They serve any refractory landholder, or enterprising gang-robber, without wages, for the sake of the booty to be acquired.
Many of the sipahees of the Mobarick Pultun, on detached duty with the king's wakeel in attendance upon me, were this morning arrested, while taking off the choppers from the houses of villages along the road and around my camp, for fuel and fodder, in what they called the "_usual way_." The best beams and rafters and the whole of the straw were fast moving off to my camp; and when seized, the sipahees seemed much surprised, and asked me what they were to do, as they had not received any pay for six months, and the Government expected that they would help themselves to straw and timber wherever they could most conveniently find it.

All were fined; but the hope to put a stop to this intolerable evil, under the present system, is a vain one.
The evil has the acquiescence and encouragement of the Government and its functionaries of all kinds and grades throughout the country.

It is distressing to witness every day such melancholy proofs of how much is done that ought not to be done, and how much that ought to be done is left undone, in so fine a country.
A want of sympathy or fellow-feeling between the governing and governed is common in all parts of India, but in no part that I have seen is it so marked as in Oude.

The officers of the Government delight in plundering the peasantry, and upon every local Governor who kills a landholder of any mark, rewards and honours are instantly bestowed, without the slightest inquiry as to the cause or mode.

They know that no inquiry will be made, and therefore kill them when they can; no matter how, or for what cause.