OF NEW ENGLAND FROM THE REVOLUTION OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO THE REVOLUTION OF THE EIGHTEENTH. BY JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. = IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque. -ENNIUS, apud Cic. de Rep., V. i. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1890. EDITOR'S ADVERTISEMENT TO VOLUME V. THE author of this work died in 1881. He left the material for this volume in an advanced condition, but yet in a condition requiring the bestowal of much labor upon it before it should be ready for the press. This labor fell, in accordance with his wish, to me, his eldest son, and I have prepared the volume for publication. It is to be regretted that it should have remained so long in manuscript; but the delay has been owing to much ill-health of myself or in my family, causing frequent and long absences from home. The present volume is almost wholly printed from the author's manuscript as he left it. There can be no doubt that it has lost some advantage, in respect to literary finish, from being printed without the author's personal supervision, as it was his habit to make numerous changes of language in proofsheets and revises. There can be little doubt that much of it is a long way from being wrought up to the author's high idea of what a philosophic history should be. It is easy to see that repetitions are not infrequent, that much of the volume is only connected citations from records and documents, and much of it only simple and rapid narrative. But it seems to me that these defects, such as they are, are matter of form rather than of substance, and that the important fact remains that this book and this alone is the author's, and that we are told here what opinions a singularly conscientious and thoughtful man held in regard to New England men and things as they were in the |