regarding religion, politics, the public service, the natives of India. His kindness, courtesy and attention brightened my rising career with rays of hope. And now, after the lapse of forty years, busy, eventful and distracted, the retrospect of his conversation is among my most sunny memories, and his figure stands out resplendently in the picture-gallery of my recollections.
My portrait of him, then, will be drawn by the hand of affection. But while endeavouring fully to do justice to his virtues, talents and achievements, I shall strive to delineate him with discrimination, to depict him, not ideally, but actually as he was, and to avoid ascribing to him qualities which indeed great men might be supposed to possess, but which he had no opportunity of displaying. For, on the whole, he did not resemble many among the rulers of India; and in some respects his position in Anglo-Indian history is almost unique.
James Thomason was born at Shelford, near Cambridge, in 1804, and died in northern India, at Bareilly, in 1853, amongst the people whom he had governed. When a whole community was lamenting his unexpected death in the zenith of fame and authority, men felt that it was impossible by any deliberate verdict to determine his place in history. But now, after the lapse of more than a full generation, it is possible to fix the position which he should occupy in the Walhalla of Anglo-Indian worthies, in the muster-roll of those who have ruled in India.
