s of their weaker
neighbours, and they have been driven from their forts and
strongholds, the privilege of building them up again, or re-occupying
and garrisoning them with the same bands of robbers, to be employed
in the same way, is purchased from the local authorities, or the
patrons of these leaders at Court, during the same or the succeeding
season. The same things continue to be done every season where no
British troops are employed. Such privileges are purchased with as
much facility as those for the supply of essence or spices in the
palace; unless the Resident should interpose authoritatively to
prevent it, which he very rarely does. Indeed it is seldom that a
Resident knows or cares anything about the matter.

I may say generally, that in Oude the larger landholders do not pay
more than one-third of their net rents to the Government, while some
of them do not pay one-fifth or one-tenth. In the half of the
territory made over to us in 1801, the great landholders who still
retain their estates pay to our Government at least two-thirds of
their net rents. In Oude these great landholders have, at present,
about two hundred and fifty mud forts, mounting about five hundred
guns, and containing on an average four hundred armed men, or a total
of one hundred thousand, trained and maintained to fight against
other, or against the Government authorities; and to pillage the
peaceful and industrious around whenever so employed. In the half of
the territory ceded to us in 1801, this class of armed retainers has
disappeared altogether. Hence from the Oude half we have some fifty
thousand native officers and sipahees in our native army, while from
our half we have not perhaps five thousand.

One thing is clear, that we cannot restore to the Oude Government the
territory we acquired from it by the treaty of 1801, and the people
who occupy it; and that we cannot withdraw our support from that
Government altogether without doing so. It is no less clear that all
our efforts to make the Government of Oude, under the support which
we are bound by that treaty to give it, fulfil the duties to its
people to which it was pledged by that treaty, have failed during the
fifty years that have elapsed since it was made.

The only alternative left, appears to be for the paramount power to
take upon itself the administration, and give to the sovereign, the
royal family, and its stipendiary dependents, all the surplus
revenues in pensions