On the 10th of that month he was taken by the minister to pay his respects to his Majesty, who, on the 30th, conferred upon him additional honours and titles, and appointed him Inspector-general of all his dominions, with orders "to make a settlement of the land revenue at an increased rate; to cut down all the jungles, and bring all the waste lands into tillage; to seize all refractory barons, destroy all their forts, and seize and send into store all the cannon mounted upon them; to put down all disturbances, protect all high roads, punish all refractory and evil-minded persons; to enforce the payment of all just demands of his sovereign upon landholders of all degrees and denominations; to invite back all who had been driven off by oppression, and re-establish them on their estates, or punish them if they refused to return; to ascertain the value of all estates transferred from the jurisdiction of the local authorities to the 'Hozoor Tehsel,' without due inquiry; and report, for the consideration of his Majesty and his minister, any nankar or rent-free lands, assigned, of late years, by Amils and other governors of districts; to enforce the payment of all recoverable balances, due on account of past years; to muster the troops, and report, through the commander-in-chief, all officers and soldiers borne on the muster-rolls, and paid from the treasury, but in reality dead, absent without leave, or unfit for further service;" in short, to reform all abuses, and make the government of the country what the King and his minister thought it ought to be. Dursun Sing assured them that he would do his best to effect all the objects they had in view; and, after recovering possession of his estates, and conciliating, by suitable gratuities, all the reigning favourites at Court, he went to work heartily at his Herculean task after his wonted way. But he, soon after, became ill, and retired to his residence at Fyzabad, where he died on the 20th of August, 1844, leaving his elder brother, Bukhtawar Sing—my Quartermaster-general—at Court; and his three sons, Ramadeen, Rughbur Sing, and Mann Sing, to fight among themselves for his landed possessions and immense accumulated wealth.
The minister was a man of good intentions; and, having inherited an immense fortune from his uncle, Hakeem Mehndee, he cared little about money; but he was an indolent man, and indulged much in opiates, and his object was to reform the administration at the least possible cost of time and trouble to himself. He had, he thought, found the man who could efficiently supervise and control the administration in all its branches; and he invested him with plenary powers to do so. Of the duty, on his part and that of his master; efficiently to supervise and control the exercise of these plenary powers on the part of the man of their choice, in order to prevent their being abused to the injury of the state and the people; or of the necessity of taking from Court favourites the nomination of officers to the charge of all districts and all fiscal and judicial Courts, and to the command of all corps and establishments, in order to render them efficient and honest, and prevent justice from being perverted, and the revenues of the state from being absorbed on their way to the treasury, they took no heed. Court favourites retained their powers, and the King and his minister relied entirely, as heretofore, upon the reports of the news-writers, who attend officially upon all officers in charge of districts, fiscal and judicial Courts, corps and establishments of all kinds, for the facts of all cases on which they might have to pass orders; and remained as ignorant as their predecessors of the real state of the administration and the real sufferings of the people, if not of the real losses to the Exchequer.
The news department is under a Superintendent-general, who has sometimes contracted for it, as for the revenues of a district, but more commonly holds it in amanee, as a manager. When he contracts for it he pays a certain sum to the public treasury, over and above what he pays to the influential officers and Court favourites in gratuities. When he holds it in amanee, he pays only gratuities, and the public treasury gets nothing. His payments amount to about the same in either case. He nominates his-subordinates, and appoints them to their several offices, taking from each a present gratuity and a pledge for such monthly payments as he thinks the post will enable him to make. They receive from four to fifteen rupees a-month each, and have each to pay to their President, for distribution among his patrons or patronesses at Court from one hundred to five hundred rupees a-month in ordinary times. Those to whom they are accredited have to pay them, under ordinary circumstances, certain sums monthly, to prevent their inventing or exaggerating cases of abuse of power or neglect of duty on their part; but when they happen to be really guilty of great acts of atrocity, or great neglect of duty, they are required to pay extraordinary sums, not only to the news-writers, who are especially accredited to them, but to all others who happen to be in the neighbourhood at the time. There are six hundred and sixty news-writers of this kind employed by the King, and paid monthly three thousand one hundred and ninety-four rupees, or, on an average, between four and five rupees a-month each; and the sums paid by them to their President for distribution among influential officers and Court favourites averages above one hundred and fifty thousand rupees a-year. Many, whose avowed salary is from four to ten rupees a-month, receive each, from the persons to whom they are accredited, more than five hundred, three-fourths of which they must send for distribution among Court favourites, or they could not retain their places a week, nor could their President retain his. Such are the reporters of the circumstances in all the cases on which the sovereign and his ministers have to pass orders every day in Oude. Some of those who derive part of their incomes from this source are "persons behind the throne, who are greater than the throne itself." The mother of the heir-apparent gets twelve thousand rupees a-year from it.
But their exactions are not confined to government officers of all grades and denominations; they are extended to contractors of all kinds and denominations, to him who contracts for the supply of the public cattle with grain, as well as to him who contracts for the revenue and undivided government of whole provinces; and, indeed, to every person who has anything to do under, or anything to apprehend from, government and its officers and favourites; and, in such a country, who has not? The European magistrate of one of our neighbouring districts one day, before the Oude Frontier Police was raised, entered the Oude territory at the head of his police in pursuit of some robbers, who had found an asylum in one of the King's villages. In the attempt to secure them some lives were lost; and, apprehensive of the consequences, he sent for the official news-writer, and gratified him in the usual way. No report of the circumstances was made to the Oude Durbar; and neither the King, the Resident, nor the British Government ever heard anything about it. Of the practical working of the system, many illustrations will be found in this Diary.
