"Twas your zealous want of sense, and sanctified impertinence Obliged the State to talk about, and turn you root & branch all out. CIVIL LIST AND CROWN REVENUES; OF THE ARISTOCRACY; PRIVY COUNCIL, DIPLOMATIC, AND CONSULAR ESTABLISHMENTS; Law and Judicial Administration; REPRESENTATION AND PROSPECTS OF REFORM Profits, Influence, and Monopoly OF THE BANK OF ENGLAND AND EAST-INDIA COMPANY, RENEWAL OF THEIR CHARTERS; DEBT AND FUNDING SYSTEM; Salaries, Fees, and Emoluments in Courts of Justice, Public Offices, and Colonies; Pluralists, Placemen, Pensioners, and Sinecurists: THE WHOLE CORRECTED FROM THE LATEST OFFICIAL RETURNS, AND PRESENTING Church, State, Law, and Representation. BY THE ORIGINAL EDITOR. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. 1831. THE Black Book was, originally, brought out in periodical numbers, and laboured under the disadvantages incident to that mode of publication: the composition was hurried, the subjects ill-arranged and digested, and time was not always afforded for verifying facts and obtaining complete and authentic information. Defective as the publication was, it excited unusual interest; though rough in manner, and incorrect in matter, it contained a striking development of Oligarchical abuse, and thus fixed the attention of the public. It has been oftentimes reprinted, and upwards of 14,000 copies have been sold, almost without the expense of advertisement, or any of those helps from literary notices which are usually deemed essential to give celebrity to the productions of the press. The imperfections of the original undertaking, augmented by intervening changes, have been comprised in the editions of the work hitherto published; with the exception o eight pages, not a single subject has been revised, nor an alteration made, further than in the title page. It has now been so completely re-modelled by the original Editor, that it may be said to be newly-created. The price has been reduced one-third; all that was valuable in the two volumes of the old work has been carefully corrected, and a variety of new subjects has been introduced; it has been composed entirely afresh, newly arranged, and is, in all respects, a new Book. The opinions and statements now submitted to the public are those alone for which the Editor feels responsible. Ten years have elapsed since the first publication; in the interval, all things have changed, or nearly so-but the writer is the same. His object at first was, and now has been, to show the mani 28729 As |