is governed, reflect on the attentive mind an image of the genius of the people and their rulers. They supply the means of detecting the ignorance of barbarism, and mark the progress of refinement, and of mental culture. They exhibit distinct traces of the usurpations, or of the depression of monarchs, and of the power or the importance of legislative bodies. In short, a reference to collections of the laws of a community is frequently necessary to correct the errors of mere chroniclers, and to rectify the false conceptions of political theorists; and, in all cases in which it can be made, tends to promote the prime object of the historian's researches, namely, the establishment of truth.

Many of the preceding observations may be applied to demonstrate the utility, which the historian may derive from the records of Courts of Law. These furnish a vast variety of historical facts most minutely investigated. In their pages may be traced the artful devices of injustice, and the amendment of judicial principles and practice. They serve as a warning against that worst species of tyranny, oppression under the forms of law-and exemplify the superior felicity enjoyed by nations, when the lives and liberties of their citizens are securely fenced by legal provisions against the encroachments of power.*

The public archives in which are preserved original grants of titles, estates, and immunities, contain documents which throw great light upon the internal history of states and kingdoms-nor will the student, who wishes fully to investigate many historical questions, refuse their due true praise to heralds, genealogists, and antiquarians; whose labours, though frequently made the subjects of ridicule, are, nevertheless, on many occasions extremely useful to the historian.

The reports, made by the governors of distant provinces to

* It may be with truth affirmed that no one can form an adequate and correct idea of the gradual amendment effected in the institutions of our native country, and of the value of those constitutional principles, from which those amendments have been naturally derived, who has not read with attention the State Trials of England.

the seat of government in the mother country, detail the difficulties experienced in the infancy of colonization. They mark the gradual growth of emigrant communities. They afford important hints of warning and instruction. By their aid may be traced the rise and progress of ideas of independence, from the first impatient murmurs against restraint, to the bold and manly struggle to throw off the yoke of despotism.

The recording of treaties with foreign powers, is an obvious method of preserving the remembrance of the external relations of a country; and the dispatches of envoys and embassadors, especially the confidential communications made by diplomatic agents to the executive branches of their respective governments, lay open to view the most secret springs of political conduct. How clearly is the policy, or rather the impolicy, of our King Charles II. and of his unfortunate successor, to be traced in the official letters of Barillon, which have been laid before the public by Sir James Dalrymple and Mr. Fox; and what a striking picture do we behold of the difficulties incident to the administration of a free government, in the papers of Sir Robert Walpole and his associates in office, as published by Mr. Coxe in the appendix to his Life of that celebrated statesman. Though a degree of obscurity is thrown upon some parts of this work, in consequence of its author's not sufficiently opening the general history of the times of which he treats, it is, in the main, highly interesting and instructive; and, above all, it evinces, what is a quality of rare occurrence in a political biographer, a candid and unprejudiced mind. The appendix, which occupies two volumes supplementary to the life, contains an abundance of documents which disclose the secret springs of many political transactions, and which will teach the young to regard with due scepticism the professions of public men; to which it may be added, that the collection of letters, of which the appendix principally consists, exhibits an interesting variety of style, rising in excellence through just degrees, from the clumsy coarseness of Chancellor Middleton, to the graceful ease of the profligate Bolingbroke,

It is impossible, in many cases, correctly to decide upon the merits or the demerits of commanders of fleets and armies, without an inspection of such returns of their forces, and of such details of their plans, and the reasons of their movements, as they are accustomed, from time to time, to submit to their superiors. A mere attention to dates will apprize the readers of gazettes, that General Washington, in the years 1775 and 1776, lay encamped before the town of Boston, at the head of a force far superior to that of the British, for the space of nine months, without striking a blow. The general's official correspondence with Congress, accounts for his seeming dilatoriness, by revealing the astonishing fact, that, during a great part of this time, he was so scantily provided with powder, that, had the British been aware of his situation, and marched to attack him, he would have been under the necessity of abandoning his position.*

Though the declarations and manifestoes which the rulers of states, in deference to public opinion, are in modern times accustomed to issue as a record of their mutual grievances, and as apologies for disturbing the general tranquility by an appeal to arms, are usually drawn up with considerable artifice, and with an anxious desire to distort facts and to disguise the truth, to the discerning mind they not unfrequently afford a clue for the tracing of political mysteries; and are by no means to be neglected by him who would wish to be well versed in history.

