In the reports of the Resident on the state of affairs in Oude, and the replies of Government, much importance has been always attached to the change from the contract, or ijara system, to that of the amanee, or trust management system; and since the time of Lord Hardinge’s visit many more districts have been put under the latter system; but this has not tended, in the smallest degree, to the benefit of the people of these districts.  The same abuses prevail under the one system as under the other.  The troops employed in the districts under the one are the same as those employed in the districts under the other, and they prey just as much upon the people.  There is the same system of rack-rent in the one as in the other, and the same uncertainty in the rate of the Government demand.  The manager under the amanut system demands the same secret gratuities and nuzuranas for himself and his patrons at Court from the landholders, as the contractor; and if they refuse to pay them they are besieged, attacked, and cut up, and their estates desolated in the same manner.  The amanut manager knows that his tenure of office depends as much upon the amount which he pays to his sovereign, and to his patrons at Court, as that of the contractor, and he exacts and extorts as much as he can in the same manner.  Unless he pays his patrons the same he knows that he shall soon be removed, or driven to resign by the want of means to enforce the payment of the revenues justly due.

The objections which are urged against the employment of British troops in support of the authority of revenue contractors, are equally applicable to their employment in support of that of amanee managers.  Their employment is just as liable to abuse under the one as under the other.  It is not a whit easier to ascertain whether a demand for balance of revenue from, or a charge of contumacy against, a landholder is just or unjust in the one than in the other.  In neither is the demand set forth in public documents understood by either party to be the real demand.  Both parties are equally interested in preventing a portion of the real demand from appearing in the public accounts; and the quarrel is almost always about the rate of this concealed portion—­the collector trying to augment, and the landlord trying to reduce it.

In a letter to the Resident, dated the 29th of March, 1823, Government observes:  “As some palliation of the mischief of our forces being constantly employed in what might be too often termed the cause of injustice and extortion, the Government in 1811 distinctly declared our right of previously investigating, and of arbitrating the demands which its troops might be called upon to support as also its resolution to exercise that right on all future occasions.  The execution of the important duty in question seems to be almost invariably delegated by the Resident to the officers commanding at the different stations, who, after receiving general