To the
Hon. Edward James Eliot,
One of the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury,
and Member for Liskeard, in Cornwall.
SIR,
As I am convinced the permission with which you have honoured me, of prefixing your name, will be no small credit to this publication, I should be unhappy if the performance should do any discredit to so respectable a patron.
Some indulgence, however, must be claimed from the candour of the public, as the original of this admired work is confessedly, in some parts, extremely difficult and abstruse: for which reason also, it has not, I believe, been generally read in the present age: so that, perhaps, even you, Sir, and your young associates in the Administration, may, without knowing it, have been acting on the noble and public-spirited maxims of Marcus Antoninus.
He was a philosopher from his youth; and coming to the government of a great empire, at a very critical period, as the love of his country was his ruling principle, so he made its prosperity the chief study and employment of his whole life.
