We can do this with honour to our Government and benefit to the people.

To confiscate would be dishonest and dishonourable.

To annex would be to give the people a government almost as bad as their own, if we put our screw upon them.

My position here has been and is disagreeable and unsatisfactory: we have a fool of a king, a knave of a minister, and both are under the influence of one of the cleverest, most intriguing, and most unscrupulous villains in India." Major Bird, in his pamphlet "Dacoitee in Excelsis," while endeavouring to establish a case for the King of Oude, has assumed that Sir William Sleeman was an instrument in the hands of Lord Dalhousie, to carry out his purpose of annexing Oude to British India.

The letters, now first printed, entirely refute this hasty and erroneous statement.