ng ago; and the holder of a hundred acres is as
proud as the holder of a million.[30] He boasts the same descent, and
the same exclusive possession of arms and agriculture, to which
unhappily the industry of their little territories is almost
exclusively confined, for no other branch can grow up among so
turbulent a set, whose quarrels with their chiefs, or among each
other, are constantly involving them in civil wars, which render life
and property exceedingly insecure. Besides, as I have stated, their
propensity to keep bands of thieves, robbers, and murderers in their
baronial castles, as poachers keep their dogs, has scared away the
wealthy and respectable capitalist and peaceful and industrious
manufacturer.

All the landholders are uneducated, and unfit to serve in any of our
civil establishments, or in those of any very civilized Governments;
and they are just as unfitted to serve in our military
establishments, where strict discipline is required. The lands they
occupy are cultivated because they depend almost entirely upon the
rents they get from them for subsistence; and because every petty
chief and his family hold their lands rent-free, or at a trifling
quit-rent, on the tenure of military service, and their residue forms
all the market for land produce which the cultivators require. They
dread the transfer of the rule to our Government, because they now
form almost exclusively all the establishments of their domestic
chief, civil as well as military; and know that, were our rule to be
substituted, they would be almost entirely excluded from these, at
least for a generation or two. In our regiments, horse or foot, there
is hardly a man from Bundelkhand, for the reasons above stated; nor
are there any in the Gwalior regiments and contingents which are
stationed in the neighbourhood; though the land among them is become
minutely subdivided, and they are obliged to seek service or starve.
They are all too proud for manual labour, even at the plough. No
Bundelkhand Rajput will, I believe, condescend to put his hand to
one.

Among the Maratha states, Sikhs, and Muhammadans, there is no bond of
union of this kind. The establishments, military as well as civil,
are everywhere among them composed for the most part of foreigners;
and the landed interests under such Governments would dread nothing
from the prospect of a transfer to our rule; on the contrary, they
and the mass of the people would almost everywhere h