The expenditure is now about twenty lacs of rupees a-year above the
income, and the excess is paid out of the reserved treasury. This
reserved treasury was first established by Saadut Allee Khan in A.D.
1801, when he had serious thoughts of resigning the government of his
country into the hands of the Honourable Company, and retiring into
private life. Up to this time he used to drink hard, and to indulge
in other pleasures, which tended to unfit him for the cares and
duties of sovereignty; but, in 1801, he made a solemn vow at the
shrine of Huzrut Abbas at Lucknow to cease from all such indulgences,
and devote all his time and attention to his public duties. This vow
he kept, and no Sovereign of Oude has ever conducted the Government
with so much ability as he did for the remaining fourteen years of
his life. On his death, which took place on the 12th of July, 1814,
he left in this reserved treasury the sum of fourteen crores of
rupees, or fourteen millions sterling, with all his establishments
paid up, and his just debts liquidated. When he ascended the musnud
on the 21st January, 1798, he found nothing in the Treasury, and the
public establishments all much in arrears.
Out of this reserved treasure, the _zukaat_, or two and a-half per
cent., is every year paid to the mojtahid for distribution among the
poor of the Sheea sect at Lucknow. No person of the Sonnee sect is
permitted to partake of this charity.
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