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Rh the kind existing; yet, without detriment to any other science or subject as to which information was here reasonably to be expected. The political articles contained in it may be considered as belonging to General Politics, to Political Economy, and to Political Arithmetic.

To the first head may be referred the articles Balance of Power, Government, Jurisprudence, Law of Nations, Liberty of the Press, and Prison Discipline; all of them, but the first, written by Mr Mill; whose contributions in this and the other departments where his assistance has been given, display a reach and depth of thinking, and a power of analytical reasoning, that must command the respect even of those who may sometimes be disposed to dispute his principles, or to dissent from his conclusions. Most of the great problems respecting the ends of government and legislation, and the means of preserving political, civil, and national rights, are discussed by him, in the articles just mentioned, in a form severely methodical, and in a spirit which seeks neither aid nor ornament from the artifices of rhetoric.

It is observed by M. Cuvier, in his Historical Report on the progress of certain branches of physical science in France, since the era of the Revolution, that the evils which the ruinous system of Assignats produced in that country, were, in some degree, compensated by the improvements in the arts to which it gave rise. Compensations of a far higher order have, in this country, attended the evils occasioned by measures affecting the soundness of its Currency; for they have served to exercise the science of Political Economy in discussions, which have elicited new principles, afforded new explanations, and raised the truths which it unfolds to a degree of importance in the eyes of statesmen and legislators, of which the world is at length likely to experience the benefits. The space allotted to this science, in the plan of the present work, has been accordingly measured out, with a due regard to the interest which it has excited, and to its intrinsic utility; and here, also, the reader will receive the information which it presents to him, from contributions of eminent ability; some of them