Calcutta, to present his situation to this government,--the
Governor-General therefore proposes, with the concurrence of Mr.
Wheler, to visit the province of Oude as speedily as the affairs of
the Presidency will admit, in hopes that, from a minute and
personal observation of the circumstances of that country, the
system of management which has been adopted, and the characters
and conduct of the persons employed, he may possibly be able to
concert and establish some plan by which the province of Oude may
in time be restored to its former state of affluence, good order,
and prosperity."

Your Lordships have now the whole chain of the evidence complete, with
regard to the state of the country, up to the period of Mr. Hastings's
journey into the country. You see that Mr. Hastings himself admits it to
have been formerly in a most flourishing, orderly, and prosperous state.
Its condition in 1781 he describes to you in words than which no enemy
of his can use stronger, in order to paint the state in which it then
was. In this state he found it, when he went up in the year 1781; and he
left it, with regard to any substantial regulation that was executed or
could be executed, in the state in which he found it,--after having
increased every one of those grievances which he pretended to redress,
and taken from it all the little resources that remained in it.

We now come to a subsequent period, at which time the state of the
country is thus described by Mr. Bristow, on the 12th December, 1782.

"Despotism is the principle upon which every measure is founded,
and the people in the interior parts of the country are ruled at
the discretion of the aumil or foujdar for the time being. They
exercise, within the limits of their jurisdiction, the powers of
life and death, and decisions in civil and other cases, in the same
extent as the sovereign at the capital. The forms prescribed by the
ancient institutions of the Mogul empire are unattended to, and the
will of the provincial magistrate is the sole law of the people.
The total relaxation of the Vizier's authority, his inattention and
dislike to business, leave the aumils in possession of this
dangerous power, unawed, uncontrolled by any apprehension of
retrospection, or the interference of justice. I can hardly quote
an instance, since the Vizier's accession to the musn