The greater part of the houses in the town are in ruins, and Seobuksh has the reputation of being a reckless and improvident landholder.

He is said not only to take from his tenants higher rates of rent than he ought, but to extort from them very often a _property tax_, highly and capriciously rated.

This is what the people call the _bhalmansae_, of which they have a very great abhorrence.

"You are a _bhala manus_" (a gentleman, or man of substance), he says to his tenant, "and must have property worth at least a thousand rupees.

I want money sadly, and must have one-fifth: give me two hundred rupees." This is what the people call "_bhalmansae_," or rating a man according to his substance; and to say that a landlord or governor does this, is to say that he is a reckless oppressor, who has no regard to obligations or to consequences.
There are manifest signs of the present landholder, Seobuksh Sing, being of this character; but others, not less manifest, of his grandfather having been a better man, in the fine groves which surround Lahurpoor, and the villages between this place and Kuteysura, all of which are included in his estate.