, are
the dominant class in Oude; and they can disregard the feelings and
opinions of the people around them with impunity. The greater part of
the land is held by them, and in the greater part of the towns and
villages their authority is paramount.

Industry is confined almost exclusively to agriculture. They have
neither merchants nor manufacturers to form, or aid in forming, a
respectable and influential middle class; and the public officers of
the state they look upon as their natural and irreconcileable
enemies. When the aristocracy of Europe buried their daughters alive
in nunneries, the state of society was much the same as it now is in
Oude. The King has prohibited both infanticide and suttee. The latter
being essentially a public exhibition, the local authorities have
continued, in great measure, to put down; but the former was
certainly never more common than it is at present, for the Rajpoot
landholders were never before more strong and numerous. That suttees
were formerly very numerous in Oude is manifest from the numerous
suttee tombs we see in the vicinity of every town and almost every
village; but the Rajpoots never felt much interested in them; they
were not necessary either to their pride or purse.*

[* Suttee, infanticide, suicide, the maiming of any one, or making
any one an eunuch, were all prohibited by the King of Oude, on the
15th of May, 1833, as reported to Government by the Resident on the
6th November, 1834. These prohibitions were reported to the Resident,
by the King, on the 14th of June, 1833.]

_February 24th_, 1850.--Dureeabad, ten miles south-east, over a plain
of good soil--doomut and mutteear--covered with the same rich crops
and fine foliage. There is at present no other district in Oude
abounding so much in gang robbery and other crime as this of
Dureeabad Rodoulee, in which the Amil, Girdhara Sing, is notoriously
conniving at these crimes from a consciousness of utter inability to
contend with the landholders who commit them, or employ men to commit
them. Yet he has at his disposal a force that ought to be sufficient
to keep in order a district five times as large. He has the Jannissar
battalion of nujeebs, under Seetla Buksh at present; the Zoolfukar
Sufderee battalion of nujeebs, under Bhow-od Dowlah, who never leaves
Court; and the Judeed, or new regiment, consisting of a thousand men.
He has nine guns, and a squadron of horse. Of the guns, five are on
the ground, utterly us