PREFACE.

THE changes announced in the Preface to our last volume have now been subjected to a year's trial, and it is with feelings of very grateful satisfaction that we are enabled to record their success. That they have met with general approval we learn not only from many flattering communications, but from the unerring test of a regularly increasing demand for the Journal which they were designed to improve. Thus encouraged, we shall adhere to the plan of the last twelve months, striving only to carry it out with the highest attainable degree of completeness. Every effort will be made to secure the earliest and the most accurate intelligence, as well as to record it in the most convenient form; and while this department will possess every advantage that energy, liberal outlay, and unremitting assiduity can secure, passing events will continue to be discussed in that spirit of honest examination and fearless independence by which our strictures have been hitherto marked. Ours is not a party Journal, and we may fairly claim the credit of having kept it entirely free from the influence of party feeling.

The interests of India and its people, of the countries of the East generally, and of that numerous portion of the British public connected with those countries, whether by commerce or by service-civil or military-these interests claim our undivided attention, and our only ambition is to deserve the character of faithful watchmen over them.

LONDON, January, 1846.