Sleeman used to be literally besieged along his entire route by the villagers who had some grievance to relate or wrong to be redressed. He gives a pitiful detail of the numerous applicants who crowded to him for help and restitution. Every day, as he travelled throughout the country, scores of petitions were presented to him. "with quivering lip and tearful eye," by persons who had been plundered of all they possessed or who had their dearest relatives murdered or tortured to death, and their habitations burned to the ground by gangs of ruffians, under landlords of high birth and pretensions, whom they had never wronged or offended. For this misery the native officials of the King of Oudh were answerable besides the Talukdar,[1] who not only oppressed the peasant by heavy exactions, but also endeavoured to deprive him of his proprietary right in the soil.
12. Under native rule the Talukdars of Oudh were not mere middle-men, employed to collect revenue from cultivators, but heads of powerful clans and representatives of ancient families; they were, in reality, a feudal aristocracy, based upon rights in the soil, which went back to traditional times and we're acknowledged by their retainers. At the time of annexation, 23,500 villages, or about two-thirds of the total area of the province, were in their possession.
13. Colonel Sleeman,[2] though averse to annexation as a system, stated in his report that, with all his desire to maintain the throne in its integrity, past experience did not permit him to entertain the smallest hope that the King would ever carry out any system of government calculated to ensure the safety and happiness of his subjects. He did not think that, with a due regard to its own character as the Paramount Power in India, and the particular obligation by which it was bound by solemn treaties to the suffering people, the Government could any longer forbear to take over the administration, and to make some suitable provision, in perpetuity, for the King when dethroned.
14. On every side the necessity for interference in the affairs of Oudh was most pressing, but the Marquis of Dalhousie, though determined to annex the province, was compelled to postpone action for the present. being
- ↑ The term Talukdar mans holder of a Taluka, or collection of villages, farmed out to him by Government, to whom he is responsible for payment of the land revenue assessed.
- ↑ Disabled by ill health, Colonel Sleeman quitted India at the commencement of 1806, and died on his voyage to Europe. He was succeded at the Lucknow Residency, by General Sir James Outram.
