in character and strength, while the Rajpoot landholders have risen in pride and power.  The aid of the British troops has, by degrees, been altogether withdrawn, and the landholders of this class despise the Oude Government, and many of them resist its troops whenever they attempt to enforce the payment of even its most moderate demands.  The revenues of the State fall off as the armed bands of these landholders increase, and families who, in his time, kept up only fifty armed men, have now five hundred, or even a thousand or two thousand, and spend what they owe to Government in maintaining them.  To pay such bands they withhold the just demands of the State, rob their weaker neighbours of their possessions, and plunder travellers on the highway, and men of substance, wherever they can find them.

“When Saadut Allee made over one-half of his dominions to the British Government in 1801, he was bound to reduce his military force and rely altogether upon the support of your Government.  He did so; but the force he retained, though small, was good; and while that support was afforded things went on well—­he was a wise man, and made the most of the means he had.  Since that time, sir, the Oude force has been increased four-fold, as your aid has been withdrawn; but the whole is not equal to the fourth part which served under Saadut Allee.  You see how insignificant it everywhere is, and how much it is despised even by the third-class Rajpoot landholders.  You see, also, how they everywhere prey upon the people, and are dreaded and detested by them:  the only estates free from their inroads are those under the ‘Huzoor Tuhseel,’ into which the Amils and their disorderly hosts dare not enter.  If the landholders could be made to feel that they would not be permitted to seize other men’s possessions, nor other men to seize theirs, as long as they obeyed the Government and paid its just dues, they would disband these armed followers, and the King might soon reduce his.  He will never make them worth anything; there are too many worthless, but influential persons about the Court, interested in keeping up all kinds of abuses, to permit this.  These abuses are the chief source of their incomes:  they rob the officers and sipahees, and even the draft-bullocks; and you everywhere see how the poor animals are starved by them.”

Within a mile of the camp I met the Nazim, Hoseyn Allee Khan, who told me that Rajah Goorbuksh Sing, of Ramnuggur Dhumeree, had fulfilled all the engagements entered into before me at Byramghat, on the Ghagra, on the 6th of December, and was no longer opposed to the Government; and that the only large landholder in his district who remained so at present was Seobuksh Sing, of Kateysura, a strong fort, mounted with seven guns, near the road over which I am to pass the day after tomorrow, between Oel and Lahurpoor.  As he came up on his little elephant along the road, I saw half-a-dozen of his men, mounted on camels, trotting along through a fine field of wheat, now