That cause must be weak and desperate, indeed, that has to resort to the arts of the slanderer to prop it up and injure its victims. And it is truly lamentable to see people adopting these tactics against the Theosophical Society and its founders. Soon after we reached India we were obliged to begin legal proceedings against a missionary organ, to compel its editor to apologize for some base slanders he had indulged in; and readers of The Theosophist are aware of the conduct of the Christian party in Ceylon, and their utter discomfiture at Panadure. However great our efforts to avoid any conflict with them, some strange fatality seems to be for ever urging these good people to adopt questionable measures to hasten their own ultimate ruin. Our Society has been their favourite mark. The most recent shot was fired at Benares by a well-known convert to the Christian faith, who, unable to lay hold upon anything disreputable in our Indian career, did his best to injure us in a certain important direction by sneeringly suggesting to a very high personage that Colonel Olcott was a man of no position in his own country, and had doubtless come to India as an adventurer, to make money out of the people. Happily his venom was poured into unsympathetic ears. Yet, as he is a man of a certain influence, and others of our friends have also been similarly approached by him and other enemies of ours, such calumnies as these cannot be well overlooked. We are quite aware that a document of such a nature as the present, if launched on the public without a word of explanation, would give rise to criticism, and perhaps be thought in bad taste, unless very serious and important reasons can be shown for its appearance. Such reasons unquestionably exist, even were no account to be taken of the malicious plot of our Benares opponent. When, in addition to this, we reflect that ever since we landed in this country, impelled by motives, sincere and honest – though, perhaps, as we now find it ourselves, too enthusiastic, too unusual in foreigners to be readily believed in by natives without some more substantial proof than our simple word – we have been surrounded by more enemies and opponents than by friends and sympathizers; and that we two are strangers to rulers as well as the ruled, we believe that no available proof should be withheld that will show that, at least, we are honest and peaceful people, if not actually that which we know ourselves to be – most sincere friends of India and her sons. Our personal honour, as well as the honour of the whole Society, is at stake at the present moment. "Tell me what your friends are and I will tell you what you are," is a wise saying. A man at Colonel Olcott’s time of life is not likely to so change in character as to abandon his country, where he has such an honourable past and where his income was so large as it was, to come to India and turn "adventurer." Therefore, we have concluded, with Colonel Olcott’s permission, to give the following details. They are but a few out of many now lying before us, that show his honourable, efficient and faithful career, both as a member of the Bar, a private gentleman, and a public official, from the year 1853 down to the very moment of his departure from the United States for India. As Colonel Olcott is not a man to sound his own praises, the writer, his colleague, may state that his name has been widely known in America for nearly thirty years as a promoter of various public reforms. It was he who founded (in 1856) the first scientific agricultural school there upon the Swiss model; it was he again who aided in introducing a new crop now universally cultivated; addressed three state legislatures upon the subject by invitation; wrote three works upon agriculture, of which one passed through seven editions, and was introduced into the school libraries; was offered by Government a botanical mission to Caffraria, and, later, the Chief Commissionership of Agriculture, and was offered by M. Evangelides, of Greece, the Professorship of Agriculture in the University of Athens. He was at one time Agricultural Editor of Horace Greeley’s great journal, The Tribune, and also American Correspondent of The Mark Lane Express. For his public services in connection with agricultural reform he was voted two medals of honour by the National (U.S.) Agricultural Society, and a silver goblet by the American Institute.