This Preface comes directed to you, not as commissioner, &c., under
whom I have the honour to serve his Majesty, nor as a friend, though
I have great obligations of that sort also, but as the most proper
judge of the subjects treated of, and more capable than the greatest
part of mankind to distinguish and understand them.

Books are useful only to such whose genius are suitable to the
subject of them; and to dedicate a book of projects to a person who
had never concerned himself to think that way would be like music to
one that has no ear.

And yet your having a capacity to judge of these things no way
brings you under the despicable title of a projector, any more than
knowing the practices and subtleties of wicked men makes a man
guilty of their crimes.

The several chapters of this book are the results of particular
thoughts occasioned by conversing with the public affairs during the
present war with France. The losses and casualties which attend all
trading nations in the world, when involved in so cruel a war as
this, have reached us all, and I am none of the least sufferers; if
this has put me, as well as others, on inventions and projects, so
much the subject of this book, it is no more than a proof of the
reason I give for the general projecting humour of the nation.

One unhappiness I lie under in the following book, viz.: That
having kept the greatest part of it by me for near five years,
several of the thoughts seem to be hit by other hands, and some by
the public, which turns the tables upon me, as if I had borrowed