All the landholders are uneducated, and unfit to serve in any of our
civil establishments, or in those of any very civilized Governments;
and they are just as unfitted to serve in our military
establishments, where strict discipline is required. The lands they
occupy are cultivated because they depend almost entirely upon the
rents they get from them for subsistence; and because every petty
chief and his family hold their lands rent-free, or at a trifling
quit-rent, on the tenure of military service, and their residue forms
all the market for land produce which the cultivators require. They
dread the transfer of the rule to our Government, because they now
form almost exclusively all the establishments of their domestic
chief, civil as well as military; and know that, were our rule to be
substituted, they would be almost entirely excluded from these, at
least for a generation or two. In our regiments, horse or foot, there
is hardly a man from Bundelkhand, for the reasons above stated; nor
are there any in the Gwalior regiments and contingents which are
stationed in the neighbourhood; though the land among them is become
minutely subdivided, and they are obliged to seek service or starve.
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