However it was to be
explained, no harm came to me anywhere on my march. But my guard, if
he looked zealously after my interests, looked full as zealously after
his own. For what I knew he was licensed, as a servant of the state,
to billet himself at free quarters on his royal master's subjects: at
any rate, so he did. But, greatly to his vexation, I would not hear of
his compelling the shopkeepers with whom my butler had daily dealings
in buying necessaries for me to provision my camp at their own charge.
The man was for carrying things with a high hand; and at the period of
which I am writing to do so was in Oude wellnigh the universal rule.
Justice was fast dying out in the land, and violence already reigned
prevalent in its stead. The taxes, exorbitant as apportioned at the
court, were farmed by merciless wretches who made them more exorbitant
still, and who collected them, for the most part, at the point of the
sword. Open robbery, deadly brawls and private assassination had
become matters of perpetual occurrence. There was scarcely a day
during my tour that I was not in the close vicinity of fatal
skirmishes, and that I did not fall in with parties carrying away from
them the dead or wounded. Obviously, this state of affairs could not
exist for any very long duration. The nawab was advised, warned, and
then menaced with deposal, provided things were not righted in his
dominions, radically and speedily, to the satisfaction of the East
India Company.
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