RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL of SHELBURNE. My LORD, T was a faying of one of the greatest critics of antiquity, that whofoever took particular delight in Cicero's writings, might conclude he had made a confiderable proficiency in the art of eloquence. With equal propriety it may be affirmed of the work, which I have the honour of prefenting to your lordship, that whoever finds a pleasure in perufing the Spirit of Laws, must be deemed to have greatly improved in the study of jurifprudence and politics. Your lordship has been a conftant admirer of this celebrated work; and from thence VOL. I. you A you have imbibed that noble and manly tafte, that dignity of fentiment, and those refined ideas of civil liberty, which have endeared you to the public, and for which you have been already distinguished in the British Senate. This, indeed, has been my inducement for prefixing your name to a performance, which has hitherto claimed no patronage or protection of the great; but has fupported itself by its intrinfic merit, and even commanded the applause of the literary world. It is not my intention, My Lord, in this address, to follow the common track of dedicators, by writing a panegyric on your virtues, or launching into encomiums on your noble progenitors. Let other pens, when pofterity hall anxiously enquire into the hiftory of your tranfactions, expatiate on those accomplishments, which add a new luftre to your high birth; let them paint that dignity without pride, that magnificence without profufion, that elegance of manners, that affability, and that public fpirit, which which form the characteristic of the Earl of Shelburne ; it will be fufficient for me to view you, at this juncture, My Lord, as an admirer of Montefquieu, and as an encourager of real merit. AfAluence of fortune is no lefs adventitious than tranfitory; it indifcriminately falls to the share of the virtuous and the undeferving; and is but too often prostituted to the base purposes of debauchery and corruption. The extraordinary affluence, with which it has pleased providence to bless your Lord hip, you nobly employ, not in the idle purfuits of fashionable vice, but in promoting the polite arts, in bringing modeft merit into light, and in acts of public utility. I could be more ample on this subject, My Lord; but your delicacy forbids me, and I would not be fufpected of adulation. This, however, I muft affirm, that those truly noble virtues, which have raised you to fuch a degree of eminence at this early stage of life, give the public juft reason to prefage, that you will render yourself ftill A 2 |