‘8. Amongst these there may be some who have been continuously in arms against the government, and who have shewn inveterate opposition to the last, but who are free from the suspicion of having put to death or injured Europeans who fell in their way.
‘9. To these men their lives are guaranteed and their honour; that is, in native acceptation—they will neither be transported across sea, nor placed in prison.
‘10. Probably the most easy and effectual way of disposing of them, in the first instance, will be to require that they shall reside in Lucknow under surveillance and in charge of an officer appointed for that purpose.
‘11. Their ultimate condition and place of residence may remain to be determined hereafter, when the chief-commissioner shall be able to report fully to the governor-general upon the individual character and past conduct of each.
‘12. There will be others who, although they have taken up arms against the government, have done so less heartily, and upon whom, for other causes, the chief-commissioner may not see reason to put restraint. These, after surrendering their arms, might be allowed to go to their homes, with such security for their peaceable conduct as the chief-commissioner may think proper to require.
‘13. One obvious security will be that of making it clearly understood by them, that the amount of favour which they shall hereafter receive, and the condition in which they shall be re-established, will be in part dependent upon their conduct after dismissal.
‘14. The permission to return to their homes must not be considered as a reinstatement of them in the possession of their lands, for the deliberate disposal of which the government will preserve itself unfettered.
‘15. There will probably be a third class, less compromised by acts of past hostility to the government, in whom the chief-commissioner may see reason to repose enough of confidence to justify their services being at once enlisted on the side of order, towards the maintenance of which in their respective districts they might be called upon to organise a temporary police.
‘16. The foregoing remarks apply to the thalookdars and chiefs of the province. As regards their followers who may make submission with them, these, from their numbers, must of necessity be dismissed to their homes. But before this is done, their names and places of residence should be registered, and they should receive a warning that any disturbance of the peace or resistance of authority which may occur in their neighbourhood, will be visited, not upon the individual offenders alone, but by heavy fines upon the villages.
‘17. I am to observe that the governor-general wishes the chief-commissioner to consider what has been above written as suggestions rather than instructions, and as indicating generally the spirit in which his lordship desires that the proclamation should be followed up, without tying down the action of the chief-commissioner in matters which may have to be judged under circumstances which cannot be foreseen.