le classes
connected with the land. These classes it should be our object to
create and foster, that we might in the end inspire them with a
feeling of interest in the stability of our rule. _We shall find a
few years hence the tables turned against us_. In fact, the
aggressive and absorbing policy, which has done so much mischief of
late in India, is beginning to create feelings of alarm in the native
mind; and it is when the popular mind becomes agitated by such alarms
that fanatics will always be found ready to step into Paradise over
the bodies of the most prominent of those from whom injury is
apprehended. I shall have nothing new to do at Lucknow. Lord
Dalhousie and I have different views, I fear. If he wishes anything
done that I do not think right and honest, I resign, and leave it to
be done by others. I desire a strict adherence to solemn engagements,
whether made with white faces or black. We have no right to annex or
confiscate Oude; but we have a right, under the treaty of 1837, to
take the management of it, but not to appropriate its revenues to
ourselves. We can do this with honour to our Government and benefit
to the people. To confiscate would be dishonest and dishonourable. To
annex would be to give the people a government almost as bad as their
own, if we put our screw upon them. My position here has been and is
disagreeable and unsatisfactory: we have a fool of a king, a knave of
a minister, and both are under the influence of one of the cleverest,
most intriguing, and most unscrupulous villains in India."

Major Bird, in his pamphlet "Dacoitee in Excelsis," while
endeavouring to establish a case for the King of Oude, has assumed
that Sir William Sleeman was an instrument in the hands of Lord
Dalhousie, to carry out his purpose of annexing Oude to British
India. The letters, now first printed, entirely refute this hasty and
erroneous statement. Major Bird has, in fact, withdrawn it himself in
a lecture delivered by him at Southampton on Tuesday, the 16th of
February, 1858.

It will be seen that Sir W. Sleeman's "Diary" commences on December
1, 1849. To preserve chronological order, the letters written before
that date are prefixed; those which refer to a later period are added
at the end of the narrative.

__________________________

PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE
PRECEDING THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE KINGDOM OF OUDE.

Camp, 20th February, 1