we should pity this further instance of his weakness, but could have no right to insist upon his doing so.  Even had the offence been an interference in public affairs, and breach of the King’s engagements, I should not have demanded their banishment without a reference to the Governor-General, because the delay of waiting for instructions involved no danger or serious inconvenience; that is, I should not have demanded it when the King was so strongly opposed to it.  I must distinctly deny that you demanded the King’s fulfilment of his promise in conformity to any instructions received from me, or in accordance with my views of what was right or expedient in this matter.  Your second visit and demand were neither in conformity to the one nor in accordance with the other.  You must have put a construction upon what I wrote which it cannot fairly bear.  By “requisitions” I mean your requirements that the two men should be banished by the King, according to his promise.  No notice has been made to me of your visit by the Court, and I have therefore had no occasion to say anything whatever about it in my communications to the Court, nor shall I have any I suppose.  In your letter of the 4th instant, you say, with regard to the Taj Mahal’s case, “Not knowing whether you do or do not wish me to act in any sudden emergency during your absence, I suppose, therefore, that had you had any such wish you would have instructed me on the subject.”  In reply, I requested that you would so act on your own discretion in any such sudden case of emergency.

Yours sincerely,
(Signed) W. H. SLEEMAN.

To Captain Bird,
   &c. &c.
                 __________________________

Camp, Mahomdee, 2nd February, 1850.

My Dear Sir Erskine,

Had it not been too late for you to join my camp conveniently, I should have asked you to run out and see a little of the country and people of Oude, after you had seen so much of those of the Honourable Company’s dominions.  A few years of tolerable government would make it the finest country in India, for there is no part of India with so many advantages from nature.  I have seen no soil finer; the whole plain of which it is composed is capable of tillage; it is everywhere intersected by rivers, flowing from the snowy chain of the Himmalaya, which keep the moisture near the surface at all times, without cutting up any of the land on their borders into deep ravines; it is studded with the finest groves and single trees, as much as the lover of the picturesque could wish; it has the boldest and most industrious peasantry in India, and a landed aristocracy too strong for the weak and wretched Government; it is, for the most part, well cultivated; yet with all this, one feels, in travelling over it, as if he was moving among a people suffering under incurable physical diseases, from the atrocious crimes every day perpetrated with impunity, and the numbers of suffering and innocent people who approach him, in the hope of redress, and are sent away in despair.