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PREFACE.

THE ANNUAL REGISTER has existed for one hundred and five years the first volume being a record of the events of the year 1758. No other publication of the present day, except, perhaps, the Gentleman's Magazine, can boast of so venerable a pedigree; and it is not too much to say that it contains a mass of useful and interesting matter which can be found in no other work. As a book of reference for the occurrences of the last century it stands alone. Independently of its value as a History of public events, both at Home and Abroad, it preserves in its Chronicle a record of those incidents of daily life which, while they interest the reader for their own sake, serve to illustrate the state of society, and the manners and customs of the time. Its Collection of State Papers and Public Documents furnishes a rich mine of authentic materials for the use of the politician and historian. In its Law Cases and Trials are to be found the causes célèbres which have attracted the attention and riveted the interest of the

public during the last hundred years. And the Obituary contains the Biographies of the most eminent men who have lived and died in that period. The form and arrangement of the work have remained substantially the same from its commencement. But it is now proposed to introduce what the Proprietors confidently believe will be some marked improve

ments. The Domestic History has been chiefly a prícis of the Debates in Parliament-a collection, in fact, of the speeches there in an abridged shape. It is intended, in future, to adopt a narrative form, and to write the Domestic History of the year in the same way in which the Foreign History has been writtentaking care to notice all the important events in the order they have occurred. Improvements will be introduced in the mode of printing the work, and it is intended to name it in future "The Annual Register, New Series." For the greater convenience of purchasers, each volume will be distinguished, not by a number, but by the year to which it relates. The Proprietors confidently trust that the improvements they contemplate, amongst which they hope to include an earlier appearance of the volumes, will make the work still more worthy of the public patronage which it has for upwards of a century enjoyed.

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