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S. GOSNELL, Printer, Little Queen Street, Holburn.

Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek

München

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THE marvellous fertility of the prefent æra in extraordinary occur rences will reconcile the reader to the publication of a poftliminious preface to a work, that has been upwards of fix months before the public. Whilft the great Ruler of the Universe continues to produce the wife ends of his providence over human beings through fecondary causes, the reasoning powers, with which he has gifted them, continue to be the ordinary means, by which he enables them to face the circumstances of the day, however awful, pregnant, or unprecedented they be. To every function and department in focial life, appropriate duties are affixed, which arife out of, and can only ceafe in the extinction of social nature itself. If Bolingbroke obferved truly, that the love of history feems infeparable from human nature, the hiftoriographer fills no unimportant station in fociety. His first and last duty is a facred adherence to truth; and until it please the Divine Ruler to fufpend or alter that system, by which he has hitherto given action and protection to the physical and moral world, profane and irreverend would be the attempt to attain the truth of human events otherwise

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than by the light and rules of that reafon, which for this very end he has indiscriminately infused into every human being.

The author, confcious of his eagerness to investigate, and his ftern determination to disclose the truth, did not heretofore feel himself called

upon to make any avowal to the public of his intention and endeavours to fulfil this indifpenfable duty of the hiftorian. The cafe is now altered; and he does feel himself called upon to submit to the public feveral facts, which affect the credit of his Hiftory, and which most intimately touch the interefts of Ireland, and therefore involve the firmness and profperity of the British empire.

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Confiftently with the views, motives, and principles, which led the author to undertake the arduous and important (and to fome, invidious) task of bringing down the Irish history to the present day, he cannot pafs wholly unnoticed, the invectives upon the Historical Review in the British Critic for November and December 1803. The work appears to have fet afloat all the gall of the reverend writers of that periodical publication. In p. 465, vol. xxii. they affure their readers, that "the publication is confidered by a great part of the Irish "as a libel upon the loyalty of Ireland: and his (the author's) object in publishing such a work at fuch a time is best known to himself." It is now become neceffary to make that object known also to the public. They add (p. 483), "As this Hiftorical Review of the State of Ireland by Mr. Plowden has very imprudently provoked investigation, it is " alone answerable for whatever contention may arise from the difcuffion." Such refponfibility is common to all publications; more efpecially to fuch as deal in invective. These confiderate cenfors are, doubtless, therefore prepared for fimilar refponfibility. But the influence, under which the British Critic is well known to be directed and circulated, gives no opening to individual controversy or perfonal reflection.

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The author repels with fcorn the falfe charges of writing his Hiftory to ferve the interests of a party, and to mislead the people of England. He avers, that it contains no wilful hiftorical mifreprefentation; he believes it contains no actual biftorical mifreprefentation. It contains no undeferved panegyric upon any fet of individuals; it contains fome cenfure, but no unfounded calumnies against the living and the dead

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of any fet. Such general charges can only be met by general denial; and in fupport of fuch denial, beyond the authorities adduced in the Hiftorical Review (not to be taken on the credit of the grofs miftatements of the British Critic), the author forewarns his reader, that the first overflow of their acrimonious humour for the month of November does not contain one specific charge, much lefs a proof, that the author has falfified one fingle historical fact.

If from these first workings of the British Critic it be allowable to analyze the dofe administered (however gilded the pill), it will be found to have been compofed of the following ingredients: three fourths of antipathy against the profeffors of the Roman Catholic religion, not ineptly termed, Papaphobia; and the remaining fourth of a powerful compound of the drug called Miferinia, or hatred of the Irish nation; an equal portion of a higher fublimate of this compound lately prepared by Sir Richard Mufgrave, Bart. and forced by the puffs of the British Critic into general circulation amongst their cuflomers; and a difcretional infufion of the common drug Doulodynamy never known for ages to have failed in producing in the patient a blind unqualified fubmiffion even to the most nauseous, painful, and humiliating recipe of the phyfician. Whether the administration of fuch a pill have been judicious under the exifting circumftances, may be doubted by many; that it has operated powerfully, must be allowed by all, who have examined its effects.

Under the operation of this dofe, fo keenly ferocious are the patients' animofity and hatred to the Irish nation, or to their religion, or to both, that they take offence at what the author has very compendiously inferred from the indefatigable researches and unanfwerable difquifitions of the late Charles O'Connor of Ballynagare, the learned and ingenious Vallaney, and feveral other refpectable Irish authors, concerning fome facts, which preceded Chriftianity by nearly one thousand years; others that happened before the Reformation, by as long a period; and many that pre-existed by feveral centuries the invasion of Ireland by Henry II. the epoch, from which the author commences his Hiftorical Review. These facts are not the affertions of Mr. Plowden, as falfely advanced (P. 471); but the concurrent teftimony of the ancient and modern

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