said, to the Public-and what really is private feeling, I have forborne even more than I have adventured.
What's done ye partly may compute
But know not what's resisted.
It would have been egotistical and presumptuous in me to have said even this much, upon the circumstances under which the present work has been written, if it had not been that, on a recent occasion, these personal circumstances were much mis-stated both in Parliament and by the Press; and a great Public Body identified with what was in reality but a private undertaking. And, however willing I may be, in all cases where others have assisted me, to share with them the praise that may be considered my due, I wish to keep the blame undividedly to myself; and to be held solely responsible for all the revelations that are made, and all the opinions that are expressed, in any book that bears my name upon its title.
I have but one word more to say, personal to myself. On looking over the sheets of this work, it appears to me that there is, in some parts, what may seem to be a party bias-in other words, a disposition to speak more slightingly of the acts of the old Whig party than those of their opponents. As the supposition that I have written at all under political influence would, very properly, invalidate my testimony, I think it right to say, that ever since I was a boy my sympathies have been all with the Whigs, and that if this has not appeared in the writings which bear my name, it is because I have ever held that “India is of no Party," and esteemed the claims of Historical Truth paramount over all considerations of Party or of Person.