at the time.  There are six hundred and sixty news-writers of this kind employed by the King, and paid monthly three thousand one hundred and ninety-four rupees, or, on an average, between four and five rupees a-month each; and the sums paid by them to their President for distribution among influential officers and Court favourites averages above one hundred and fifty thousand rupees a-year.  Many, whose avowed salary is from four to ten rupees a-month, receive each, from the persons to whom they are accredited, more than five hundred, three-fourths of which they must send for distribution among Court favourites, or they could not retain their places a week, nor could their President retain his.  Such are the reporters of the circumstances in all the cases on which the sovereign and his ministers have to pass orders every day in Oude.  Some of those who derive part of their incomes from this source are “persons behind the throne, who are greater than the throne itself.”  The mother of the heir-apparent gets twelve thousand rupees a-year from it.

But their exactions are not confined to government officers of all grades and denominations; they are extended to contractors of all kinds and denominations, to him who contracts for the supply of the public cattle with grain, as well as to him who contracts for the revenue and undivided government of whole provinces; and, indeed, to every person who has anything to do under, or anything to apprehend from, government and its officers and favourites; and, in such a country, who has not?  The European magistrate of one of our neighbouring districts one day, before the Oude Frontier Police was raised, entered the Oude territory at the head of his police in pursuit of some robbers, who had found an asylum in one of the King’s villages.  In the attempt to secure them some lives were lost; and, apprehensive of the consequences, he sent for the official news-writer, and gratified him in the usual way.  No report of the circumstances was made to the Oude Durbar; and neither the King, the Resident, nor the British Government ever heard anything about it.  Of the practical working of the system, many illustrations will be found in this Diary.

The Akbar, or Intelligence Department, had been farmed out for some years, at the rate of between one and two lacs of rupees a-year, when, at the recommendation of the Resident, the King expressed his willingness to abolish the farm, and intrust the superintendence to men of character and ability, to be paid by Government.  This resolution was communicated to Government by the Resident on the 24th of April, 1839; and on the 6th of May the Resident was instructed to communicate to his Majesty the satisfaction which the Governor-General derived on hearing that he had consented to abolish this farm, which had produced so large a revenue to the state.  This was considered by the Resident to be a great boon obtained for the people of Oude, as the farmers of the department consented to pay a large revenue, only on condition that they should be considered as the only legitimate reporters of events—­the only recognised masters in the Oude Chancery; and, as the Resident observed, “they choked up all the channels the people had of access to their sovereign;” but they have choked them up just as much since the abolition of the farm, and have had to pay just as much as before.