Memoirs of the Kings of Great Britain of the Houfe of Brunswic IT T gives us pleasure to meet again this amiable and well informed author in the track of history and politics, to which his talents feem well adapted. In proportion as hiftory becomes more authentic and interefting, the task of writing it becomes more difficult, and it requires a hand at once firm and impartial to delineate characters and events fo recent, that the feelings concerning them mix with the prejudices of the times and the paflions of the moment. The abilities of Mr. Belfham appear, however, not inadequate to the undertaking. His manner of writing is temperate and manly, and he seems to have inveftigated the fpirit of contending parties without being carried away by a blind enthufiafm for any one of them. We do not clearly understand why thefe volumes are termed Memoirs; a title from which we fhould understand either family anecdotes of the Houfe of Brunswic, or particular information drawn from fources not generally acceflible, neither of which is the cafe. The work is in fact a history of the two laft reigns, with this only difference, that it prefents a fuller picture of the internal ftate of parties, and the struggles of parliamentary debate, than of foreign military tranfactions, and is particularly directed to unfold the views by which the politics of the prefent family have been directed. The Introduction, which is here reprinted from a volume of Effays published fome time ago by the fame author, gives a sketch of the politics of the reign of queen Anne, and a view of the critical conjuncture the nation was in at the moment of her death.-At the acceffion of the Hanoverian family, the Tories were immediately difmifled; the perfecuted Diflenters taken into favour, and a new system of politics adopted, flowing from new fituations and the emergency of the times. The difference between the principles of the Whigs and Tories, between whom the nation was, our author thinks, pretty equally divided at this period, is here clearly and flrongly markC. R. N. AR. (XIII ) Jan. 1795. B ed |