"Almas Ali has taken the purgunnah of Marara at a very inadequate rent,
and his aumils have seized many adjacent villages: the purgunnahs of
Cocutmow and Souje are constantly plundered by his people. The
collection of the ghauts near Futtyghur has been seized by the Vizier's
_cutwal_, and the zemindars in four purgunnahs are so refractory as to
have fortified themselves in their gurries, and to refuse all payments
of revenue. This is the state of the purgunnahs. _And Furruckabad,
which was once the seat of great opulence and trade, is now daily
deserted by its inhabitants, its walls mouldering away, without police,
without protection, exposed to the depredations of a banditti of two or
three hundred robbers, who, night after night, enter it for plunder,
murdering all who oppose them. The ruin that has overtaken this country
is not to be wondered at, when it is considered that there has been no
state, no stable government, for many years._ There has been the Nabob
Vizier's authority, his ministers', the Residents' at Lucknow, the
sezauwils', the camp authority, the Nabob Muzuffer Jung's, and that of
twenty duans or advisers: no authority sufficiently predominant to
establish any regulations for the benefit of the country, whilst each
authority has been exerted, as opportunity offered, for temporary
purposes.
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