lated during his nonage, and recommenced the old Maráthá extortions upon his people.
'Of late years,' wrote our Resident at Nágpur in 1853[1], 'all the anxiety of the Raja and his favourite ministers has been to feed the privy purse by an annual income of two or more lacs of rupees from nuzzurs, fines, bribes, confiscation of property of deceased estates, the composition of public defaulters, or the sale of their effects, and such like sources. The Raja has thus been led on by his avarice to discard all feeling, and to throw himself into the hands of the most unprincipled of his servants, who plundered the country and put justice up to sale for profits, but a slender part of which reached the Raja. He has done many cruel acts, and even carried war into the country of his feudal dependents, on the misrepresentation of those parties gilded by the offer of a nuzzur. Orders of the most contradictory character have been issued at the bid of rival parties from time to time in cases before the Law Courts... All this has been aggravated by the low tone of mind originally belonging to the Raja... Profits and pickings are to be made anyhow. The choicest amusement of the Raja is an auction sale, when some unfortunate widow is ruled not to be entitled to her husband's estate.'
These are the words of the temperate and fair-minded Mansel who mediated between the two Lawrences on the Punjab Board, and who was himself an opponent of annexation. The Raja's sole idea regarding the treaty by which he had been raised to the Chiefship, was that it secured
- ↑ Mr. Mansel's Report, dated 14th December, 1853.
