But neither the late nor the present Vizier
fulfilled their engagements, or observed their oaths: the former having
withheld what he had stipulated to restore; and the latter not only
subjecting him to a tribute, instead of restoring him to what his father
had unjustly withheld, but having made a further invasion by depriving
him of fifteen of his districts, levying the tribute of the whole on the
little that remained, and putting the small remains of his territory
under a sequestrator or collector appointed by Almas Ali Khan, who did
grievously afflict and oppress the prince and territory aforesaid.
That the hardships of his case being frequently represented to Warren
Hastings, Esquire, he did suggest a doubt whether "that little ought to
be still subject to tribute," indicating that the said tribute might be
hard and inequitable,--but, whatever its justice might have been, that,
"from the _earliest period_ of our connection with the present Nabob of
Oude, it had invariably continued a part of the funds assigned by his
Excellency as a provision for the liquidation of the several public
demands of _this government_ [Calcutta] upon him; and in consequence of
the powers the board deemed it expedient to vest in the Resident at his
court for the collection of the Company's assignments, a _sezauwil_ [a
sequestrator] has always been stationed to enforce by every means in his
power the payment of the tribute.
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