Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 28.1.6

28.1.6

For as the English are now the rulers and the masters of this country, as well as the only rich men in it, to whom can those poor people look up for offering the productions of their art, so as to benefit by their expenses? It is only some artificers that can find a livelihood with the English, such as carpenters, silver-smiths, iron-smiths, &c; nay, they subsist upon better terms than they did under the Hindostany Government, and possibly two or three trades more, the names whereof I cannot now recollect, may fare the better for these strangers. But as to those numerous artificers of other denominations, they have no other resource left than that of begging or thieving. Numbers, therefore have already quitted their homes and countries; and numbers unwilling to leave their abodes, have made a covenant with hunger and distress, and ended their lives in a corner of their cottages. To heighten this picture now, let us imagine that at such a time of general distress and want of employment as this, when to get a meal at night is become a matter of so much difficulty, we are perpetually cursed with shoals of peons or messengers, and constables of the Fodjdary office, all let loose upon the necessitous people, whom they torment by every invention which chicane and accusation can contrive. These wretches, under pretence of diet-money to themselves, harass the people with so much cruelty, that the shaft has sunk to the quick, and the knife has cut through to the bone;