ill now go
on smoothly. When the men have to complain to their own Government,
they will seldom complain without just cause, being aware that a
false story will soon be detected by the native local authorities,
though it could not be so by European officers at a distance from the
villages; and that in all cases of real grievances their claims will
soon be fairly and speedily adjusted. If," added he, "the sipahees of
this force had been so placed that they could have enlisted their
officers on their side in making complaints, while such officers
could know nothing whatever of the circumstances beyond what the
sipahees themselves told them, false and groundless complaints would
have become endless, and the vexations thereby caused to Government
and their neighbours would have become intolerable. These troops,"
said he, "will now be real soldiers; but if the privileges enjoyed by
the Honourable Company's sipahees had been conferred upon the seven
regiments composing this force, with the relations and pretended
relations of the sipahees, it would have converted into corrupt
traders in village disputes sixteen or seventeen thousand of the
King's subjects, settled in the heart of the country, privileged to
make false accusations of all kinds, and believed by the people to be
supported in these falsehoods by the British Government." Both the
King and the minister requested the Resident earnestly and repeatedly
to express to the Governor-General their most sincere thanks for
having complied with his Majesty's solicitations on this point.*

[* See King of Oude's letter to the Governor-General, dated 5th
October, 1837, and Residents letters of the 7th idem and 14th
December, 1837.]

This privilege which the native officers and sipahees of our native
army enjoy of petitioning for redress of grievances, through the
Resident, has now been extended to all the regular, irregular, and
local corps of the three Presidencies--that is, to all corps paid by
the British Government, and to all native officers and sipahees of
contingent corps employed in and paid by native States, who were
drafted into them from the regular corps of our army up to a certain
time; and the number cannot be less than fifty or sixty thousand. But
European civil and political functionaries, in our own provinces and
other native States, have almost all some men from Oude in their
offices or establishments, whose claims and complaints they send for
adjustment to t