THE PREFACE OF THE EDITOR. THE very laudable design of the Author to furnish the British isles with a true and faithful history of Ireland was unfortunately marred by the procurement of an injunction from the Court of Chancery against the publication of the work, by the holder of the copy-right of the Historical Review. The labours of Mr. Plowden being thus put in abeyance, and he himself being obliged to flee to France, to avoid the consequences of a verdict obtained against him for a libel, brought by one Hart, whose conduct in the scourging of 1798 the Author had freely detailed in a note to his Re view, this History has been little known. The Editor has never seen but one copy of it, nor has he met with half a dozen person who knew any thing about its existence. Having derived much information from it himself, and entertaining the same feelings for the interests of Ireland as the Author, he conceived that he could not render a greater sérvice to Irishmen, on the late starting of the question of the repeal of the Union, than the making public a detail of the wrongs and sufferings of their country while under English domination. With this motive he undertook the task of ushering into the world a work which had long lain hidden under a rule of Chancery, and fulfilling the wishes of the Author, who exerted his best efforts to render Irishmen "an act of national justice, by a true historical representation of what they were, and what they are." The Historical Review is very voluminous, and made up chiefly of public documents and extracts from speeches in the English and Irish Parliaments. In his History the Author-makes references by notes to these records in his Review, to which in all probability few of the readers can have recourse. duced the most important of these documents into this edition as notes, and in some places where the text was deficient, he has supplied the defect by the introduction of the requisite information from the Review; so that in the whole he may safely venture to assert, that in the following pages will be found the fullest and most authentic account extant of the annals of Ireland, from the invasion of Henry II. to the act of Union in 1800, embracing a period of six centuries and a half. The Editor has therefore intro London, Nov. 12, 1831. |