y can
save their own tenants from pillage and slaughter. They find,
moreover, that the sufferings of others enable them to get
cultivators and useful tenants of all kinds upon their own estates,
on more easy terms, and to induce the smaller allodial or khalsa
proprietors around, to yield up their lands to them, and become their
tenants with less difficulty. It was in the same manner that the
great feudal barons aggrandised themselves in England, and all the
other countries of Europe, in the MIDDLE AGES.

In Oude all these great landholders look upon the Sovereign and his
officers--except when they happen to be in collusion with them for
the purpose of robbing or coercing others--as their natural enemies,
and will never trust themselves in their power without undoubted
pledges of personal security. The great feudal tenants of the Crown
in England, and the other nations of Europe, did the same, except
when they were in collusion with them for the purpose of robbing
others of their rights; or fought under their banners for the purpose
of robbing or destroying the subjects and servants of some other
Sovereign whom he chose to call his enemy.

Only one of these sources of union between the Sovereign and his
great landholders is in operation in Oude. Some of them are every
year in collusion with the governors of districts for the purpose of
coercing and robbing others; but the Sovereign can never unite them
under his banners for the purpose of invading and plundering any
other country, and thereby securing for himself and them present
_glory_, wealth, and high-sounding titles, and the admiration and
applause of future generations. The strong arm of the British
Government is interposed between them and all surrounding countries;
and there is no safety-valve for their unquiet spirits in foreign
conquests. They can no longer do as Ram did two thousand seven
hundred years ago--lead an army from Ajodheea to Ceylone. They must
either give up fighting, or fight among themselves, as they appear to
have been doing ever since Ram's time; and there are at present no
signs of a disposition to send out another "Sakya Guntama" from
Lucknow, or Kapila vastee to preach peace and good-will to "all the
nations of the earth." They would much rather send out fifty thousand
more brave soldiers to fight "all the nations of the east," under the
banners of the Honourable East India Company.

An English statesman may further ask how it is that so