I could form no consistent plan from the various opinions I met with: hence I was engaged to compile the observations I had casually made, in the course of my travels, reading, and experience. From these I formed the following work, after expunging the numberless inconsistencies and contradictions which I found had arisen from my separate inquiries into every particular branch. I had observed so many persons declining in knowledge as they advanced in years, that I resolved early to throw upon paper whatever I had learned; and to this I used to have recourse, as others have to their memories. The unity of the object of all my speculations, rendred this practice more useful to me than it would be to one whose researches are more extended. Whoever is much accustomed to write for his own use merely, must contract a more careless stile than another who has made language his study, and who writes in hopes of acquiring a literary reputation. I never, till very lately, thought of appearing as an author; and in the frequent perusals of what I had writ, my corrections were chiefly in favour of perspicuity: add to this, that the language in which I now write was, for many years, foreign to those with whom I lived and conversed. When these circumstances are combined with the intricacy of my subject, which constantly carried off my attention from every ornament of language, I flatter myself that those of my readers, at least, who enter as heartily as I have done into the spirit of this work, will candidly overlook the want of that elegance which adorns the stile of some celebrated authors in this Augustan age. I present this inquiry to the public as nothing more than an essay which may serve as a canvass for better hands than mine to work upon. It contains such observations only as the general view of the domestic policy of the countries I have seen, has suggested. It is a speculation, and no more. It is a rough drawing of a mighty plan, proportioned in correctness to my own sagacity, to my knowledge of the subject and to the extent of my combinations. It goes little farther than to collect and arrange some elements upon the most interesting branches of modern policy, such as _population, agriculture, trade, industry, money, coin, interest, circulation, banks, exchange, public credit, and taxes_. The principles deduced from all these topics, appear tolerably consistent; and the whole is a train of reasoning, through which I have adhered to the connection of subjects as faithfully as I could: but the nature of the work being a deduction of principles, not a collection of institutions, I seized the opportunities which my reasoning threw in my way, to connect every principle, as I went along, with every part of the inquiry to which it could refer; and when I found the connexion sufficiently shewn, I broke off such disquisitions as would have led me from the object then present.