the real rates. He never pledged himself to pay higher
rates than he could and really did pay.

Now the tallookdars keep the country in a perpetual state of
disturbance, and render life, property, and industry everywhere
insecure. Whenever they quarrel with each other, or with the local
authorities of the Government, from whatever cause, they take to
indiscriminate plunder and murder over all lands not held by men of
the same class; no road, town, village, or hamlet is secure from
their merciless attacks; robbery and murder become their diversion--
their sport; and they think no more of taking the lives of men,
women, and children who never offended them, than those of deer or
wild hogs. They not only rob and murder, but seize, confine, and
torture all whom they seize, and suppose to have money or credit,
till they ransom themselves with all they have, or can beg or borrow.
Hardly a day has passed since I left Lucknow in which I have not had
abundant proof of numerous atrocities of this kind committed by
landholders within the district through which I was passing, year by
year, up to the present day. The same system is followed by
landholders of smaller degrees and of this military class--some
holders of single villages or co-sharers in a village. This class
comprises Rajpoots of all denominations, Mussulmans, and Pausies.
Where one co-sharer in a village quarrels with another, or with the
Government authorities, on whatever subject, he declares himself in a
_state of war_, and adopts the same system of indiscriminate plunder
and reckless murder. He first robs the house and murders all he can
of the family of the co-sharer with whom he has quarrelled, or whose
tenement he wishes to seize upon; and then gets together all he can
of the loose characters around, employs them in indiscriminate
plunder, and subsists them upon the booty, without the slightest
apprehension that he shall thereby stand less high in the estimation
of his neighbours, or that of the officers of Government; on the
contrary, he expects, when his _pastime_ is over, to be at least more
feared and courted, and more secure in the possession of increased
lands, held at lower rates.

All this terrible state of disorder arises from the Government not
keeping faith with its subjects, and not making them keep faith with
each other. I one day asked Rajah Hunmunt Sing how it was that men
guilty of such crimes were tolerated in society, and he answered by
quo