Part 6 (1/2)

5. The abuses they would have to remedy are all perfectly well understood, and the measures required to remedy them are all simple and obvious: a settlement would be made with the landholders, based upon past avowed collections; they would be delighted to bind themselves to pay such an a.s.sessment, as they would escape from the more than one-third more, which they have now to pay, in one form or another, to contractors and Court favourites; the large landholders, who are for the most part now in open resistance to the Government, would rejoice at the prospect of securing their estates to their posterity, without the necessity of continually fighting for them.

6. The army would soon become efficient: at present every man purchases his place in it from the minister and the singers and eunuchs, and he loses it as soon as he becomes disabled from wounds or sickness. The only exceptions are the four regiments under Captain Burlow, Captain Bunbury, Captain Magness, and Soba Sing, lately Captain Buckley's; in these, all that are disabled from wounds or sickness are kept on the strength of the corps, and each corps has with it a large invalid establishment of this kind unrecognized by the Government. They could not get their men to fight, without it.

These regiments are put up at auction every season, and often several times during one season; the contractor who bids highest gets the services of the best for the season or the occasion; the purchase- money is divided between the minister and the Court favourites, singers, &c. These are really efficient corps, and the others might soon be made the same. The men are as fine-looking and brave as those of our, regular infantry, for Oude teems with such men, who have from their boyhood been fighting against contractors under the heads of their clan or families.

7. The rest are for the most part commanded by boys, or Court favourites, who seldom see them, keep about two-thirds of what are borne on the rolls and paid for, and take about one-third of the pay of what remain for themselves. The singer, Rajee-od Dowla, the prime favourite above named, has two regiments thus treated, and of course altogether inefficient, ragged, hungry, and discontented. It will be easy to remedy all this, get excellent men, and inspire them with excellent spirit by inst.i.tuting a modified pension establishment for men disabled in the discharge of their duties, and providing for their regular pay and efficient command.

8. This would prevent the necessity of employing British troops, except on rare and great occasions; the settlement of the land- revenue, and knowledge that they would be employed if required, would keep the great landholders in obedience. It would be well to have back the corps of infantry and two guns that were taken away from Pertanghurh, in Oude, in 1835. This is all the addition that would be required to secure an efficient Government; and the scale to which our troops in Oude had been reduced up to that time (1835) was generally considered the lowest compatible with our engagements. A regiment of cavalry had been borrowed from Pertanghurh for the Nepaul and Mahratta wars in 1814 and 1817; it was finally withdrawn in 1823.

9. The judicial Courts would be well conducted while the presiding officers felt secure in their tenure of office, which they would do when their dismissal depended upon proof of guilt or incompetency sufficient to satisfy a Board guaranteed by our Government.

10. The police would soon become efficient under the supervision and control of respectable revenue-officers, having the same feeling of security in their tenure of office. All the revenue-officers would, of course, be servants of Government instead of contractors. There would be grades answering to our commissioners of divisions, say four; 2nd, to our collectors of revenue, say twenty-eight; 3rd, deputy-collectors, say twenty-eight; all under the Board, and guided by the member intrusted with that branch of the administration: all would be responsible for the police over their respective jurisdictions.

11. Oude ought to be, and would soon be, under such a system, a garden; the soil is the finest in India, so are the men; and there is no want of an educated cla.s.s for civil office: on the contrary, they abound almost as much as the cla.s.s of soldiers. From the numerous rivers which flow through the country the water is everywhere near the surface, and the peasantry would manure and irrigate every field, if they could do so in peace and security, with a fair prospect of being permitted to reap the fruits. The terrible corruption of the Court is the great impediment to all this good: the savings would more than pay all the increased outlay required for rendering establishments efficient in all branches, while the treasury would receive at least one-third more than the expenditure; that is, 1,50,00,000 Rs., or one crore and a half.

12. From the time the treaty of 1801 was made, up to within the last few years, the term ”internal enemies” was interpreted to mean the great landholders who might be in resistance to the Government, and this interpretation was always acted upon; the only difficulty was in ascertaining whether the resistance was or was not, under the circ.u.mstances, justifiable. While employed in Oude with my regiment, and on the staff in 1818 and 1819, I saw much of the correspondence between the Resident and Commandant; many letters from the Resident, Colonel Baillie, mentioning how bitterly Saadulullee, with whom that treaty was made, had complained, that after the sacrifice of half his kingdom for the aid of British troops in keeping down these powerful and refractory landholders, he could not obtain their a.s.sistance without being subject to such humiliating remonstrances as he got from officers commanding stations whenever he asked for it. Aid was often given, and forts innumerable were reduced from time to time, but the privilege of building them up again was purchased from the same or another contractor next season.

13. At this time I have calls for at least two battalions and a train of artillery, from about six quarters, to enforce orders on these landholders. Captain Hea.r.s.ey has had men of his Frontier Police killed and wounded by them on the western border, and declares that nothing can be done to secure offenders, refugees from our districts, with a less force. Captain Orr has had several men wounded, and prisoners taken from him, by the same cla.s.s on the eastern border, and declares to the same effect. Sixteen sepoys of our army, 59th N.

