FROM SIR ROBERT WALPOLE ΤΟ SIR ROBERT PEEL. BY JOHN CHARLES EARLE, B.A. OXON. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY. 1871. (The right of translation is reserved.) PREFACE. THE following papers have already appeared in a monthly magazine, but many additions have since been made, together with a few verbal alterations. It has been the aim of the writer to blend history, biography, and comment in a way which might not be unpleasing, and to avoid above all things overcharging the portraits of the premiers with details. He willingly leaves to those who are more enterprising the task of writing their entire lives with elaborate precision, content if he can only succeed in drawing sketches which will be both popular and exact. He has no fear as regards the principles advocated in these pages, being deeply conscious of a most hearty sympathy with all that is truly Liberal and wisely Conservative. He believes the safety, happiness, and progress of society in this country to be indissolubly bound up with the conflict of political parties and the freedom of religious exertion; and though the lives of English premiers have an intrinsic interest in a literary point of view, their highest value is derived from the |