Never
was country more favoured, by nature, or more susceptible of
improvement under judicious management. There is really hardly an
acre of land that is not capable of good culture, or that need be
left waste, except for the sites of towns and villages, and ponds for
irrigation, or that would be left waste under good government. The
people understand tillage well, and are industrious and robust,
capable of any exertion under protection and due encouragement.
The Government has all the revenues to itself, having no public debt
and paying no tribute to any one, while the country receives from the
British Government alone fifty lacs, or half a million a-year; first,
in the incomes of guaranteed pensioners, whose stipends are the
interest of loans received by our Government at different times from
the sovereigns of Oude, as a provision for their relatives and
dependents in perpetuity, and as endowments for their mausoleums and
mosques, and other religious and eleemosynary establishments; second,
in the interest paid for Government securities held by people
residing in Oude; third, in the payment of pensions to the families
of men who have been killed in our service, and to invalid native
officers and sipahees of our army residing there, fourth, in the
savings of others who still serve in our army, while their families
reside in Oude; and those of the native officers of our civil
establishments, whose families remain at their homes in Oude; fifth,
in the interest on a large amount of our Government securities held
by people at Lucknow, who draw the interest not from the Resident's
Treasury, but from the General Treasury in Calcutta, or the
Treasuries of our bordering districts, in order to conceal their
wealth from the King and his officers.
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