Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924024153987).pdf/63

 INTRODUCTION, control,

and acknowledged no

liii

responsibility.

Their only object

was to make their places as profitable as possible to themselves. They had, moreover, no power to see that their judgments were executed, and the ndzims were too much engaged in the realization of the revenue,

and -too utterly indifferent to the disputes of the people among themselves, to interfere in their support. Lastly, the law itself was one which did not meet the requirements or satisfy the sense of justice of the mass of litigants, and denied the Hindu all remedy as against the Muhammadan. The people of course preferred their own panchayats and the cutcherries of their ancestral chieftains to a resort to courts whose first object was to extort a heavy bribe, who were powerless of action, and whose orders conveyed either a redress which was inapplicable or no redress at all. That so much importance should have been attached at the time to the measure by which revenue appointments were made subject to the payment of a fixed annual sum, instead of being as heretofore exposed to auction in open market, is only one of the things which show how imperfect was the information of the Calcutta Government in all the affairs of Oudh. In principle no doubt the measure was admirable ; but with an apathetic king and ministers and officials bent on nothing but private ends, who was to superintend its execution ? The only difierence it made was one of account to the ndzims and chakladars. Money, which was before collected as government revenue and appropriated by the collector, after he had

appointment had been knocked down, now was realized as nazrdna, or took any one of the numerous channels which official dishonesty is ingenious in devising. The loss to the revenue was shown either in a diminished rent-roll or The receipts of the in arrears beyond the hope of recovery. actual collections were as while the decrease, state continued to power of extortion, and the nazim's only by before limited slightest degree in the the people were nor king neither the paid the

sum for Which

affected

by the change.

his

These, then, were the elements of the society which came

under British rule. The king, who exercised no royal functions, but was simply a heavy charge on the public treasury the corrupt and infamous capital the ministers insecure in their the empty courts, offices and alive to no interest but their own and every villany crime every suffered and justice which denied the other have land to the of from one end unchecked to triumph own administrative our by taken is the place and all passed away, remained for us to deal which elements stable The machinery.

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