Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Travels During the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789, Vol. 1: Undertaken More Particularly With a View of Ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources, and National Prosperity of the Kingdom of France
One circumfiance I may be allowed to mention, becaufe it will thew, that Whatever faults the enfuing pages contain, 'they do not flow from any prefump tive expe�tation of fuccefs a feeling that belongs to writers only, much more popular than myfelf when the publilher agreed to run the hazard of printing thefe papers, and fome progrefs being made in the journal, the whole ms. Was put into the compofitor's hand to be examined, if there were a fu?iciency for a volume of fixty theets he found enough prepared for the prefs to fill 140 and I affure the reader, that the fuccefiive employment of {hiking out and mutilatin g more than the half of what I had written, was executed with more indifference than regret, even though it obliged me to exclude feveral chapters, upon which I had taken confiderable pains. The publifher would have printed the whole but whatever faults may be found with the author, he ought at leali to be ex empted from the imputation of an undue confidence in the public favour fince, to expunge was undertaken as readily as to compofe. -so much depended in the fecond part of the work on accurate figures, that I did not care to trull: to myfelf, but employed a fchoolmaller, who has the reputation of being a good arithme tician, for examining the calculations, and I hope he has not let any material er rors efcape him.
The revolution in France was a hazardous and critical fubje�t, but too im portant to be neglected the details I have given, and the reflections I have ventured, will, si trufi, be received with candour, by thofe who confider how many authors, of no inconfiderable ability and reputation, have failed on that difficult theme: the courfe I have fieered is fo removed from extremes, that I can hardly hope for the approbation of more than a few, and I may apply to myfelf, in this inftance, the words of Swift I have the ambition, common with other reafoners, to wifh at leafi that both parties may think me In the rig/at; but if that IS not to be hoped for, my next with fhould be, that both might think me iii tbe w; 072g which I would under?and as an ample juftification of my (elf, and a fure ground to believe that I have proceeded at lcaft with Impar tiality, and perhaps with truth.
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