t Lucknow was charged before a court-martial with three abuses of
the privilege. He required no less than seventy-four witnesses to be
summoned in his defence. The Court had to wait till what could be got
out of the seventy-four appeared, and the man became an object of
sympathy, because he was kept so long in arrest. He named the first
Assistant to the Resident, who has charge of the Sipahee Petition
Department, as a witness; and he was not, in consequence, permitted
to attend the Court on the part of the Resident, who preferred the
charges, though he was never called or examined by the Court on the
part of the defence. The naming him, and the summoning of so many
witnesses were mere _ruses_ on the part of the sipahee to escape. No
person on the part of the Resident was allowed to attend the Court
and see that his witnesses were examined; nor had he any means of
knowing whether they were or not. He had reason to believe that the
most important were not. The sipahee was of course acquitted, as
sipahees charged with such abuses of the privilege always will be.
This man's regiment was at Lucknow, and near the place where the
cause of action arose, his own village, and the Resident's office.
How much more difficult would it be to get a conviction against a
sipahee whose regiment happens to be many hundred miles off!

The transfer of their lands from the jurisdiction of the local
authorities to that of the Hozoor Tehseel is often the cause of much
suffering to their copartners and neighbours. Their co-sharers in the
land often find much inconvenience from it, and apprehend that,
sooner or later, the influence of the sipahee will enable him to add
their shares to his own. The village so transferred, being removed
from the observation and responsibility of the local authorities,
often becomes a safe refuge for the bad characters of the district,
who thence depredate upon the country around with impunity. Claims to
villages, to which the claimant had really no right whatever, have
been successfully prosecuted by or through sipahees, for the sole
purpose of having them transferred to the Hozoor Tehseel, and made
dens of thieves and highway robbers. The person in charge of the
Hozool Tehseel villages has generally a good deal of influence at
Court, and this he lends to such claimants, for a consideration,
without fear or scruple, as he feels assured that he shall be able to
counteract any representations on the part of the local