PREFACE.

IN presenting our last Volume to the Public, we had occasion to remark, that when the Political Occurrences, and Official Documents of the Year, were very numerous, we were unavoidably obliged to contract the Literary Departments of the Work. But the events of 1803, are of so much real importance and dignity, and must be so interesting to our readers at large, that we thought it right to relate them in an historical form, and even to omit the annual portion of our general history of India, in order to give them place.

To insert both our account of the Mahratta War, together with the large Appendix which accompanies it, and the chapter of the history

of India, which we had prepared, would have increased the volume, much beyond that cumbrous and inconvenient size to which we were formerly censured for extending it.

Under these circumstances, therefore, it appeared to us indispensable, to let the ancient history give way to a narration of those splendid events, in the glory of which so many of our readers had participated, and about which the public in general felt so lively an interest.

In the opinions which we have given of the merits of the war, of its causes, and of its consequences, as well as of the conduct of the Marquis Wellesley, and of the gallant officers who led our armies to victory, we shall not, we trust, be accused of partiality, or exaggerated commendation; for we challenge the strictest scrutiny as to the truth of the facts we have stated; and the simplest statement of these facts, must satisfy every unbiassed mind, of the justness of those encomiums, which not only our admiration, but our judgment called upon us to bestow.

Of

Of the calamitous warfare in which the British government, in Ceylon, has unfortunately been embroiled, we have not given any account; because we have not yet obtained all the documents requisite for the full developement of all the causes which produced, and all the circumstances which attended, our operations against the king of Candy. In our next volume, we shall lay before our readers, a succinct, but complete narrative of the whole of the Public Transactions in Ceylon, during the years 1802, 1803, and 1804. We however think it right to apprize our readers, that this postponement can in no way affect our account of the continental affairs of India, with which the war in Ceylon is not in any manner connected, the latter place being a distinct government, under the crown, and wholly independent of the power and control of the Company, as well as of the authority of the governor-general of India.

We shall also have occasion, in our next. volume, to give an account of the recent operations against Holkar, the Mahratta chief.