I., on their way home on furlough were attacked and two of them killed, three weeks ago, by a third Zumeendar, at Peernugger, his own estate, within ten miles of the Setapore Cantonments, where we have a regiment. Captain Barlow's regiment and artillery, and another, with all Captain Hea.r.s.ey's Frontier Police, are in pursuit of him. Four others have committed similar outrages on our officers and sepoys and their families, and the Government declares its utter inability to enforce obedience or grant any redress, without a larger force than they have to send. Great numbers of the same cla.s.s are plundering and burning villages, and robbing and murdering on the highway, and laughing at the impotency of the sovereign. It was certainly for aid in coercing these ”internal enemies” that the Sovereign of Oude ceded his territories to us, and for no other, and that aid may be afforded at little cost, and to the great benefit of all under the system I have submitted for your Lords.h.i.+p's consideration. It will be very rarely required, and when called for, a mere demonstration will, in three cases out of four, be sufficient to effect the object.

14, After a time, or when the heir-apparent comes of age, the duties of the guaranteed members of the Board may safely be united to a supervision over the settlement made with the princ.i.p.al landholders, whose obedience our Government may consider itself bound to aid in enforcing; all the rest may be left to a competent sovereign; and there will be nothing in the system opposed to native usages, feelings, and inst.i.tutions, to prevent its being adhered to. I should mention, that many of these landholders have each armed and disciplined bodies of two thousand foot and five hundred horse; and, what is worse, the command of as many as they like of ”Pa.s.sies,”

armed with bows and arrows. These Pa.s.sies are reckless thieves and robbers of the lowest cla.s.s, whose only professions are thieving and acting as Chowkedars, or village police. They are at the service of every refractory Zumeendar, for what they can get in booty in his depredations. The disorders in Oude have greatly increased this cla.s.s, and they are now roughly estimated at a hundred thousand families; these are the men from whom travellers on the road suffer most.

15. A second a.s.sistant would be required for a time to enable the Resident to s.h.i.+ft off the daily detail of the treasury, which has become the largest in India,--I believe, beyond those at the three Presidencies.

A good English copyist, capable of mapping, will be required in the Resident's office at 150, and two Persian writers 100; total 250.

These are the only additions which appear to me to be required.

16. I annex a list of the regiments now in the King's service, Telungas, or regulars, and Nujeebs, or irregulars; and with my next official report I will submit a list of all the establishments, civil and military.

17. The King's habits will not alter; he was allowed by his father to a.s.sociate, as at present, with these singers from his boyhood, and he cannot endure the society of other persons. His determination to live exclusively in their society, and to hear and see nothing of what his officers do or his people suffer, he no longer makes any attempt to conceal. It would be idle to hope for anything from him but a resignation of power into more competent hands; whatever he retains he will a.s.suredly give to his singers and eunuchs, or allow them to take. No man can take charge of any office without antic.i.p.ating the income by large gratuities to them, and the average gratuity which a contractor for a year, of a district yielding three lacs of rupees a- year, is made to pay, before he leaves the capital to enter upon his charge, is estimated to be fifty thousand rupees: this he exacts from the landholders as the first payment, for which they receive no credit in the public account. All other offices are paid for in the same way.

18. The King would change his minister to-morrow if the singers were to propose it; and they would propose it if they could get better terms or perquisites under any other. No minister could hold office a week without their acquiescence. Under such circ.u.mstances a change of ministers would be of little advantage to the country.

19. The King will yield to the measure proposed only under the a.s.surance, that if he did not, the Governor-General would be reduced to the necessity of having recourse to that which Lord Hardinge threatened in the 10th, 11th, and 12th paragraphs of his letter of October, 1847, and the Court of Directors, on the representation of Lord William Bentinck, sanctioned in 1831. The Court was at that time so strongly impressed with the conviction that the threat would be carried into execution, that they prevailed upon the President to undertake a mission to the Home Government, with a view to enlarge the President's powers of interference, in order to save them from the alternative. This led to Mr. Maddock's removal from the Presidency; all subsequent correspondence has tended to keep up the apprehension that the threatened measure would be had recourse to, and to stimulate sovereigns and ministers to exertion till the present reign. The present King has, from the time he ascended the throne, manifested a determination to take no share whatever in the conduct of affairs; to spend the whole of his time among singers and eunuchs, and the women whom they provide for his amus.e.m.e.nt; and carefully to exclude from access, all who suffer from the maladministration of his servants, or who could and would tell him what was done by the one and suffered by the other.

20. But it is not his minister and favourites alone who take advantage of this state of things to enrich themselves; corruption runs through all the public offices, and Maharaja Balkishen, the Dewan, or _Chancellor of the Exchequer_, is notoriously among the most corrupt of all, taking a large portion of the heavy balances due by contractors to get the rest remitted or misrepresented. There is no Court in the capital, criminal, civil, or fiscal, in which the cases are not tampered with by Court favourites, and divided according to their wishes, unless the President has occasion to interfere in behalf of guaranteed pensioners, or officers and sepoys of our army. On his appearance they commonly skulk away, like jackals from a dead carcase when the tiger appears; but the cases in which he can interfere are comparatively very few, and it is with the greatest delay and difficulty that he can get such cases decided at all. A more lamentable state of affairs it is difficult to conceive.

With great respect, I remain, Your Lords.h.i.+p's obedient humble servant, (Signed) W. H. SLEEMAN.

To the Most n.o.ble the Marquis of Dalhousie, K.T., &c. &c. &c.

P.S.--I find that the King's brother is altogether incompetent for anything like business or responsibility. The minister has not one single quality that a minister ought to have; and the King cannot be considered to be in a sound state of mind.

(Signed) W. H. SLEEMAN.

_Annexures_.