Were we to take advantage of the occasion to annex or confiscate Oude, or any part of it, our good name in India would inevitably suffer; and that good name is more valuable to us than a dozen of Oudes.  We are now looked up to throughout India as the only impartial arbitrators that the people generally have ever had, or can ever hope to have without us; and from the time we cease to be so looked up to, we must begin to sink.  We suffered from our conduct in Scinde; but that was a country distant and little known, and linked to the rest of India by few ties of sympathy.  Our Conduct towards it was preceded by wars and convulsions around, and in its annexation there was nothing manifestly deliberate.  It will be otherwise with Oude.  Here the giant’s strength is manifest, and we cannot “use it like a giant” without suffering in the estimation of all India.  Annexation or confiscation are not compatible with our relations with this little dependent state.  We must show ourselves to be high-minded, and above taking advantage of its prostrate weakness, by appropriating its revenues exclusively to the benefit of the people and royal family of Oude.  We should soon make it the finest garden in India, with the people happy, prosperous, and attached to our rule and character.

We have at least forty thousand men from Oude in the armies of the three Residencies, all now, rightly or wrongly, cursing the oppressive Government under which their families live at their homes.  These families would come under our rule and spread our good name as widely as they now spread the bad one of their present ruler.  Soldiers with a higher sense of military honour, and duty to their salt, do not exist, I believe, in any country.  To have them bound to us by closer ties than they are at present, would of itself be an important benefit.

I can add little to what I have said in the latter end of the fourth chapter of my Diary (from p. 187*, vol. ii.), on the subject of our relations with the Government of Oude; and of our rights and duties arising out of those relations.  The diaries political, which I send every week or fortnight to the Government of India, are formed out of the reports made every day to the Durbar, by their local or departmental authorities.  The Residency News-writer has the privilege of hearing these reports read as they come in; and though the reports of many important events are concealed from him, they may generally be relied upon as far as they go.  The picture they give of affairs is bad enough, though not so bad as they deserve.

[* Transcriber’s note.  From the text “By the treaty of 1801 we bound
ourselves.......”--to the end of the chapter IV in vol. ii]

There are so many worthless and profligate people about the Court, interested in smothering any signs of common sense and good feeling on the part of the heir apparent to the throne, in order to maintain their ascendancy over him as he grows up, that he has