The Akbar, or Intelligence Department, had been farmed out for some years, at the rate of between one and two lacs of rupees a-year, when, at the recommendation of the Resident, the King expressed his willingness to abolish the farm, and intrust the superintendence to men of character and ability, to be paid by Government. This resolution was communicated to Government by the Resident on the 24th of April, 1839; and on the 6th of May the Resident was instructed to communicate to his Majesty the satisfaction which the Governor-General derived on hearing that he had consented to abolish this farm, which had produced so large a revenue to the state. This was considered by the Resident to be a great boon obtained for the people of Oude, as the farmers of the department consented to pay a large revenue, only on condition that they should be considered as the only legitimate reporters of events—the only recognised masters in the Oude Chancery; and, as the Resident observed, "they choked up all the channels the people had of access to their sovereign;" but they have choked them up just as much since the abolition of the farm, and have had to pay just as much as before.
A brief sketch of the proceedings of Rughbur Sing, the son of Dursun Sing, in his government of these districts of Gonda and Baraetch, for the years 1846 and 1847, may here be given as further illustration of the Oude government and its administration, in this part of the country at least. It had not suffered very much under his uncle's brief reign in 1842 and 1843, and the governors who followed him, up to 1846, were too weak to coerce the Tallookdars, or do much injury to their estates. Rughbur Sing had a large body of the King's troops to aid him in enforcing from them the payment of the current revenue and balances, real or pretended, for past years; and a large body of armed retainers of his own to assist him in his contest with his brothers for the possessions of the Mehdona and Asrewa estates, which had been going on ever since the death of their father.
I have stated that Rughbur Sing held in contract the districts of Gonda and Bahraetch for the years 1846 and 1847, and shown to what a state of wretchedness he managed to reduce them in that brief period. In 1849, some months after I took charge of my office, I deputed a European gentleman of high character, Captain Orr, of the Oude Frontier Police, to pass through these districts, and inquire into and report upon the charges of oppression brought against him by the people, as his agents were diligently employed at Lucknow in distributing money among the most influential persons about the Court, and a disposition to restore him to power had become manifest. He had purchased large estates in our districts of Benares and Goruckpoor, where he now resided for greater security, while he had five thousand armed men, employed under other agents, in fighting with his brother, Maun Sing, for the possession of the bynamah estates, above described, in the Sultanpoor district. In this contest a great many lives were lost, and the peace of the country was long and much disturbed, but, after driving all his brother's forces and agents out of the district. Maun Sing retained quiet possession of the estates. This contest would, however, have been again renewed, and the same desolating disorders would have again prevailed, could Rughbur Sing's agents at the capital, by a judicious distribution of the money at their disposal, have induced the Court to restore him to the government of these or any other districts in Oude.
On the 23rd of July 1849, Captain Orr sent in his report, giving a brief outline of such of the atrocities committed by Rughbur Sing and his agents in these districts as he was able, during his tour, to establish upon unquestionable evidence; but they made but a small portion of the whole, as the people in general still apprehended that he would be restored to power by Court favour, and wreak his vengeance upon all who presumed to give evidence against him; while many of the most respectable families in the districts were ashamed to place on record the suffering and dishonour inflicted on their female members; and still more had been reduced by them to utter destitution, and driven in despair into other districts. To use his own words—"The once flourishing districts of Gonda and Bahraetch, so noted for fertility and beauty, are now, for the greater part, uncultivated; villages completely deserted in the midst of lands devoid of all tillage everywhere meet the eye; and from Fyzabad to Bahraetch I passed through these districts, a distance of eighty miles, over plains which had been fertile and well cultivated, till Rughbur Sing got charge, but now lay entirely waste, a scene for two years of great misery ending in desolation."
Rajah Hurdut Sahae, the proprietor of the Bondee estate, was the head of one of the oldest Rajpoot families in Oude. Having placed the most notorious knaves in the country as revenue collectors over all the subdivisions of his two districts, Rajah Rughbur Sing, in 1846, demanded from Hurdut Sahae an increase of five thousand rupees upon the assessment of the preceding year. The Rajah pleaded the badness of preceding seasons, and consequent poverty of his tenants and cultivators; but at last he consented to pay the increase, and on solemn pledges of personal security he collected all his tenants, to take upon themselves the responsibility of making good this demand. To this they all agreed; but they had no sooner done so, than Rughbur Sing's agent, Prag Pursaud, demanded a gratuity of seven thousand rupees for himself, over and above the increase of five thousand upon the demand of the preceding year. The Rajah would not agree to pay the seven thousand, but went off to request some capitalists to furnish securities for the punctual payment of the rent.
The agent sent off secretly to Rughbur Sing to say, that unless he came at the head of his forces he saw no chance of getting the revenues from the Rajah or his tenants, who were all assembled and might be secured if he could contrive to surprise them. Rughbur Sing came with a large force at night, surrounded his agent's camp, where the tenants and the Rajah's officers were all assembled, and seized them. He then sent out parties of soldiers of from one hundred to two hundred each, to plunder all the towns and villages on the estate, and seize all the respectable residents they could find. They plundered the town of Bondee, and pulled down all the houses of the Rajah, and those of his relatives and dependents; and, after plundering all the other towns and villages in the neighbourhood, they brought in one thousand captives of both sexes and all ages, who were subjected to all manner of torture till they paid the ransom demanded, or gave written pledges to pay. Five thousand head of cattle were, at the same time, brought in and distributed as booty.