LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET.
MDCCCXXX.
GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS,
ST. JOHN'S SQUARE, LONDON.
TO
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE PRINCE REGENT.
SIR,
The gracious permission which I have received to dedicate these volumes to your Royal Highness, affords me an opportunity of interesting your Royal Highness in favour of the amiable and ingenuous people whose country they describe. The high respect they entertain for British valour and justice, and the lively gratitude they retain for the generous system of British Legislation, will, I am sure, give them a strong claim upon your Royal Highness's good opinion.
To uphold the weak, to put down lawless force, to lighten the chain of the slave, to sustain the honour of the British arms and British good faith; to promote the arts, sciences, and literature, to establish humane institutions, are duties of government which have been most conspicuously performed during your Royal Highness's regency. For a period of nearly five years, in which I have had the honour, as a servant of the East India Company, to preside over a mild and simple people, it has been my pride and my ambition to make known to them the justice and benevolence of my Prince, whose intentions towards them I could only fulfil by acting up to the principles of the Authority which I represented, and by doing every thing in my power to make them happy.