powers to attend to the requisitions of the amils, become the sole judges of the individual cases, in which aid is to be afforded or withheld; and the discretion again unavoidably descends from them, in many instances, to the officers commanding parties detached from the main body.  It is obvious that an inquiry of this description can afford but a partial check to, and a feeble security against, injustice and oppression where specific engagements rarely exist, and where the point at issue is frequently the demand for augmenting rates of revenue, founded on alleged assets sufficient to meet that increase.

“Neither is the aid thus afforded at all effectual for the purposes of the Government of Oude, whether present or future, as is clear from the annual repetition of the same scenes of resistance and compulsion.  As fast as disorders are suppressed in one quarter they spring up in another.  Forts that are this year dismantled are restored again the next; the compulsion exercised upon particular individuals in one season has no effect in producing more regularity on their parts, or on that of others in the ensuing season, until the same process has been again gone through; whilst the contempt and odium attaching to a system of collecting the revenues, by the habitual intervention of the troops of another State, infallibly tend to aggravate the evil, by destroying all remains of confidence in his Majesty, or respect for his authority.”

The aid of British troops in the collection of the revenues of Oude has long ceased to be afforded; but when they have been afforded for the suppression of leaders of atrocious bands of robbers, who preyed upon the people, and seized upon the lands of their weaker neighbours, and they have been driven from their forts and strongholds, the privilege of building them up again, or re-occupying and garrisoning them with the same bands of robbers, to be employed in the same way, is purchased from the local authorities, or the patrons of these leaders at Court, during the same or the succeeding season.  The same things continue to be done every season where no British troops are employed.  Such privileges are purchased with as much facility as those for the supply of essence or spices in the palace; unless the Resident should interpose authoritatively to prevent it, which he very rarely does.  Indeed it is seldom that a Resident knows or cares anything about the matter.

I may say generally, that in Oude the larger landholders do not pay more than one-third of their net rents to the Government, while some of them do not pay one-fifth or one-tenth.  In the half of the territory made over to us in 1801, the great landholders who still retain their estates pay to our Government at least two-thirds of their net rents.  In Oude these great landholders have, at present, about two hundred and fifty mud forts, mounting about five hundred guns, and containing on an average four hundred armed men, or a total of one hundred thousand, trained and maintained to fight against other, or against the Government authorities; and to pillage the peaceful and industrious around whenever so employed.  In the half of the territory ceded to us in 1801, this class of armed retainers has disappeared altogether.  Hence from the Oude half we have some fifty thousand native officers and sipahees in our native army, while from our half we have not perhaps five thousand.