The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI | Page 3

their illustrious writer.
XII. Letter to the Right Honorable Henry Dundas; with the Sketch of a Negro Code.
Mr. Burke, in the Letter to Mr. Dundas, has entered fully into his own views of the Slave Trade, and has thereby rendered any further explanation on that subject at present unnecessary. With respect to the Code itself, an unsuccessful attempt was made to procure the copy of it transmitted to Mr. Dundas. It was not to be found amongst his papers. The Editor has therefore been obliged to have recourse to a rough draft of it in Mr. Burke's own handwriting; from which he hopes he has succeeded in making a pretty correct transcript of it, as well as in the attempt he has made to supply the marginal references alluded to in Mr. Burke's Letter to Mr. Dundas.
XIII. Letter to the Chairman of the Buckinghamshire Meeting.
Of the occasion of this Letter an account is given in the note subjoined [prefixed] to it.
XIV. Tracts and Letters relative to the Laws against Popery in Ireland.
These pieces consist of,--
1. An unfinished Tract on the Popery Laws. Of this Tract the reader will find an account in the note prefixed to it.
2. A Letter to William Smith, Esq. Several copies of this letter having got abroad, it was printed and published in Dublin without the permission of Mr. Burke, or of the gentleman to whom it was addressed.
3. Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe. This may be considered as supplementary to the first letter, addressed to the same person in January, 1792, which was published in the third volume.[5]
4. Letter to Richard Burke, Esq. Of this letter it will be necessary to observe, that the first part of it appears to have been originally addressed by Mr. Burke to his son in the manner in which it is now printed, but to have been left unfinished; after whose death he probably designed to have given the substance of it, with additional observations, to the public in some other form, but never found leisure or inclination to finish it.
5. A Letter on the Affairs of Ireland, written in the year 1797. The name of the person to whom this letter was addressed does not appear on the manuscript; nor has the letter been found to which it was written as an answer. And as the gentleman whom he employed as an amanuensis is not now living, no discovery of it can be made, unless this publication of the letter should produce some information respecting it, that may enable us in a future volume to gratify, on this point, the curiosity of the reader. The letter was dictated, as he himself tells us, from his couch at Bath; to which place he had gone, by the advice of his physicians, in March, 1797. His health was now rapidly declining; the vigor of his mind remained unimpaired. This, my dear friend, was, I believe, the last letter dictated by him on public affairs:--here ended his political labors.
XV. Fragments and Notes of Speeches in Parliament.
1. Speech on the Acts of Uniformity.
2. Speech on a Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters.
3. Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians.
4. Speech on the Middlesex Election.
5. Speech on a Bill for shortening the Duration of Parliaments.
6. Speech on the Reform of the Representation in Parliament.
7. Speech on a Bill for explaining the Powers of Juries in Prosecutions for Libels.
*7. Letter relative to the same subject.
8. Speech on a Bill for repealing the Marriage Act.
9. Speech on a Bill to quiet the Possessions of the Subject against Dormant Claims of the Church.
With respect to these fragments, I have already stated the reasons by which we were influenced in our determination to publish them. An account of the state in which these manuscripts were found is given in the note prefixed to this article.
XVI. Hints for an Essay on the Drama.
This fragment was perused in manuscript by a learned and judicious critic, our late lamented friend, Mr. Malone; and under the protection of his opinion we can feel no hesitation in submitting it to the judgment of the public.
XVII. We are now come to the concluding article of this volume,--the Essay on the History of England.
At what time of the author's life it was written cannot now be exactly ascertained; but it was certainly begun before he had attained the age of twenty-seven years, as it appears from an entry in the books of the late Mr. Dodsley, that eight sheets of it, which contain the first seventy-four pages of the present edition,[6] were printed in the year 1757. This is the only part that has received the finishing stroke of the author. In those who are acquainted with the manner in which Mr. Burke usually composed his graver literary works, and of which some