To the Right Hon. Gen. Viscount Hardinge, G.C.B.,
            &c. &c. &c.

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Lucknow, 24th July, 1849.

My Lord,

May I, request that your Lordship will do me the favour to have the name of my only son, Henry Arthur Sleeman, placed upon his Grace the Commander-in-Chiefs list of candidates for a commission in one of her Majesty’s Dragoon regiments?

He was sixteen years of age on the 6th of January last; and he is now prosecuting his studies under the care of Mr. C. J. Yeatman, at Westow Hill, in Surrey, five miles from London, who will be instructed to have him prepared for the examination he will have to undergo.  My agents, Messrs. Denny, Clark, and Co., Austin Friars, London, will be prepared to lodge the money, and to forward to me any letters with which they may be honoured by your Lordship.  My rank is that of Lieut.-Colonel in the Honourable East India Company’s service, and present situation, that of Resident at the Court of his Majesty the King of Oude.

I have the honour to be,
Your Lordship’s obedient, humble servant,
W. H. SLEEMAN.

To Lieut.-General Lord Fitzroy Somerset, G.C.B.,
Military Secretary to his Grace the Commander-in-Chief,
Horse Guards, London.

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Lucknow, August 1849.

My Lord,

1.  I will answer your Lordship’s queries in the order in which they are made.

2.  The King, as I shall show in my next official report, is utterly unfit to have anything to do with the administration, since he has never taken, or shown any disposition to take any heed of what is done or suffered in the country.  My letters have made no impression whatever upon him.  He spends all his time with the singers and the females they provide to amuse him, and is for seven and eight hours together living in the house of the chief singer, Rajee-od Dowla—­a fellow who was only lately beating a drum to a party of dancing-girls, on some four rupees a-month.  These singers are all Domes, the lowest of the low castes of India, and they and the eunuchs are now the virtual sovereigns of the country, and must be so as long as the King retains any power.  The minister depends entirely upon them, and between them and a few others about Court everything that the King has to dispose of is sold.

3.  To secure any reform in the administration, it will be necessary to require the King to delegate all the powers of sovereignty to the Board.  This he can do, retaining the name of Sovereign and control of his household; or abdicating in favour of his son the heir apparent, to whom the Board would be a regency till he comes of age.  If the alternative be given him, and he choose the former, it should be on the condition, that if his favourites continue to embarrass the Government, he will be required to submit to the latter.  Oude is now, in fact, without a Government: