know that where the object is to exact the means to gratify influential persons about Court, the Nazim would be likely to get good military support, if driven to extremity, and consent to pay the greater part of what is demanded.  When the trust manager, by his liberal remittances to Court patrons, gets all the troops he requires, he exacts the full gratuities, and still higher and more numerous if strong enough.  The corps under Captains Magness, Bunbury, Barlow, and Subha Sing, are called komukee, or auxiliary regiments; and they are every season, and sometimes often in the same season, sold to the highest bidder as a perquisite by the minister.  The services of Captain Magness and Captain Bunbury’s corps were purchased in this way for 1850 and 1851, by Aga Allee, the Nazim of Sultanpoor, and he has made the most of them.  No contractor ever exacted higher nazuranas or gratuities than he has, by their aid, this season, though he still holds the district as a trust manager.  Ten, twenty, or thirty thousand rupees are paid for the use of one of these regiments, according to the exigency of the occasion, or the time for which it may be required.

The system of government under which Oude suffers during the reign of the best king is a fearful one; and what must it be under a sovereign, so indifferent as the present is, to the sufferings of his people, to his own permanent interests, and to the duties and responsibilities of his high station?  Seeing that our Government attached much importance to the change, from the contract to the trust system of management, the present minister is putting a large portion of the country under that system in the hope of blinding us.  But there is virtually little or no change in the administration of such districts; the person who has the charge of a district under it is obliged to pay the same gratuities to public officers and court favourites, and he exacts the same, or nearly the same from the landholders; he is under no more check than the contractor, and the officers and troops under him, abuse their authority in the same manner, and commit the same outrages upon the suffering people.  Security to life and property is disregarded in the same manner; he confines himself as exclusively to the duties of collecting revenue, and is as regardless of security to life and property, and of fidelity to his engagements, as the landholders in his jurisdiction.  The trust management of a district differs from that of the contractors, only as the wusoolee kubaz differs from the lakulamee; though he does not enter into a formal contract to pay a certain sum, he is always expected to pay such a sum, and if he does not, he is obliged to wipe off the balance in the same way, and is kept in gaol till he does so, in the same way.  Indeed, I believe, the people would commonly rather be under a contractor, than a trust manager under the Oude Government; and this was the opinion of Colonel Low, who, of all my predecessors, certainly knew most about the real state of Oude.