The presents from the Government to the Chiefs were then handed in on trays, and placed on the ground in front of each, the value of the present being regulated according to the rank and position of the recipient.

This part of the ceremony being over, the Viceroy rose and addressed the Talukdars.
After expressing his pleasure at meeting them in their own country, he gave them an assurance that, so long as they remained faithful to the Government, they should receive every consideration; he told them that a new era had commenced in Oudh, and that henceforth they would be allowed to revert to the conditions under which they had held their estates prior to the annexation of the province.

When Lord Canning had finished speaking, a translation of his address in Urdu was read to the Talukdars by Mr.Beadon, the Foreign Secretary; _atar_ and _pan_[4] were then handed round, and the Viceroy took his departure with the same formalities as those with which the durbar had been opened.
There is some excuse to be made for the attitude of the Talukdars, who, from their point of view, had little reason to be grateful to the British Government.

These powerful Chiefs, whose individual revenues varied from L10,000 to L15,000 a year, and who, in their jungle fastnesses, often defied their sovereign's troops, had suddenly been deprived of all the authority which in the confusion attending a long period of misgovernment they had gradually usurped, as well as of a considerable proportion of the landed property which, from time to time, they had forcibly appropriated.

The conversion of feudal Chiefs into ordinary law-abiding subjects is a process which, however beneficial to the many, is certain to be strenuously resisted by the few.
In March, 1858, when Lucknow was captured, a Proclamation was issued by the Government of India confiscating the proprietary rights in the soil.