In the progress of this work I shall give a brief delineation of the political movements of the last twelve or fourteen years, or at least of those events that came within my knowledge, which I believe will include almost every thing relating to reform and the public characters who have taken any part in promoting or retarding that desirable object. These public characters consist of George the Third down to Arthur Thistlewood inclusive, who are dead and gone; of those who are yet living from George the Fourth down to Mr. Cobler Preston and Mr. Billsticker Waddington. The public events will more particularly include the History of the great Public Meetings held within the last twelve years in Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somersetshire, Middlesex, London, Westminster, Bristol, Bath, Spa-fields, Smithfield and Manchester, as well as those held at the Crown & Anchor and the Freemason's and London Taverns; and likewise of the contested elections of Bristol, Westminster, London, Bridport, Ludgershal and Preston, at all of which I took an active part, and therefore am enabled to detail many curious and interesting anecdotes, facts, intrigues, plots, under-plots, cabals, &c. which were never before presented to the public, and which circumstances, together with the secret springs and actions of those who worked in the back ground, which have hitherto been very imperfectly understood, shall be brought to light and faithfully recorded; taking due care not to betray any confidential communications. I shall, also, as is usual, or at least as is very common, give a short sketch of my ancestors, not because I can show a long line of them up to the Conquest, (nor because I esteem this a circumstance to boast of), but I shall state facts as they have been handed down from father to son by old family documents, regardless of the sneers of those who, at the same time and in the very same breath in which they affect to ridicule and despise all distinctions of this sort, fall themselves into a much greater error and indulge in a much less excusable folly; that of holding up to public admiration, esteem and confidence, their own offspring, and bedaubing them with the most fulsome adulation merely because they are their own progeny; although every other person except themselves can clearly perceive that they neither possess talent, intellect, public spirit, nor any other qualification calculated either to amuse or to instruct. When I see a sensible man in other respects fall into an inconsistency of this sort, I am always reminded of the fable of the _Eagle, the Owl, and her young ones_. The fact is, that I am more proud of my father than of any of my ancestors, because I know him to have been an excellent and an honest man, and one who by his industry and talent became a second founder of his family. But as the object of my labours will be to give you a faithful history of my _own life_, it is of very little consequence either to you