A different distribution of the contents, while it has made the volumes, with the exception of the first and sixth, more nearly equal in their respective bulk, has, at the same time, been fortunately found to produce a more methodical arrangement of the whole.  The first and second volumes, as before, severally contain those literary and philosophical works by which Mr. Burke was known previous to the commencement of his public life as a statesman, and the political pieces which were written by him between the time of his first becoming connected with the Marquis of Rockingham and his being chosen member for Bristol.  In the third are comprehended all his speeches and pamphlets from his first arrival at Bristol, as a candidate, in the year 1774, to his farewell address from the hustings of that city, in the year 1780.  What he himself published relative to the affairs of India occupies the fourth volume.  The remaining four comprise his works since the French Revolution, with the exception of the Letter to Lord Kenmare on the Penal Laws against Irish Catholics, which was probably inserted where it stands from its relation to the subject of the Letter addressed by him, at a later period, to Sir Hercules Langrishe.  With the same exception, too, strict regard has been paid to chronological order, which, in the last edition, was in some instances broken, to insert pieces that wore not discovered till it was too late to introduce them in their proper places.

In the Appendix to the Speech on the Nabob of Arcot’s Debts the references were found to be confused, and, in many places, erroneous.  This probably had arisen from the circumstance that a larger and differently constructed appendix seems to have been originally designed by Mr. Burke, which, however, he afterwards abridged and altered, while the speech and the notes upon it remained as they were.  The text and the documents that support it have throughout been accommodated to each other.

The orthography has been in many cases altered, and an attempt made to reduce it to some certain standard.  The rule laid down for the discharge of this task was, that, whenever Mr. Burke could be perceived to have been uniform in his mode of spelling, that was considered as decisive; but where he varied, (and as he was in the habit of writing by dictation, and leaving to others the superintendence of the press, he was peculiarly liable to variations of this sort) the best received authorities were directed to be followed.  The reader, it is trusted, will find this object, too much disregarded in modern books, has here been kept in view throughout.  The quotations which are interspersed through the works of Mr Burke, and which were frequently made by him from memory, have been generally compared with the original authors.  Several mistakes in printing, of one word for another, by which the sense was either perverted or obscured, are now rectified.  Two or three small insertions have also been made from a quarto copy corrected by