Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/17



persons who may be disposed to criticise this work, will have an advantage, which no doubt will be made use of. Some of the opinions maintained in it being contrary to the more generally received notions, it was necessary to treat the subject in a somewhat elementary manner, beginning with the more simple matters, and such as were less contrary to the common ways of thinking, and proceeding to others more complex and more opposite to popular ideas. On which account, the chapters in the advanced part of the discourse, if detached from their places and exposed to view by themselves, without the preceding facts and reasons on which they are grounded, may appear paradoxical and untrue. The author, therefore, makes use of the right he has to put in his caveat against that mode of proceeding.