‘2. On the 12th inst., we received from you a copy of the letter, dated the 3d of March, addressed by your secretary to the secretary to the chief-commissioner in Oude, which letter enclosed a copy of the proclamation to be issued by the chief-commissioner as soon as the British troops should have command of the city of Lucknow, and conveyed instructions as to the manner in which he was to act with respect to different classes of persons, in execution of the views of the governor-general.
‘3. The people of Oude will see only the proclamation.
‘4. That authoritative expression of the will of the government informs the people that six persons, who are named as having been steadfast in their allegiance, are henceforward the sole hereditary proprietors of the lands they held when Oude came under British rule, subject only to such moderate assessment as may be imposed upon them; that others in whose favour like claims may be established will have conferred upon them a proportionate measure of reward and honour; and that, with these exceptions, the proprietary right in the soil of the province is confiscated to the British government.
‘5. We cannot but express to you our apprehension that this decree, pronouncing the disinherison of a people, will throw difficulties almost insurmountable in the way of the re-establishment of peace.
‘6. We are under the impression that the war in Oude has derived much of its popular character from the rigorous manner in which, without regard to what the chief landholders had become accustomed to consider as their rights, the summary settlement had, in a large portion of the province, been carried out by your officers.
‘7. The landholders of India are as much attached to the soil occupied by their ancestors, and are as sensitive with respect to the rights in the soil they deem themselves to possess, as the occupiers of land in any country of which we have a knowledge.
‘8. Whatever may be your ultimate and undisclosed intentions, your proclamation will appear to deprive the great body of the people of all hope upon the subject most dear to them as individuals, while the substitution of our rule for that of their native sovereign has naturally excited against us whatever they may have of national feeling.
‘9. We cannot but in justice consider that those who resist our authority in Oude are under very different circumstances from those who have acted against us in provinces which have been long under our government.
‘10. We dethroned the King of Oude, and took possession of his kingdom, by virtue of a treaty which had been subsequently modified by another treaty, under which, had it been held to be in force, the course we adopted could not have been lawfully pursued; but we held that it was not in force, although the fact of its not having been ratified in England, as regarded the provision on which we rely for our justification, had not been previously made known to the King of Oude.
‘11. That sovereign and his ancestors had been uniformly faithful to their treaty engagements with us, however ill they may have governed their subjects.