Excerpt from A History of England in the VII, Vol. 7 Dropmore, and to Lord George Hamilton for some curious papers describing the different interests and connections in the Irish Parliament. It will be objected, that the addition of two long volumes to the large amount of Irish history already contained in this book has completely destroyed the proportion of my work. It must, however, be remembered, that the present volumes form in reality a supplementary history, dealing with Irish affairs during eight eventful years which are not comprised in my English narrative. The sketch of Irish history which has been given in the preceding volumes would be imperfect and, per haps, even misleading, if it were not continued to the close of the Irish Parliament and to the resignation of Pitt, in March 1801. But if the fiercely contested events Of those last years are related at all, it is very desirable that they should be related in a manner that may, if possible, raise them above the distort ing atmosphere of party strife, and place the reader in a position to judge them in all their aspects. There is a method of dealing with historical facts which has been happily compared to that of a child with his box of letters, who picks out and arranges those letters, and those only, which will spell the words on which he has previously determined, leaving all others un touched. In Irish history this method has been abundantly practised, and among the many crimes and errors that have been committed by all parties, it is not difficult to select on either side the materials Of a very effective party narrative. I have endeavoured to write this History in a different spirit. Perhaps another generation may be more capable than the present one, of judging how far I have succeeded. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.