can wipe them from hardly any. The reckless disregard shown by the
depredators of all classes and degrees to the sufferings of their
victims, whatever be the cause of discontent or object of pursuit, is
lamentable. I have every day scores of petitions delivered to me
"with quivering lip and tearful eye," by persons who have been
plundered of all they possessed, had their dearest relatives murdered
or tortured to death, and their habitations burnt to the ground, by
gangs of ruffians, under landlords of high birth and pretensions,
whom they had never wronged or offended; some, merely because they
happened to have property, which the ruffians wished to take--others,
because they presumed to live and labour upon lands which they
coveted, or deserted, and wished to have left waste. In these
attacks, neither age, nor sex, nor condition are spared. The greater
part of the leaders of these gangs of ruffians are Rajpoot
landholders, boasting descent from the sun and moon, or from the
demigods, who figure in the Hindoo religious fictions of the Poorans.
There are, however, a great many Mahommedans at the head of similar
gangs. A landholder of whatever degree, who is opposed to his
government from whatever cause, considers himself in a state of
_war_', and he considers a state of war to authorize his doing all
those things which he is forbidden to do in a state of peace.

Unless the sufferer happens to be a native officer or sipahee of our
army, who enjoys the privilege of urging his claims through the
Resident, it is a cruel mockery to refer him for redress to any
existing local authority. One not only feels that it is so, but sees,
that the sufferer thinks that he must know it to be so. No such
authority considers it to be any part of his duty to arrest evil-
doers, and inquire into and redress wrongs suffered by individuals,
or families, or village communities. Should he arrest such people, he