The records which have been preserved of the instructions given to plenipotentiaries, and of the successful and the unsuccessful negociations which have, from time to time, taken place between belligerent powers for the restoration of peace, afford abundant matter of information and instruction to the student of History. They admit the reader, as it were, behind the curtain. They reveal the views and expectations of adverse powers; their sense of strength, or their consciousness of weakness; the real as well as the pretended foundation of

* See Washington's Official Letters, published in London in 1795, in two vols. octavo.

their demands, and the true as well as the alleged reason of their relinquishment of claims. They not unfrequently develope the whole system of the policy of a state; and while they afford specimens of the mutual exercise of consummate dissimulation, they may be classed among the most valuable documents which can be submitted to the examination of an historian.

Of no less value are all those records which afford authentic materials for statistical science; namely, accurate accounts of the population of different countries at several periods of their revenues-their commerce, their naval, military, and religious establishments-of their civil constitution, and the condition of the various classes into which their inhabitants are subdivided.

In addition to the information which is to be derived from these public documents, much light is frequently thrown on national transactions by the papers of individuals. The management of state affairs has been well denominated "a craft." It is esteemed one of the chief requisites of a politician, to be able to put a fair seeming upon the schemes in which he is engaged, and he frequently adopts the most skilful artifices to disguise the motives of his actions, and to conceal from observation his ulterior views and designs. These, however, he, in all probability, reveals, either to his superiors and employers, or to his confidential friends. When communications of this kind come to light, they obviously tend to explain what is obscure in the conduct of political affairs, and to give a full view of the truth. Of these repositories of private confidence, the diligent and faithful historical inquirer will be anxious to avail himself. In many points, the orations of Cicero exhibit the outward appearance of public transactions in which that true lover of his country was engaged; but the real nature, quality, and purpose of some of the most important of these transactions, are clearly to be understood only by the perusal of his Epistles, in many of which he appears to have opened to his friends his most secret thoughts.

Tacitus, in the compiling, or rather in the composition of his Annals, consulted not only the public records of the times of which he treated, but also the private memoirs of such senators as had taken an active part in the conduct and management of the affairs of the Roman empire.*

In this respect, the historian of modern times enjoys great advantages over the writer who endeavours minutely to investigate the events of ancient history. There exists a rich abundance of private memoirs and letters of such statesmen as have, in later days, directed the affairs of almost every country in Europe. These documents disclose the hidden causes of many public proceedings, which cannot, without their aid, be thoroughly understood. They evince the occasional embarrassments of the rulers of nations, and display, in all their deformity, the mean artifices of political intrigue, and the interested manœuvres of the crafty and dishonest, who have abused the delegation of power. A careful perusal of their pages will abate the ardour of political idolatry, and prepare the free inquirer to investigate the truth with candour and impartiality.

The foregoing are the principal sources and repositories of historical materials. Others, no doubt, may be enumerated. The diligent and sagacious inquirer will glean facts from quarters apparently the most unpromising and barren. What is lost upon a careless or an ignorant reader, may dispense a ray of light to the man who applies the powers of an active mind to the investigation of historic truth. He who proposes to himself this as his object, will not, when occasion requires it, shrink with disgust from the toil of turning over heaps of rubbish in search of a single pearl. Thus the intelligent and industrious Gibbon, speaking of the works of Jerome, Augustine, and Chrysostom, observes: "the smallest part of these writings is of the historical kind; yet the treatises which

*Thus, in recording the proposal to assassinate Arminius, made to the Roman government by Adgandestrius, referring to his authorities, he says, "Reperio apud scriptores, senatoresque eorundem temporum."