y large gratuities to them, and the average gratuity which a
contractor for a year, of a district yielding three lacs of rupees a-
year, is made to pay, before he leaves the capital to enter upon his
charge, is estimated to be fifty thousand rupees: this he exacts from
the landholders as the first payment, for which they receive no
credit in the public account. All other offices are paid for in the
same way.

18. The King would change his minister to-morrow if the singers were
to propose it; and they would propose it if they could get better
terms or perquisites under any other. No minister could hold office a
week without their acquiescence. Under such circumstances a change of
ministers would be of little advantage to the country.

19. The King will yield to the measure proposed only under the
assurance, that if he did not, the Governor-General would be reduced
to the necessity of having recourse to that which Lord Hardinge
threatened in the 10th, 11th, and 12th paragraphs of his letter of
October, 1847, and the Court of Directors, on the representation of
Lord William Bentinck, sanctioned in 1831. The Court was at that time
so strongly impressed with the conviction that the threat would be
carried into execution, that they prevailed upon the President to
undertake a mission to the Home Government, with a view to enlarge
the President's powers of interference, in order to save them from
the alternative. This led to Mr. Maddock's removal from the
Presidency; all subsequent correspondence has tended to keep up the
apprehension that the threatened measure would be had recourse to,
and to stimulate sovereigns and ministers to exertion till the
present reign. The present King has, from the time he ascended the
throne, manifested a determination to take no share whatever in the
conduct of affairs; to spend the whole of his time among singers and
eunuchs, and the women whom they provide for his amusement; and
carefully to exclude from access, all who suffer from the
maladministration of his servants, or who could and would tell him
what was done by the one and suffered by the other.

20. But it is not his minister and favourites alone who take
advantage of this state of things to enrich themselves; corruption
runs through all the public offices, and Maharaja Balkishen, the
Dewan, or _Chancellor of the Exchequer_, is notoriously among the
most corrupt of all, taking a large portion of the heavy balances due
by contractors