ORIGINAL PREFACE.
pleasure of the British Government, expressed before the question can give rise to dispute, or encourage those hopes and expectations, which on each occasion sacrificed the lives of so many members of the Royal Family at the shrine of a vain and reckless ambition.
It is this want of a fixed rule of succession to the throne, which has contributed to maintain the kingdom in a constant ferment, and retard the progress of improvement. It was not that the reigning monarch's choice of his successor was not promulgated; but in a pure despotism, though the will of a living autocrat carries with it the force of law, the injunctions of a dead one avail little against the “lang claymore” or the “persuasive gloss” of a gallant or an intriguing competitor. The very law of primogeniture, which seems to carry with it the strongest sanctions is only more calculated to excite and foment these disturbances, where regal descent is not avowedly based on that rule, and especially in a country where polygamy prevails; for the eldest prince is he who has been longest absent from the Court, whose sympathies have been earliest withdrawn from the influence of his own home, whose position in charge of an independent government inspires most alarm and mistrust in the reigning monarch, and whose interests are the first to be sacrificed, to please some young and favorite queen, ambitious of seeing the crown on the head of her own child. In such a state of society, the princes themselves are naturally brought up, always as rivals, sometimes as adventurers and robbers; the chiefs espouse the cause of one or the other pretender, not for the maintenance of any principle or right, but with the prospect of early advantage or to gratify a personal predilection; and probably end in themselves aspiring to be usurpers on their own account; the people, thoroughly indifferent to the success of either candidate, await with anxiety the issue, which shall enable them to pursue for a short time the path of industry and peace, till it shall again be interrupted by new contests; in short, all classes, interests, and institutions are more or less affected by the general want of stability, which is the necessary result of such unceasing turmoil and agitation.
These considerations, and many more which will offer themselves to any diligent and careful peruser of the volumes here noticed, will
