THE RATIONALE OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION. BY THE AUTHOR OF ESSAYS ON THE FORMATION OF OPINIONS, &c., &c. LONDON: R. HUNTER, 72, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 1835. PREFACE. THE Introduction to the following Treatise comprises most of those topics on which an author usually enters into an explanation with his readers, and would have precluded the necessity of this brief preface, had it not been for one circumstance, which could not well be noticed elsewhere. It was originally announced to be the intention of the writer to include, with the present Essay, a shorter dissertation on "Vicissitudes in the Value of Money, as they affect National Industry and Pecuniary Contracts." The general opinion, however, of the advisers whom he consulted being against the combination, in one work, of two treatises so dissimilar in their subjects, he abandoned his first design, and has, for the present, contented himself with the publication of the larger, and perhaps, from the nature of its topics, more generally interesting Essay. As those of his friends to whom his original plan was communicated must of course have been led to expect both treatises, he has deemed it proper to offer this short explanation, in order to account to them for the omission of the minor one. February 19, 1835. |