THE CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF HENRY LORD BROUGHAM, TO WHICH IS PREFIXED A SKETCH OF HIS CHARACTER. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA: LEA & BLANCHARD. 57516 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by LEA & BLANCHARD, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. GRIGGS & CO., PRINTERS. PREFACE. It is now nearly forty years since Henry Brougham, at the age of three-and-twenty, began those labours ever directed to the advancement of the intellectual and moral condition of his species, the impression of which can never be effaced from the history of the progress of the human mind. The Edinburgh Review, of which he was one of the founders, was the vehicle of the earliest productions of his prolific pen, and has continued to the present time to be occasionally enriched by his contributions on almost every subject with which the improvement of mankind is connected. Political regeneration, the correction of abuses of every sort, the extension of rational liberty, the freedom of conscience, the information and consequent elevation of the operative classes, the improved education of the higher orders, the diffusion of the knowledge of the God of nature through the familiar exposition of the laws of nature, the reform of parliament, and of the laws, the restoration of the streams of charity to their proper channel,-in a word, the promotion of every measure which could conduce to ennoble the mind of man, and contribute to the improvement of religion and virtue, has occupied his attention as a |