of
acknowledgment. The presents from the Government to the Chiefs were
then handed in on trays, and placed on the ground in front of each,
the value of the present being regulated according to the rank and
position of the recipient. This part of the ceremony being over, the
Viceroy rose and addressed the Talukdars.

After expressing his pleasure at meeting them in their own country, he
gave them an assurance that, so long as they remained faithful to the
Government, they should receive every consideration; he told them that
a new era had commenced in Oudh, and that henceforth they would be
allowed to revert to the conditions under which they had held their
estates prior to the annexation of the province. When Lord Canning had
finished speaking, a translation of his address in Urdu was read
to the Talukdars by Mr. Beadon, the Foreign Secretary; _atar_ and
_pan_[4] were then handed round, and the Viceroy took his departure
with the same formalities as those with which the durbar had been
opened.

There is some excuse to be made for the attitude of the Talukdars,
who, from their point of view, had little reason to be grateful to the
British Government. These powerful Chiefs, whose individual revenues
varied from L10,000 to L15,000 a year, and who, in their jungle
fastnesses, often defied their sovereign's troops, had suddenly been
deprived of all the authority which in the confusion attending a long
period of misgovernment they had gradually usurped, as well as of a
considerable proportion of the landed property which, from time to
time, they had forcibly appropriated. The conversion of feudal Chiefs
into ordinary law-abiding subjects is a process which, however
beneficial to the many, is certain to be strenuously resisted by the
few.

In March, 1858, when Lucknow was captured, a Proclamation was issued
by the Government of India confiscating the proprietary rights in the
soil. The object in view was not merely to punish contumacious Chiefs,
but also to enable the Government to establish the revenue system on
a sounder and firmer footing. Talukdars who submitted were to receive
their possessions as a free gift direct from the Government; while
those who had done good service, whether men of Oudh or strangers,
might be rewarded by grants of confiscated property.

The Proclamation was considered in many influential quarters too
arbitrary and sweeping a measure; Outram protested against it, and
Lord Ellenborough (the Pr