I may here remark that no native gentleman from Lucknow, save such as hold office in districts, and are surrounded by troops, can with safety reside in the country.  He would be either suspected and destroyed by the great landholders around him, or suspected and ruined by the Court.  Under a better system of government, a great many of these native gentlemen, who enjoy hereditary incomes, under the guarantee of the British Government, would build houses in distant districts, take lands, and reside on them with their families, wholly or occasionally, and Oude [would] soon be covered with handsome gentlemen’s seats, at once ornamental and useful.  They would tend to give useful employment to the people, and become bonds of union between the governing and the governed.  Under such an improved system, our guarantees would be of immense advantage to the whole country of Oude, in diffusing wealth, protection, education, intelligence, good feeling, and useful and ornamental, works.  At present, these guarantees are not so.  They have concentrated at the capital all who subsist upon them, and surrounded the Sovereign and his Court with an overgrown aristocracy, which tends to alienate him more and more from his people.  The people derive no benefit from, and have no feeling or interest in common with, this city aristocracy, which tends more and more to hide their Sovereign from their view, and to render him less and less sensible of his duties and high responsibilities; and what would be a blessing under a good, becomes an evil under a bad system, such as that which has prevailed since those guarantees began.

In this overgrown city there is a perpetual turmoil of processions, illuminations, and festivities.  The Sovereign spends all that he can get in them, and has not the slightest wish to perpetuate his name by the construction of any useful or ornamental work beyond its suburbs.  All the members of his family and of the city aristocracy follow his example, and spend their means in the same way.  Indifferent to the feelings and opinions of the landed aristocracy and people of the country, with whom they have no sympathy, they spend all that they can spare for the public in gratifying the vitiated tastes of the overgrown metropolis.  Hardly any work calculated to benefit or gratify the people of the country is formed or thought of by the members of the royal family or aristocracy of Lucknow; and the only one formed by the Sovereign for many years is, I believe, the metalled road leading from Lucknow to Cawnpoor, on the Ganges.

One good these guarantees certainly have effected—­they have tended greatly to inspire the people of the city with respect for the British Government, by whom the incomes of so large and influential a portion of the community and their dependents are secured.  That respect extends to its public officers and to Europeans generally; and in the most crowded streets of Lucknow they are received with deference, courtesy, and kindness, while in those of Hydrabad, their lives, I believe, are never safe without an escort from the Resident.