And if any future act of Parliament shall positively or by
implication tend to annihilate those very rights, or their exertion, as
I have exerted them, I much fear that the boasted sovereignty of
Benares, which was held up as an acquisition almost obtruded on the
Company against my consent and opinion, (for I acknowledge that even
then I foresaw many difficulties and inconveniences in its future
exercise,)--I fear, I say, that this sovereignty will be found a burden
instead of a benefit, a heavy clog rather than a precious gem to its
present possessors: I mean, unless the whole of our territory in that
quarter shall be rounded and made an uniform compact body by one grand
and systematic arrangement,--such an arrangement as shall do away all
the mischiefs, doubts, and inconveniences (both to the governors and
the governed) arising from the variety of tenures, rights, and claims in
all cases of landed property and feudal jurisdiction in India, from the
informality, invalidity, and instability of all engagements in so
divided and unsettled a state of society, and from the unavoidable
anarchy and confusion of different laws, religions, and prejudices,
moral, civil, and political, all jumbled together in one unnatural and
discordant mass.
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