Industry is confined almost exclusively to agriculture.  They have neither merchants nor manufacturers to form, or aid in forming, a respectable and influential middle class; and the public officers of the state they look upon as their natural and irreconcileable enemies.  When the aristocracy of Europe buried their daughters alive in nunneries, the state of society was much the same as it now is in Oude.  The King has prohibited both infanticide and suttee.  The latter being essentially a public exhibition, the local authorities have continued, in great measure, to put down; but the former was certainly never more common than it is at present, for the Rajpoot landholders were never before more strong and numerous.  That suttees were formerly very numerous in Oude is manifest from the numerous suttee tombs we see in the vicinity of every town and almost every village; but the Rajpoots never felt much interested in them; they were not necessary either to their pride or purse.*

[* Suttee, infanticide, suicide, the maiming of any one, or making any one an eunuch, were all prohibited by the King of Oude, on the 15th of May, 1833, as reported to Government by the Resident on the 6th November, 1834.  These prohibitions were reported to the Resident, by the King, on the 14th of June, 1833.]

February 24th, 1850.—­Dureeabad, ten miles south-east, over a plain of good soil—­doomut and mutteear—­covered with the same rich crops and fine foliage.  There is at present no other district in Oude abounding so much in gang robbery and other crime as this of Dureeabad Rodoulee, in which the Amil, Girdhara Sing, is notoriously conniving at these crimes from a consciousness of utter inability to contend with the landholders who commit them, or employ men to commit them.  Yet he has at his disposal a force that ought to be sufficient to keep in order a district five times as large.  He has the Jannissar battalion of nujeebs, under Seetla Buksh at present; the Zoolfukar Sufderee battalion of nujeebs, under Bhow-od Dowlah, who never leaves Court; and the Judeed, or new regiment, consisting of a thousand men.  He has nine guns, and a squadron of horse.  Of the guns, five are on the ground, utterly useless; four will bear firing a few rounds.  For these four he has bullocks, but they are not yet in condition.  Of the seer and half of corn, drawn for each bullock per diem, only half a seer is given.  Of the corps, more than one-half of the men are at Lucknow, in attendance upon Court favourites; and of the half present not one-third are fit for the work of soldiers.

The Amil rode by my side, and I asked him about the case of the marriage-procession.  “Sir,” said he, “what you heard from Seoraj-od Deen is all true.  Imam Buksh had a strong fort in his estate of Ouseyree, five miles to our right, where he had a formidable gang, that committed numerous dacoitees and highway robberies in the country around.  I was ordered to attack him with all my force.