Excerpt from The Naval Chronicle, Vol. 24: Containing a General and Biographical History of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom With a Variety of Original Papers on Nautical Subjects
Spence, in the preface to his Polymetis, says, "there is not any sort of writing which he sits down to with so much reluctance as that of prefaces:" as we are somewhat inclined to his opinion, and moreover believe that most people are not much more given to reading them, than we are fond of writing them, we shall, for the readers sake as well as our own, get over this as fast as is consistent with our duty. For, notwithstanding ordinary readers may be apt to skip over these little compositions, and that some even consider them as so many pages lost, the case is different with us; we have what may be called a literary duty to perform, and the present is one of the stated periods for that performance. We have to justify principles, to acknowledge patronage, to vindicate conduct, or to record gratitude. In a work avowedly the produce of auxiliary literature, the Editor must wait for the returns of this period to appear personally before the tribunal to which he is amenable: and above all we are bound not to neglect the opportunities which the embodying our monthly numbers into half-yearly volumes affords, for placing our thanks giving to contributing friends upon more permanent record than the wrappers of the Chronicles; much too fugitive a medium to satisfy our feelings, or even to tranquillize our conscience. Otherwise a work like the present might certainly be permitted to appear without the accustomed ornament of a preface: for what are miscellanies but a bundle of prefaces? and a periodical publication which has attained its twenty-fourth volume, may refer the proof of it"s merits to the very fact of its existence. We do refer to that fact, with what we trust is an excusable, if not a laudable pride, as the test of having realised the professions of our original prospectus, when we undertook to occupy a space in literature and science, till then so greatly neglected, as to form no inconsiderable chasm.
Before we indulge ourselves by entering on the acknowledgments that are due for the favours of our patrons and correspondents, we think that many of our readers will not be displeased at being detained a few moments by our making some necessary observations upon certain points connected with the circumstances of these eventful and turbulent times.
First with respect to party. In the technical acceptation of that term we belong to none, deeming it, according to Swift"s satisfactory definition, "the madness of many for the gain of a few." Not that we mean in theory to deny that in a society constituted like the English public, good is generally not to be effected without the association of men who have the same object in view: or that we mean to affect that frigid impartiality between the efforts of political antagonists contending for the good of our country, (that is, when the public weal is the true object) which we cannot maintain even at a match between two pugilists or two race-horses. But we beg leave to declare, that although the Naval Chronicle shall never in our hands be intimidated to degenerate into a party publication, it will not shew backwardness in the present critical situation of Britain to promote a system in the administration of its affairs that the conductors of this work deem conducive to the general welfare. We have seen more or less to blame in the policy and conduct of both those bodies of statesmen who struggle, some for power, others for place: but the times imperiously demand a prompt and energetic government; and to check with wanton or obdurate opposition, at a season of acknowledged peril, the executive hand of the state, we should deem a crime of no ordinary magnitude.
It is much the fashion just at present, particularly with those in possession of profitable employments paid by the publ. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Naval Chronicle, Vol. 24