This he refused to do, and Anrod Sing came, with a force of two thousand armed men, supported by a detachment from Captain Barlow’s regiment, and laid siege to his fort, on the pretence that he was required to give security for the more punctual payment of the revenue.  To defend himself, he was obliged to call in the aid of his clan and neighbours, and expend all that he had or could borrow, and, at last, constrained to accept Anrod Sing’s security, for no merchants would lend money to a poor man in a state of siege.  Anrod Sing had now gone off to Lucknow, and bribed the person in charge of the Huzoor Tuhseel, Gholam Ruza Khan, one of the most corrupt men in the corrupt Court of Lucknow, to get an order issued by the Minister to have him turned out, and the estate made over to Jhoda Sing, from whom he would soon get it on pretence of accumulated balances, and make it over, in perpetuity, to his brother, Dirj Bijee Sing.  In this attempt, the old man said, a good many lives must be lost and crops destroyed, for his friends would not let him fall without a struggle.*

[* The old man has been attacked and turned out with the loss of some lives, in spite of the Resident’s remonstrance, and the estate has been made over to Jodha Sing, on the security for the payment of the revenue of Anrod Sing.  Jodha Sing is, naturally, of weak intellect; and Anrod Sing will soon have him turned out as an incompetent defaulter, and get the estate for himself, or for his younger brother.  Luckily Anrod Sing and Lonee Sing, of Mitholee, are at daggers-drawn about some villages, which Anrod Sing has seized, and to which Lonee Sing thinks he has a better right.  Their dread of each other will be useful to the Government and the people.]

As soon as we left the poor old man, Bukhtawur Sing said, “This, sir, is the way in which Government officers manage to control and subdue these sturdy Rajpoot landholders.  While they remain united, as in the Bangur district, they can do nothing with them, and let them keep their estates on their own terms; but the moment a quarrel takes place between them they take advantage of it:  they adopt the cause of the strongest, and support him in his aggressions upon the other members of his family or clan till all become weak by division and disorder, and submit.  Forty or fifty years ago, sir, when I used to move about the country on circuit with Saadut Allee Khan, the then sovereign, as I now move with you, there were many Rajpoot landholders in Oude stronger than any that defy the Government now; but they dared not then hold their heads so high as they do now.  The local officers employed by him were men of ability, experience, and character, totally unlike those now employed.  Each had a wing of one of the Honourable Company’s regiments and some good guns with him, and was ready and able to enforce his master’s orders and the payment of his just demands; but, since his death, the local officers have been falling off