Excerpt from Bolingbroke and Walpole About twenty-eight years ago, I delivered a series of lectures on English Politicians from Bolingbroke to Gladstone, introduced by a discourse which sought to outline general laws of political evolution. Several of the lectures were soon afterwards written out in a greatly expanded form; and the introductory one, by a series of expansions, became a large book of which the second edition is entitled The Evolution of States An Introduction to English Politics. Thus late in the day I have set about completing the long delayed scheme of the series of studies which dealt with the political evolution of England during nearly two hundred years. It may be asked why this ground, so often traversed, should now be gone over again. Why, for instance, should any one want to write on Walpole after the pro duction of so masterly and brilliant a book as the Walpole of Lord Morley The answer is that the original scheme of these studies was to set forth a total process of politico social evolution; to view the leading politicians as they related to the total life of their time to deal with politics as a phase or function of that total life and accordingly to consider intellectual and economic aspects of the social process which books on politics and politicians do not usually face. The last generation produced many intelligent and instructive studies in English political biography - for instance, the English Premiere of J. C. Earle (2 vols. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.