Lehal Library

— ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION, 1853 The sheets of this Edition were seen and corrected by their Author, and were ready for publication several months previous to his death, in February, 1851. The reasons of a painful, though teniporary character— — for the delay in the appearance of the work will be found in a Memoir already written and to be published hereafter, when regard for the living will no longer interfere with the truth of History. The author fell a victim to the truth related in He wrote History in advance of his time, and suffered for it; but posterity will, I feel assured, do justice to his memory. My brother's anxiety to be correct was evinced in the unceasing labour he took to obtain the most minute information. Wherever he has been proved to be wrong and this has been in very few instances he has, with ready frankness, admitted and corrected his error. In matters of opinion he made no change not from obstinacy, but from a firm conviction that he was this book. — — — right. The new notes to this Edition contain some information of moment, contributeli by Lord Gough, Sir Charles Napier, and others, and all received my brother's sanction. The printed materials for the recent History of India are not of that character on which historians can State Papers, presented to the people by 'both rely. Houses of Parliament', have been altered to suit the temporary views of political warfare, or abridged out of mistaken regard to the tender feelings of survivors.* In matters of private life, some tenderness may be shown to individual sensitiveness, but History, to be ^ The character and career of Alexander Burnes have both been misrepresented in those collections of State Papers which are supposed to furnish the best materials of history, but which are often only one-sided- compilations of garbled documents, counterfeits, which the ministerial stamp forces into currency, defrauding a present generation, and handing dowTi to posterity a chain of dangerous lies. Kaye, Affghanistan, ii. 13 —