ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. THESE Volumes contain whatever (with the exception of his History of England) is believed to be of the most value in the writings of Sir James Mackintosh. Something of method, it will be observed, has been affected in their arrangement by commencing with what is more purely Philosophical, and proceeding through Literature to Politics; each of those heads being generally, though not quite precisely, referable to each volume respectively. With such selection would naturally have terminated his responsibility; but in committing again to the press matter originally for the most part hastily printed, the Editor has assumed as the lesser of two evils-a larger exercise of discretion in the revision of the text than he could have wished to have felt had been imposed upon him. Instead, therefore, of continually arresting the eye of the reader by a notification of almost mechanical alterations, he has 230961 to premise here that where inaccuracies and redundancies of expression were obvious, these have been throughout corrected and retrenched. A few transpositions of the text have also been made; —as where, by the detachment of the eleventh chapter of what the present Editor on its original publication allowed to be called, perhaps too largely, the "History of the Revolution of 1688," a stricter chronological order has been observed, at the same time that the residuelosing thereby much of its fragmentary character -may now, it is hoped, fairly claim to be all that is assumed in its new designation. Of the contributions to periodical publications, such portions only find place here as partake most largely of the character of completeness. Some extended quotations, appearing for the most part as notes on former occasions, have been omitted, with a view to brevity, on the present; while, in addition to a general verification of the Author's references, a few explanatory notes have been appended, wherever apparently needful, by the Editor. R. J. MACKINTOSH. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen- turies Page |