Thus more than ten years before the troubles with America began, Burke had filled his mind with stores of knowledge in regard to American affairs, and had qualified himself for those marvellous trains of reasoning with which he came forward when the Stamp Act was proposed. The very next year after the publication of his treatise on the American Colonies, he projected the _Annual Register_; a work which even down to the present day has continued to give a yearly account of the most important occurrences in all parts of the globe. The undertaking could hardly have been successful except in the hands of a man of extraordinary powers. The first volumes were written almost exclusively by Burke, and the topics discussed as well as the events described, offered the best of opportunities for the exercise of his peculiar gifts. So great was the demand for the work that the early volumes rapidly passed through several editions. The first article in the first volume is devoted to the relations of the American Colonies to the mother country; and the preëminence, thus indicated of the American question in Burke’s mind, continued to be evident till the outbreak of the Revolution. Burke entered Parliament in 1765, and in January, 1766, he delivered his maiden speech in opposition to the Stamp Act. The effort was not simply successful,—it showed so much compass and power that Pitt publicly complimented him as “a very able advocate.” In 1771, he received the appointment of agent for the Colony of New York, a position which he continued to hold till the outbreak of the war. Thus, not only by his general attainments and abilities, but also as the result of his special application to the subject, he brought to the discussion of the question qualifications that were unequalled even by those of Chatham himself.