PREFACE.

THE Composition which I now deliver to the public, is the first of a threefold series of works, which, when completed, will form The History of the United States of North America, from the Plantation of the English Colonies to the Establishment of their Independence. My plan is restricted to the history of those provinces of North America (originating, all except New York and Delaware, from British colonisation,) which, at the era of the American Revolution, were included in the confederacy of the United States: the illustration of the rise and formation of this great republic, being the end of my labours.

The present work, the first of the projected series, embraces the rise of such of those States, comprehended within my general plan, as were founded prior to the British Revolution in 1688, and traces their progress till that epoch. In some instances I have found it necessary to carry forward the history of particular states, somewhat beyond this precise boundary; partly because the influence of the British Revolution did not immediately extend to them, and partly in order to exhibit a complete view of certain interesting transactions, of which the account would otherwise have been broken and defective. A second performance, for which I have already collected a considerable mass of materials, will embrace the further history of these earlier states, together with the rise and progress of those which were subsequently formed, till the commencement of the American Revolution. This second

work, which, like the present, will оссиру, I believe, two volumes, I consider the most difficult and important portion of my labours. Two additional volumes, I trust, will enable me to complete my general plan, and embrace the history of the revolutionary war, and the establishment and consolidation of the North American Republic.

Con

In the collection of materials for the composition of this work, I have been obliged to incur a degree of labour and expence, which, had I originally foreseen, I doubt if I could have ventured to encounter. sidering the connection that so long subsisted between Great Britain and the American States, the information concerning the early history of many of these provinces, which the public libraries of Britain are capable of supplying, is amazingly scanty. Many valuable works illustrative of the history and statistics both of particular states and of the whole North American commonwealth, are wholly unknown in the British libraries: a defect the more discreditable, as these works have long enjoyed a high repute at the seats of learning on the continent of Europe, and as the greater part of them might be procured without difficulty in London or from America.

After borrowing all the materials that I could so procure, and purchasing as many more as I could find in Britain, my collection proved still so defective in

In the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh, for example, there is not a single separate history of Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania; there is not one of the statistical works of Pitkin or Seybert; and although there are the first volumes, respectively, of Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, and of Hazard's Historical Collections, none of the posterior volumes of these interesting works have ever been procured. But the negative catalogue of the Advocates' Library, in this departi ent, is too copious for further quotation.

To the British Museum I am indebted for the perusal of several works of very great rarity; particularly Denton's description of New York, and Archdale's Description of Carolina. But this collection, though much richer than the Advocates' I ibrary, is yet exceedingly defective in American history.

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Un. ix. p. 156-c

many respects, that in the hope of enlarging it, I undertook a journey to Gottingen; and in the library of this place, as I had been taught to expect, I found an ampler collection of North American literature, than any or indeed all the libraries of Britain could supply. From the resources of the Gottingen library, aided by the liberality with which its administrators are always willing to render it subservient to the purposes of literary inquiry, I have derived the greatest advantage and assistance. Yet even this admirable repository of history is not entirely perfect; and I have still to lament my inability to procure some works illustrative of my subject, which, whatever may be their value, it would have been satisfactory to have had an opportunity of perusing. Hopkins's History of Providence, Hist. Coll in particular, Vanderdonck's History of New Netherlands, and ́Holm's History of Swedeland in America, are books which I have been hitherto unable to procure. The learned Ebeling has characterised the first of these as a book not easily met with: and that I am not chargeable with negligent inquiry, may be inferred, I think, from the fact, that I have succeeded in procuring and consulting various works which Ebeling confesses his inability to obtain, besides many of whose existence he seems not to have been aware. Even those which for the present I am obliged to dispense with, as well as various other works of infrequent occurrence and applicable to a later portion of time, I still hope to procure for the elucidation of the vast and varied subject of my second composition.

History addresses her lessons to all mankind: but when she records the fortunes of an existing people,

* I am indebted to the private collections of various individuals for the perusal of some very rare and not less interesting works; and in particular I beg leave to acknowledge the kindness with which the valuable library of the late George Chalmers was submitted to my examination, by his nephew and executor Mr James Chalmers of London.

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Thomas Campanins, Holmiensis, i.c.

Holmiensis, ... of Stuckholm.

it is to them that her admonitions are especially directed. There has never been a people on whose character their own historical recollections were calculated to exercise a more animating or salutary influence, than the nation whose history I have undertaken to relate.

In national societies established after the manner of the United States of North America, history does not begin with obscure or fabulous legends. The origin of the nation, and the rise and progress of all its institutions, may be distinctly known. The people may obtain an accurate and familiar acquaintance with the character of their earliest national ancestors, and of every succeeding generation through which the inheritance of the national name and fortunes has devolved to themselves. When this interesting knowledge is blended with the information that their existence as a people originated in the noblest efforts of wisdom, fortitude, and magnanimity, and that every successive acquisition by which their liberty and happiness have been extended and secured, has arisen from the exercise of the same qualities, and evinced their faithful preservation and unimpaired efficacy,-respect for antiquity becomes the motive and pledge of virtue; the whole nation feels itself ennobled by ancestors whose renown will continue to the end of time the honour or reproach of their successors; and the love of virtue is so interwoven with patriotism and with national glory, as to prevent the one from becoming a selfish principle, and the other a splendid or mischievous illusion. If an inspired apostle might with complacency proclaim himself a citizen of no mean city, a North American may feel grateful exultation in avowing himself the native of no ignoble land, but of a land that has yielded as great an increase of glory to God and of happiness to man, as any other portion of the world, since the first syllable of

recorded time, has ever had the honour of producing. A nobler model of human character could hardly be proposed to the inhabitants of New England, Pennsylvania, and others of the North American States, than that which their own early history supplies. It is at once their interest and their honour to preserve with sacred care a model so richly fraught with the instructions of wisdom and the incitements of duty. The memory of the saints and heroes whom they claim as their natural or national ancestors will bless all those who account it blessed; and the ashes of their fathers will give forth a nobler influence than the bones of the prophet of Israel, in reviving piety and invigorating virtue. So much, at the same time, of human weakness and imperfection is discernible in the conduct, or is attested by the avowals of these eminent men, and so steady and explicit was their reference to heavenly aid, of all the good they were enabled to perform or attain, that the admiration they so strongly claim never exceeds a just subordination to the glory of the Most High, and enforces the scriptural testimony to the riches of divine grace, and the reflected lustre of human virtue.

The most important requisite of historical compositions, and that in which, I suspect, they are commonly most defective, is truth—a requisite, of which even the sincerity of the historian is insufficient to assure us. In tracing ascertained and important facts, either backward into their original, or forward into their operation, the historian frequently encounters, on either hand, a perplexing variety of dissimilar causes and diverging effects; among which it is no less dif ficult than important to discriminate the peculiar springs of action, and to preserve the moral stream of events. Indiscriminate detail would produce intole