"To appreciate the value of the _Edinburgh Review_, the state of
England at the period when that journal began should be had in
remembrance. The Catholics were not emancipated. The Corporation and
Test Acts were unrepealed. The Game-Laws were horribly oppressive;
steel-traps and spring-guns were set all over the country; prisoners
tried for their lives could have no counsel. Lord Eldon and the Court
of Chancery pressed heavily on mankind. Libel was punished by the most
cruel and vindictive imprisonments. The principles of Political
Economy were little understood. The laws of debt and conspiracy were
upon the worst footing. The enormous wickedness of the slave-trade was
tolerated. A thousand evils were in existence, which the talents of
good and able men have since lessened or removed; and these efforts
have been not a little assisted by the honest boldness of the
_Edinburgh Review_."

Lord Brougham has left on record a similar account.

"I at once entered warmly into Smith's scheme. Jeffrey, by nature
always rather timid, was full of doubts and fears. It required all
Smith's overpowering vivacity to argue and laugh Jeffrey out of his
difficulties. There would, he said, be no lack of contributors. There
was himself, ready to write any number of articles, or to edit the
whole; there was Jeffrey, _facile princeps_ in all kinds of
literature; there was myself, full of mathematics and everything
relating to the Colonies; there was Horner for Political Economy, and
Murray for General Subjects. Besides, might we not, from our great and
never-to-be-doubted success, fairly hope to receive help from such
leviathans as Playfair, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, Thomson, and
others?"