CAPTAIN FURNEAUX'S ABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE PRINCIPAL TREATIES OF PEACE.
A GOOD abridgment of the principal European Treaties would be highly useful, as a work of reference, to the politician and to the historical student. It might also be made to furnish a very good coup d'ceil of history, so far as regarded political events and the results of wars. Nor would its execution require any genius : taste, method, and industry, would amply suffice. The compiler's first step would be to divide his subjects into epochs, partly ar- ranged according to the nature of history, partly according to the order of time. To each epoch an introduction should be pre- fixed, briefly but comprehensively describing the position of the negotiating powers, and narrating the circumstances which had placed them there. The abridgment of the treaties themselves would follow : their length would depend upon their importance; their execution would be merely an affair of compilation; the proem or preface to each treaty would tell its story, at least so far as was necessary to the full understanding of its scope and stipulations.
Captain FURNEAUX has attempted nothing of this kind ; nor perhaps, in the space to which he was limited, could he have accomplished it. Neither has he given merely an abridgment of the treaties. If words could be fully comprehended without a knowledge of the things they represent, the titlepage would con- vey to the reader an exact idea of the book. It is a history of treaties; and forms rather a heterogeneous work ; for though the leading stipulations are given, yet they are so mixed up, not only vv ith facts of the wars which rendered negotiations for peace neces- sary, but even with the policy and supposed motives of those wars, that the principal subject is lost in us accessories. It is a greater fault, that these statements are not always complete in themselves, but allude to circumstances and persons about which the reader may very probably be ignorant, unless he is so much of an histo- rian as scarcely to need this work.
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