Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third (Complete)

Whoever has taken the trouble of reading my Memoirs, which relate the transactions during the last ten years of King George the Second, will have seen, that I had taken a resolution of interfering no more in public affairs. It was no ambition, or spirit of faction, that engaged me in them again. Inconstancy, or weariness of retirement, were as little the motives of my return to action. I am going to set forth the true causes; and if I am obliged to make more frequent mention of myself than I should wish to do, it will be from the necessity I am under of unfolding the secret springs of many events in which I was unwillingly a considerable actor. It is to gratify no vanity that I relate them: my portion was not brilliant. And though my counsels might have been more serviceable to my country and to my friends, if they had been more followed, they were calculated to produce neither glory nor profit to myself, and were much oftener neglected than listened to. Nor should they be remembered here, if many miscarriages had not accrued from the neglect of them, as was felt and confessed by those to whom they had been suggested. How far I have been in the right or in the wrong, I leave to the judgment of posterity, who shall be impartially informed; and who may draw some benefit from the knowledge of what I have seen; though few persons, I believe, profit much from history. Times seldom resemble one another enough to be very applicable; and if they do, the characters of the actors are very different. They, too, who read history most, are seldom performers in the political drama. Yet they who have performed any part in it, are at least able to give the best account of it, though still an imperfect one. No man is acquainted with the whole plot; as no man knows all the secret springs of the actions of others. His passions and prejudices warp his judgment, and cast a mist before the most penetrating sagacity. Yet, partial as the narratives of the actors must be, they will certainly approach nearer to truth than those of spectators, who, beholding nothing but events, pretend to account for them from causes which they can but suppose, and which frequently never existed. It is this assistance to history which I now offer, and by which I may explain some passages, which might otherwise never be cleared up. I have a new reason for repeating here, what I have said in former pages, that these are memoirs, not history. The inequality, and perhaps even the contradictory opinions which may appear in them from being written at different periods, forbid this work to aim at the regular march of history. As I knew men more, I may have altered my sentiments of them;—they themselves may have changed. If I had any personal causes for changing my opinion, I have told them fairly, that the fault may be imputed to my passions, rather than to those I speak of. The actions of the persons must determine whether they altered, or I was prejudiced. But, though this dissonance may cast unequal colours on my work, I choose to leave it as I wrote it, having at each period spoken truth as it appeared to me. I might have made it more uniform by correction; but the natural colouring would have been lost; and I should rather have composed than written a history. As it stands an original sketch, it is at least a picture of my own mind and opinions. That sketch may be valuable to a few, who study human nature even in a single character.