O N HISTORY, AND GENERAL POLICY; TO WHICH IS PREFIXED, AN ESSAY ON A COURSE OF LIBERAL EDUCATION By JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL.D. F.R.S. AC, IMP. PETROP. R. PARIS. HOLM. TAURIN. AUREL. MED, PARIS. BIBL JUVAT EXHAUSTOS ITERARE LABORES, ET SULCATA MEIS PERCURRERE LITORA REMIS. BUCHANANI FRANCISCANUS. BIRMINGHAM, PRINTED BY PEARSON AND ROLLASON, FOR J. JOHNSON, N° 72, MDCCLXXXVIII, THE DEDICATION. то BENJAMIN VAUGHAN, Efq. DEAR SIR, THESE Lectures were formerly addressed to you as a pupil; and I shall think myself happy if what you say you heard with pleasure formerly, do not disappoint you now; which is often the case with the objects of our fond admiration in younger years. Confider, however, that these Lectures were not intended for proficients but for ftudents, unfurnished with the very rudiments of historical and political knowledge, and that you: attended them at the age of fixteen. With this allowance, it may give you pleasure (as the motto from my favourite Latin poet expresses it) to go over the ground you have formerly trodden. Remember, then, that you are now to read for amufement, and not for inftruction; and I fhall be happy if the scenes which I may bring to your recollection give you as much fatisfaction as they do me. For I never experience greater, than when I find young men of ability formed to virtue, and usefulness in life, under my instructions. My obligations to your father, to yourfelf, and to the whole of your large and respectable family, will always be a subject of pleasing recollection to me; and this is a circumftance that greatly heightens the fatisfaction I have in subscribing myself on this occafion, Dear Sir, Your affectionate Friend, J. PRIESTLEY. BIRMINGHAM, JAN. 1, 1788. AT the request of many of my former pupils, I now publish the heads of the Lectures on History and general Policy, which I compofed for their ufe when I was tutor at Warrington, and which I promised to do when I published my Elay on the first principles of Government. I prefix to them an Effay on a course of liberal Education for civil and active Life, which has been long out of print, and which will no more, accompany my Miscellaneous Observations relating to Education. It will be very evident that it has a much nearer connexion with these lectures, which were compofed in purfuance of the ideas which I have there enlarged upon. The following circumftance gave birth to them both. On my accepting the office of Tutor in the Languages and Belles Lettres in that academy,' I found that the far greater part of the students were young gentlemen defigned for civil and active life, whereas the course of study, as in all other places of liberal education, was almoft intirely adapted to the learned profeffions; and it occurred to me that, befides the lectures which they had been used to attend, other courfes might be introduced, which would bring them acquainted with fuch branches of knowledge as would be of more immediate, ufe to them when they should come into life. With this view I planned and compofed three courfes, one on history in general, another on the biftory of England, and a third on the laws and confiitution of England, fyllabuses of which will be feen on my former Fay on Education. 5 The |