any
one local authority could pass on such offenders, would be recognised
by any other authority in the State, as valid or sufficient to
justify him in receiving and holding them in confinement for a single
day. The local authorities, therefore, either leave the wrong-doers
unmolested, with the understanding that they are to abstain from
doing any such wrong within their jurisdictions as may endanger or
impede the _collection of revenues_ during their period of office, or
release them with that understanding after they have squeezed all
they can out of them. The wrong-doers can so abstain, and still be
able to _murder, rob, torture, dishonour, and burn_, upon a pretty
large scale; and where they are so numerous, and so ready to unite
for purposes "offensive and defensive," and the local authorities so
generally connive at or quietly acquiesce all their misdeeds, any
attempt on the part of an honest or overzealous individual to put
them down would be sure to result in his speedy and utter ruin!

To refer such sufferers to the authorities at Lucknow would be a
still more cruel mockery. The present sovereign never hears a
complaint or reads a petition or report of any kind. He is entirely
taken up in the pursuit of his personal gratifications. He has no
desire to be thought to take any interest whatever in public affairs;
and is altogether regardless of the duties and responsibilities of
his high office. He lives, exclusively, in the society of fiddlers,
eunuchs, and women: he has done so since his childhood, and is likely
to do so to the last. His disrelish for any other society has become
inveterate: he cannot keep awake in any other. In spite of average
natural capacity, and more than average facility in the cultivation
of light literature, or at least "_de faire des petits vers de sa
focon_," his understanding has become so emasculated, that he is
altogether unfit for the conduct of his domestic, much less his
public, affairs. He sees occasionally his prime minister, who takes
care to persuade him that he does all that a King ought to do; and
nothing whatever of any other minister. He holds no communication
whatever with brothers, uncles, cousins, or any of the native
gentlemen at Lucknow, or the landed or official aristocracy of the
country. He sometimes admits a few poets or poetasters to hear and
praise his verses, and commands the unwilling attendance of some of
his relations, to witness and applaud the acting of