Excerpt from A Short History of the British Commonwealth, Vol. 1 of 2: The Islands and the First Empire (to 1763) It is part of the plan of the book that the treatment should become fuller as the narrative draws nearer to our own time. The present volume extends to 1763, and covers all that part of the story which is common to all the English speaking peoples. It will be succeeded by a second volume of similar dimensions, which will bring the story down to the Great War. 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.