ESSAYS POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND RELIGIOUS BY RICHARD CONGREVE LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. All rights reserved T60-103306 ADVERTISEMENT. THIS WORK is in the main a reprint, with two or three exceptions. Without any exception, all its component parts are printed or reprinted as they were originally published or spoken. Extending over a period of nearly twenty years, and touching on difficult questions of present interest, there will be found in the essays, here and there, incidental opinions which in the shifting course of European politics have become untenable. Some of the judgments, too, I might wish softened in statement— occasionally, perhaps, strengthened. But as I abide by the leading principles and general tone, I have preferred leaving all the pieces as they stood originally, though by alterations I might in some cases have obviated objections or avoided attack. Even the two French discourses are left as they were delivered. The arrangement is in two series, each in chronological order; the more directly political writings forming one series, the more social and religious the |