On the 10th of November, 1836, in the fifty-sixth year of my age, at a period of little exciting occupation, and, therefore, so far favourable to a calm retrospect of past events, I commenced a register of a few of the chief incidents of my life, which has been continued from time to time down to my final retirement from public life, in July 1852.

I hope it may not prove altogether uninteresting to trace the steps by which I have successively attained my present position in society: first, in China, by giving to the European world the original translation of the Ta Tsing-leu-lee, or Penal Code of China, and afterwards obtaining the chief direction of our Chinese commerce, with the appointment of second Royal Commissioner to the Court of Pekin, and eventually to the chief post in the Embassy, in the event of the death or coming away of the Ambassador. In the second place, in England, I gained the representation of South Hampshire, after a severe contest; and subsequently occupied that of the important naval station of Portsmouth, which I held unanimously, during three successive Parliaments, and in which I trust I have not been unworthily employed.

I was born on the 26th of May, 1781, at Milford, near Salisbury, in the house of my maternal grandfather, Benjamin Collins, Esq., a banker of considerable wealth and eminence in that city.