In the year 1833, the Gwalior territory yielded a net revenue to the treasury of ninety-two lakhs of rupees, after discharging all the local costs of the civil and fiscal administration of the different districts, in officers, establishments, charitable institutions, religions endowments, military fiefs, &c.[12] In the remote districts, which are much infested by the predatory tribes of Bhils,[13] and in consequence badly peopled and cultivated, the net revenue is estimated to be about one-third of the gross collections; but, in the districts near the capital, which are tolerably well cultivated, the net revenue brought to the treasury is about five-sixths of the gross collections; and these collections are equal to the whole annual rent of the land; for every man by whom the land is held or cultivated is a mere tenant at will, liable every season to be turned out, to give place to any other man that may offer more for the holding.

There is nowhere to be seen upon the land any useful or ornamental work, calculated to attach the people to the soil or to their villages; and, as hardly any of the recruits for the regiments are drawn from the peasantry of the country, the agricultural classes have nowhere any feeling of interest in the welfare or existence of the government.  I am persuaded that there is not a single village in all the Gwalior dominions in which nine-tenths of the people would not be glad to see that government destroyed, under the persuasion that they could not possibly have a worse, and would be very likely to find a better.

The present force at Gwalior consists of three regiments of infantry, under Colonel Alexander; six under the command of Apaji, the adopted son of the late Bala Bai;[14] eleven under Colonel Jacobs and his son; five under Colonel Jean Baptiste Filose; two under the command of the Mamu Sahib, the maternal uncle of the Maharaja; three in what is called Babu Baoli’s camp; in all thirty regiments, consisting, when complete, of six hundred men each, with four field-pieces.  The ‘Jinsi’, or artillery, consists of two hundred guns of different calibre.  There are but few corps of cavalry, and these are not considered very efficient, I believe.[15]

Robbers and murderers of all descriptions have always been in the habit of taking the field in India immediately after the festival of the Dasahra,[16] at the end of October, from the sovereign of a state at the head of his armies, down to the leader of a little band of pickpockets from the corner of some obscure village.  All invoke the Deity, and take the auspices to ascertain his will, nearly in the same way; and all expect that he will guide them successfully through their enterprises, as long as they find the omens favourable.  No one among them ever dreams that his undertaking can be less acceptable to the Deity than that of another, provided he gives him the same due share of what he acquires in his thefts, his robberies, or his conquests,