INTRODUCTION.
11
body
fairly well off. The provision which their firm hold on the secured for their families gave them a social position inde« pendent of their caste, and enabled them to seek in marriage the daughters of clans who would have at once rejected the advances of men of the same class but not village zamindars. The power to which we are the more direct successors claims some separate notice, though the most important of its effects on the history of the country have already been detailed. Of the six potentates who filled the throne of Lucknow in the present century, two only paid any attention to the government of their subjects or their own more immediate interests in the state. The rest remained sunk in a sensual apathy or absorbed in ferocious excitements, unmoved by the constant remonstrances of the British residents, careless of the dishonesty and treachery of the servants they employed, blind to the emptiness of their treasury, and deaf to the cries of an oppressed people. The hideous palaces with which their bad taste and vulgar extravagance had defaced Lucknow were impenetrable fastnesses, where public affairs were never allowed to intrude for a moment on the more important avocations of selecting a new courtesan, criticising lifeless erotic poetry, or rewarding the insipid flattery of a swarm of low-caste hangers-on. Not even the national passion for distinction could reconcile the more manly, not of the outside public, but of the king's own servants to honours prostituted by every revolting use, and the great nazims, Darshan Singh and Mdn Singh, steadily declined any title which bore the stamp of the court. The prime ministers who were entrusted with the administration of the state present a hardly more attractive picture. Muhammadans and hangers-on of the court, they cared nothing and knew nothing of the interests of a population which was in Under no control and insecure in the slippery the main Hindu. tenure of their office, they had no reason for being honest, no other end but the provision of resources against the inevitable soil
day of
their disgrace.
Two
things,
and two only, were demanded
—
of them by the necessities of their position money for the It was pleasures of their master, and a fortune for themselves. no wonder that they were absolutely indifferent to the means by which the treasury was filled, or that at least half of an income of a million S'terlingwas appropriated to the personal use of themselves
and
their king.
The country under them was parcelled into revenue charges, which varied in number at different times, but were on an average somewhat smaller than the districts of the present day. To these were appointed ofiicers with the
title
of n^zim or chakladar
'
