There are many honest men at Lucknow, and a finer peasantry
no country can boast. But no honest man can obtain or retain office
under Government with the present minister and heads of departments.
But where the whole revenues of a fine country are available to
suborn witnesses to prove the King to be a _Solomon_, no Resident
would be able to find judicial proof of his being a fool; but that he
is so I have had abundance of, to me, satisfactory evidence ever
since I have been here. It must soon, however, become clear, without
the Resident's efforts to make it so. Where the Government of India
is so solemnly pledged to see justice done to the people of a
country, it cannot fairly permit them to be reigned over much longer
by so incompetent a Sovereign. Proofs enough of bad government and
neglected duties were given in my Diary; and a picture more true was,
I believe, never drawn of any country. The duty of remedying the
evils, and carrying out your Lordship's views in Oude, whatever they
may be, must now devolve on another.
No one of my present assistants knows anything whatever about Oude,
its Government, or its people; and Colonel Outram will, therefore,
labour under great disadvantages. I hope, therefore, that your
Lordship will pardon the liberty I take in suggesting that he be
allowed the aid of Captain Weston. He went over the whole of Oude
with me, and knows almost all who have made themselves prominent for
good or for evil within the last five years.
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