When I take the liberty of addressing to Your Lordship A Treatise on the Game of Draughts, I easily foresee that I shall be in danger of suffering ridicule on one part, while I am gaining honour on the other, and that many who may envy me the distinction of approaching you, will deride the present I presume to offer.

Had I considered this little volume as having no purpose beyond that of teaching a game, I should indeed have left it to take its fate without a patron. Triflers may find or make any thing a trifle; but since it is the great characteristic of a wise man to see events in their causes, to obviate consequences, and ascertain contingencies, Your Lordship will think nothing a trifle by which the mind is inured to caution, foresight, and circumspection. The same skill, and often the same degree of skill, is exerted in great and little things, and Your Lordship may sometimes exercise, at a harmless game, those abilities which have been so happily employed in the service of your country. I am,

My Lord, Your Lordship’s most obliged, most obedient, and most humble servant,

It is natural for a man to think well of the art which he professes to teach, and I may therefore be expected to have some esteem for the play of draughts. I would not, however, be thought to over-rate it. Every art is valued in a joint proportion to its difficulty and usefulness. The use of draughts is the same with that of any other game of skill, that it may amuse those hours for which more laudable employment is not at hand, and happy is the man whose equability of temper and constancy of perseverance in better things, exempt him from the need of such reliefs.

Whatever may be determined concerning its use, its difficulty is incontestible; for among the multitudes that practise it, very few understand it. There are indeed not many who by any frequency of playing can attain a moderate degree of skill without examples and instructions. I have therefore here given a collection of the most artful games, the most critical situations, and the most striking revolutions,3 that have fallen within my notice; which are such as may, in some respects, set this game even equal with that of chess.

There is indeed one secret boasted in the world which I cannot teach. Some men pretend to an infallible method, by which he that moves first shall win the game; but no such hero has it ever been my fortune to encounter, and no such do I expect to find. Nor can it be proved that the first mover has any considerable advantage over a person equally skilful with himself.4 In this opinion I have the concurrence of those excellent players Mr. James Randell, Captain John Godfrey, and Mr. William Wolly,5 my intimate and worthy friends, whose examples have greatly contributed to my skill in the game; but in particular those of the great Randell, of whom it may with probability be asserted, that what he could not attain will never be discovered.