Excerpt from A Short History of the British Commonwealth, Vol. 2 of 2: The Modern Commonwealth (1763 to 1919) Nor is this the only difficulty which the writing of recent history presents. The task of writing the first volume was greatly simplified by the fact that, in the main, I had to follow a beaten track, trodden by many previous writers, who had established what may be called an orthodox View as to the significance and the relative importance of events. In the present volume I have lacked this aid; for though a vast deal has been written about almost every aspect of the subject, the results have not yet been digested into a received and coherent view. Indeed, so far as I am aware, there is no book in which an attempt has been made to draw together, in their just relations, all the subjects which have seemed to me to be essential parts of my theme. 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.