f the town
object to their residing among them again, provided they pledged
themselves to abstain in future from molesting them. Goorbuksh Sing,
only a few days ago, offered the contractor, Hoseyn Allee, the sum of
five thousand, rupees if he would satisfy the Resident that Dal
Partuk had nothing whatever to do with the Peernuggur dacoitee, and
thereby induce him to discontinue the pursuit.*

[* Dhokul Partuk and Dal Partuk were at last secured. Dhokul died in
the king's gaol, but Dal Partuk is still in prison under trial.]

The people of towns and villages, having no protection whatever from
the Government, are obliged to keep up, at their own cost, this
police of pausee bowmen, who are bound only to protect those who pay
them. As their families increase beyond the means derived from this,
their only legitimate employment, their members thieve in the
neighbouring or distant villages, rob on the highroads, or join the
gangs of those who are robbers by profession, or take the trade in
consequence of disputes and misunderstandings with Government
authorities or their neighbours. In Oude--and indeed in all other
parts of India, under a Government so weak and indifferent to the
sufferings of its subjects--all men who consider arms to be their
proper profession think themselves justified in using them to extort
the means of subsistence from those who have property when they have
none, and can no longer find what they consider to be suitable
employment. All Rajpoots are of this class, and the greater part of
the landholders in Oude are Rajpoots. But a great part of the
Mahommedan rural population are of the same class, and no small
portion of the Brahmin inhabitants, like the two Partuks above named,
consider arms to be their proper profession; and all find the ready
means of forming gangs of robbers out of these pausee bowmen and the
many loose characters to whom the disorders of the country give rise.

A great many of the officers and sipahees of the King's nujeeb and
other regiments are every month discharged for mutiny,
insubordination, abuse of authority, or neglect of duty, or merely to
make room for men more subservient to Court favourites, or because
they cannot or will not pay the demanded gratuity to a new and
useless commandant appointed by Court favour. The plunder of villages
has been the daily occupation of these men during the whole period of
their service, and they become the worst of this class of loose
c