Excerpt from Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, Afterwards First of Marquess of Lansdowne, Vol. 1: With Extracts From His Papers and Correspondence The State papers saved me a great deal of labour, as I was not obliged - having them before me - to refer on every occasion to the documents at the Record Office. Whenever this was necessary, I was met with that kindness and attention which every one who seeks information there invariably receives. My thanks are more especially due to Sir Thomas Hardy and Mr. Kingston. The Autobiography consists of an account of Lord Shelburne's early life, with a sketch of the political history of England and of the characters of the leading statesmen of the period previous to the outbreak of the Seven Years' War. What may be called two editions of it exist, and of these it is difficult to settle which is the earliest in date. Both show a complete absence of all revision, especially the less finished of the two, which however contains much interesting matter not to be found in the other, and in both the same story is frequently told twice over. A further difficulty arose from the chrono logical order being frequently departed from, though evidently present to the mind of the writer. 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.