from each regiment are, or are to be, absent on leave this season.  This saves to Government a very large sum in the extra allowance which is granted to native officers and sipahees, during their march from one station to another, and in the deductions which are made from the pay and allowances of those who go on furlough.  During furlough, subadars receive 52 rupees a-month instead of 67; jemadars 17, instead of 24; havildars 9, instead of 14; naicks 7, instead of 12; and sipahees 5-8, instead of 7.

These native officers and sipahees, with all their gallantry on service and fidelity to their salt, are the most importunate of suitors, and certainly among the most untruthful and unscrupulous in stating the circumstances of their claims, or the grounds of their complaints.  They crowd around me morning and evening when I venture outside my tent, and keep me employed all day in reading their petitions.  They cannot or will not understand that the Resident is, or ought to be, only the channel through which their claims are sent for adjustment through the Court to the Oude tribunals and local authorities; and that the investigation and decision must, or ought to, rest with them.  They expect that he will at once himself investigate and decide their claims, or have them investigated and decided forthwith by the local authorities of the district through which he is passing; and it is in vain to tell them that the “law’s delay” is as often and as justly complained of in our own territory as in Oude, whatever may be the state of its uncertainty.

The wrongs of which they complain are of course such as all men of their class in Oude are liable to suffer; but no other men in Oude are so prone to exaggerate the circumstances attending them, to bring forward prominently all that is favourable to their own side, and keep back all that is otherwise, and to conceal the difficulties which must attend the search after the truth, and those still greater which must attend the enforcement of an award when made.  Their claims are often upon men who have well-garrisoned forts and large bands of armed followers, who laugh at the King’s officers and troops, and could not be coerced into obedience without the aid of a large and well-appointed British force.  For the immediate employment of such a force they will not fail to urge the Resident, though they have, to the commanding officer of their company and regiment represented the debtor or offender as a man of no mark, ready to do whatever the Resident or the Oude authorities may be pleased to order.  On one occasion no less than thirty lives were lost in attempting to enforce an award in favour of a sipahee of our army.

I have had several visits from my old friend Sheikh Mahboob Allee, the subadar-major, who is mentioned in my Essay on Military Discipline.  He is now an invalid pensioner in Oude, and in addition to the lands which his family held before his transfer to the invalids, he has lately acquired possession of a nice village, which he claimed in the usual way through the Resident.  He told me that he had possession, but that he found it very difficult to keep cultivators upon it.