Historical Preface
IT is a mere truism in the history of revolutions to assert that they are seldom brought to a close by the persons or political parties with whom they originate. Men whose existence was perhaps scarcely known to the world at large when the onward movement took its origin rise in succession to the surface, acquire the government, and carry forward the work to lengths and heights which their predecessors never contemplated. It is in tracing this sequence of political parties, the gradual growth of what was looked upon in the first instance as a contemptible and almost senseless faction, its struggles for the mastery, the arts (too often unworthy) by which it acquired the ascendancy, its acts whilst in a condition of dominancy, and finally the errors by which it forfeited power and made way for the next in turn, that much of the interest of historical narrative is found.