839 
whose criticisms, or strictures upon style, were requested by Dr. 
Robertson, that his history might profit by one who had attended 
so much to the purity and elegance of language; and to whom Sir 
William Jones thus writes: “ Your History of the Military Trans- 
actions in India, is not one of those books which a man reads once 
in a cursory manner, and then throws aside tor ever; there is no 
end of reading and approving it; nor shall I ever desist giving my- 
self that pleasure to the last year of my life. You may rely on 
this testimony, as it comes from one, who not only was never guilty 
of flattery; but, like Caesar’s wife, would never suffer himself to be 
suspected of it.” 
This amiable man was born at Anjcngo in 1728, and died in 
England in 1801. I have occasionally introduced his sentiments 
in these volumes; his account of the Hindoo and Mahomedan in- 
habitants of Hindostan, their laws and justice, their manners and 
customs, and peculiar traits of character, is admirably correct, and 
his conclusion remarkably striking. 
“ Having finished this essay on the government and people of 
Hindostan, I cannot refrain from making the reflections which so 
obviously arise from the subject. Christianity vindicates all its 
glories, all its honour, and all its reverence, when we behold the 
most horrid impieties avowed amongst the nations on whom its 
influence does not shine, as actions necessary in the common con- 
duct of life: I mean poisonings, treachery, and assassinations, in 
the sons of ambition; rapines, cruelty, and extortions in the mini- 
sters of justice. I leave divines to vindicate by more sanctified 
reflections, the cause of their religion and their God. The sons 
of liberty may here behold the mighty ills to which the slaves of a 
