Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 26.1.7

26.1.7

These evils went on increasing from day to day, till at last the office of Cazy or Judge, and that of Sadr or of Great Almoner, with many other Magistratures, came to be put up publicly to sale; so that the people skilled in law, and in matters of distributive justice, entirely disappeared from the land; nor was anything else thought of, but how to bring money to hand by any means whatever. This, and this alone, became the utmost ambition of all ranks, and especially of the hypocrites amongst the men that meddled with law. It was in such an enfeebled state of the Empire, that there arose a new sort of men, worse than the former, who, so far from setting up for patterns of piety and virtue, or pretending to shew the right way to others, squandered away the lives and properties of the poor with so much barefacedness, that other men, on beholding their conduct, became bolder and bolder, and practised the worst and ugliest actions, without fear or remorse; so far are they from thinking it a shame or an infamy to imitate and follow such examples. From those men sprung an infinity of evil-doers, who plague the Indian world, and grind the face of the wretched inhabitants. Those men having in process of time assembled in bodies, there arose an age of senseless, slothful Princes, and of Grandees, ignorant and meddling.