MEMOIRS 8:106 AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE MOST NOBLE RICHARD MARQUESS WELLESLEY, K.P.; K.G.; D.C.L. SUCCESSIVELY GOVERNOR-GENERAL AND CAPTAIN-GENERAL OF INDIA ; COMPRISING NUMEROUS LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS, NOW FIRST BY ROBERT ROUIERE PEARCE, Esq. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, ar TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY LORD BROUGHAM AND VAUX, SOMETIME LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND, &c. &c. &c. MY LORD, THE following Memoirs of one of the most illustrious and most valued of your friends are, with the greatest respect, dedicated to your Lordship. I have gratefully to acknowledge the honour conferred upon me by your Lordship's permission to inscribe these Volumes to you. To no person, my Lord, could such a work be so appropriately dedicated as to one who was for many years the associate of the great man whose public life is herein recorded, who for so long a period of time coöperated with him in advancing the happiness of mankind by the diffusion of principles of liberty, justice, and truth,— and to whom the Marquess Wellesley in terms of such beauty and emphasis inscribed his own Primitia et Reliquiæ. I also humbly conceive that the life of the Founder of the College of Fort William at Calcutta-that "light amid the darkness of Asia"-cannot be more fitly inscribed than to the Founder of a kindred institution in the British Isles. Το you, my Lord, this nation owes a debt of gratitude for your memorable services in the cause of Constitutional Reform, and of Civil and Religious Liberty,. -in the cause of the down-trodden African Slave,-of the Amendment of the Law-and preeminently in the cause of Universal Education: and in your own person you have shown that the severer studies of the Law are not incompatible with attachment to Literature and Philosophy. It is due to your Lordship and the representatives of the late Marquess Wellesley to state, that I have undertaken this work on public grounds, without concert with any one, solely in consequence of my admiration of the character of that statesman; and that I alone am responsible for the facts and opinions advanced in these pages. I feel, my Lord, the weight of the responsibility which I have assumed; but I can honestly say that, without having party or personal motives to serve, I have endeavoured to exhibit in their true light the actions of one of the greatest men that ever adorned this kingdom. I have the honour to be, My Lord, Your Lordship's most obedient and most humble Servant, ROBERT ROUIERE PEARCE. LONDON, JANUARY, 1846. |