An Englishman may further ask how it is that a wretch guilty of such cruelties to men who never wronged him, to innocent and unoffending females and children, can find, in a society where slavery is unknown, men to assist him in inflicting them, and landholders of high rank and large possessions to screen and shelter him when pursued by his Government.  He must, for the solution of this question, also go back to the MIDDLE AGES, in England and the other nations of Europe, when the baronial proprietors of the soil, too strong for their sovereigns, committed the same cruelties, found the same willing instruments in their retainers, and members of the same class of landed proprietors, to screen, shelter, and encourage them in their iniquities.

They acquiesce in the atrocities committed by one who is in armed resistance to the Government to-day, and aid him in his enterprises openly or secretly, because they know that they may be in the same condition, and require the same aid from him to-morrow—­that the more sturdy the resistance made by one, the less likely will the Government officers be to rouse the resistance of others.  They do not sympathise with those who suffer from his depredations, or aid the Government officers in protecting them, because they know that they could not support the means required to enable them to contend successfully with their Sovereign, and reduce him to terms, without plundering and occasionally murdering the innocent of all ages and both sexes, and that they may have to raise the same means in a similar contest to-morrow.  They are satisfied, therefore, if they can save their own tenants from pillage and slaughter.  They find, moreover, that the sufferings of others enable them to get cultivators and useful tenants of all kinds upon their own estates, on more easy terms, and to induce the smaller allodial or khalsa proprietors around, to yield up their lands to them, and become their tenants with less difficulty.  It was in the same manner that the great feudal barons aggrandised themselves in England, and all the other countries of Europe, in the MIDDLE AGES.

In Oude all these great landholders look upon the Sovereign and his officers—­except when they happen to be in collusion with them for the purpose of robbing or coercing others—­as their natural enemies, and will never trust themselves in their power without undoubted pledges of personal security.  The great feudal tenants of the Crown in England, and the other nations of Europe, did the same, except when they were in collusion with them for the purpose of robbing others of their rights; or fought under their banners for the purpose of robbing or destroying the subjects and servants of some other Sovereign whom he chose to call his enemy.