I would myself have dismissed him, had the control of this province come within the line of my powers, and have established such regulations and checks as would have been most likely to prevent the like irregularities. I have said checks, because, unless there is some visible influence, and a powerful and able one, impended over the head of the manager, no system can avail. The next appointed may prove, from some defect, as unfit for the office as the present; for the choice is limited to few, without experience to guide it. The first was of my own nomination; his merits and qualifications stood in equal balance with my knowledge of those who might have been the candidates for the office; but he was the father of the Rajah, and the affinity sunk the scale wholly in his favor: for who could be so fit to be intrusted with the charge of his son's interest, and the new credit of the rising family? He deceived my expectations. Another was recommended by the Resident, and at my instance the board appointed him. This was Jagher Deo Seo, the present Naib. I knew him not, and the other members of the board as little. While Mr. Markham remained in office, of whom, as his immediate patron, he may have stood in awe, I am told that he restrained his natural disposition, which has been described to me as rapacious, unfeeling, haughty, and to an extreme vindictive. "I cannot avoid remarking, that, excepting the city of Benares itself, the province depending upon it is in effect without a government, the Naib exercising only a dependent jurisdiction without a principal. The Rajah is without authority, and even his name disused in the official instruments issued or taken by the manager. The representation of his situation shall be the subject of another letter; I have made this already too long, and shall confine it to the single subject for the communication of which it was begun. This permit me to recapitulate. The administration of the province is misconducted, and the people oppressed; trade discouraged, and the revenue, though said to be exceeded in the actual collections by many lacs, (for I have a minute account of it, which states the net amount, including jaghires, as something more than fifty-one lacs,) in danger of a rapid decline, from the violent appropriation of its means; the Naib or manager is unfit for his office; a new manager is required, and a system of official control,--in a word, a constitution: for neither can the board extend its superintending powers to a district so remote from its observation, nor has it delegated that authority to the Resident, who is merely the representative of government, and the receiver of its revenue in the last process of it; nor, indeed, would it be possible to render him wholly so, for reasons which I may hereafter detail."