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About The Book: We may premise that since the great mutinies, and, beyond all doubt, in consequence of them, the public opinion of England has taken a great turn in respect to our relations with the Princes of India. In the days of annexation it was the fashion to decry Native Governments; and Secretaries in Calcutta delighted to descant on the great iniquities of the Native Rulers, and to shower the most extravagant praise on the British administration, which they designated, in their stereotyped phraseology, ' a mild and paternal sway.' That was sheer diplomatic cant. The real and only aim of these officials was to enlarge our dominions, to increase patronage, and to add more regiments to our already enormous sepoy army; and the self-imposed task of these men and their masters, the Governors-Greneral, was to effect their unrighteous purpose with as little damage to their reputation as possible. About The Author: Professor John Hope FRSE FRS PRCPE (10 May 1725 – 10 November 1786) was a Scottish physician and botanist. He did enormous work on plant classification and plant physiology, and is now best known as an early supporter of Carl Linnaeus's system of classification. He did not publish much. In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1784 Hope was elected as president of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1784–6). He was educated at Dalkeith Grammar School, then studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He took leave to study botany under Bernard de Jussieu at the University of Paris, but returned to his studies in Scotland, graduating MD from the University of Glasgow in 1750. For the next decade he practiced medicine, indulging in botany in his spare time. With the death of Charles Alston in 1760, he succeeded him as the 4th Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and King's Botanist and as Professor of Botany and Materia Medica at the University of Edinburgh.