The minister was a fool, under the tutelage of his deputy, Sobhan Allee Khan, a great knave, who disappeared as soon as he heard that the Begum was approaching with his son-in-law, Khadim Hoseyn.  Mozuffer Allee Khan, a person in high office and confidence under the late King, did the same.  The minister and the Durbar Wakeel were the only officers of the State of Oude who stood by the new King and the British Resident.  The minister afterwards declared that a strong detachment of troops had been placed outside the gate through which the Begum ultimately forced her way, as well as at the other passages leading to the palace and baraduree; and Captain Shakespear, on his way to the new Sovereign, ascertained that guards had actually been posted outside all the other gates leading to the palace and baraduree.  From this, the supineness and seeming apathy of many of the palace guards and servants, and the perversion of the orders sent by him before and during the tumult, the minister concluded that there must have been many about him interested in promoting the enterprise of the Begum; and that the approach to the gate through which she forced her way must have been purposely left unguarded.  There is now little doubt, that from the time that it became known, that the contest was between Moonna Jan and Nuseer-od Dowlah, a person but little known except as a prudent and parsimonious old man, a large portion not only of the civil and military establishments, but of the population of the city, felt anxious for the success of the Begum’s enterprise; for both had, under the harsh treatment of the last two sovereigns, become objects of sympathy.

A good many of the members of the royal family, who were brought up from childhood with the deceased King, Nuseer-od Deen Hyder, and near his person to the last, declare that Moonna Jan was his son; but that the King was ashamed and afraid to acknowledge him after he had so frequently and so formally declared to the British Government that he was not his son, and that he had ceased to cohabit with the boy’s mother for two years before his birth.  But all such persons admit that Moonna Jan was a boy of ungovernable temper, and the worst possible dispositions; and that he must soon have forfeited the crown by his cruelty, bigotry, and injustice, had he been placed upon it by the British Government.  I saw him in January 1838, at Chunar, and a more unpromising boy I have rarely seen.

The ministry dreaded being called to account for their malversations as much from the Begum, on account of their successful efforts to keep the King alienated from her and his son, as from Nuseer-od Dowlah, on account of his parsimony, prudence, and great experience in business during the reign of his able father, Saadut Allee Khan.  But they would have a better chance of escape from the Begum and the boy than from the vigilant old man, who afterwards made them all disgorge their ill-gotten wealth; and, in consequence, they