he Resident; and it is difficult for him to satisfy
them, that he is not bound to take them up in the same manner as he
takes up those of the native officers and sipahees of our native
army; and he is often induced to yield to their importunity, and
thereby to furnish grounds for further applications of the same sort.
This privilege is not recognized or named in any treaty, or other
engagement with the Sovereign of Oude; nor does any one now know its
origin, for it cannot be found in any document recorded in the
Resident's office.

If the Resident happens to be an impatient, overbearing man, he will
often frighten the Durbar and its Courts, or local officers, into a
hasty decision, by which the rights of others are sacrificed for the
native officers and sipahees; and if he be at the same time an
unscrupulous man, he will sometimes direct that the sipahee shall be
put in possession of what he claims in order to relieve himself from
his importunity, or that of his commanding officer, without taking
the trouble to inform himself of the grounds on which the claim is
founded. Of all such errors there are unhappily too many instances
recorded in the Resident's office. This privilege is in the hands of
the Resident an instrument of _torture_, which it is his duty to
apply every day to the Oude Durbar. He may put on a _screw more_ or
a _screw less_, according to his temper or his views, or the
importunity of officers commanding corps or companies, and native
officers and sipahees in person, which never cease to oppress him
more or less.

The most numerous class of complaints and the most troublesome is
that against the Government of Oude or its officers and landholders,
for enhanced demands of rents; and whenever these officers or
landholders are made to reduce these demands in favour of the
privileged sipahees, they invariably distribute the burthen in an
increased rate upon their neighbours.

Officers who have to pass through Oude in their travels or sporting
excursions have of late years generally complained that they receive
less civility from villages in which our invalid or furlough sipahees
are located than from any others; and that if they are anywhere
treated with actual disrespect, such sipahees are generally found to
be either the perpetrators or instigators. This complaint is not, I
fear, altogether unfounded; and may arise from the diminished
attachment felt by the sipahees for their European officers in our
a