Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s8.7

v4.c56.s8.7

It was "an unsettled and discontented province with a population greatly debased and impoverished by long years of misrule" under the Oudh Nawābs. But in a short time the banditti who had hitherto ravaged the land were effectively suppressed; guard-boats patrolled the rivers and checked the pirates who had obstructed the natural and extensive trade down the great river-highway of the Jamunā and the Ganges. Periodical fairs were established to open up the different districts to mutual intercourse. The currency was reformed by restricting the minting of rupees to the two chief towns. Over-powerful zamindars, like Balwant Singh of Sāsni, who on the strength of their mud-forts and armed retainers, used to enforce arbitrary exactions from travellers and traders, and withhold the proper revenue from the Nawāb's officials, were crushed by strong British detachments. A new city named Wellesleyganj, with a ghāt, a sarāi, a market-place and offices was founded within three miles of Hardwār, where the British, Gurkhā and Marātha frontiers met, and thus the wilderness between Bareilly and Hardwār (200 square miles) began to be thrown open to cultivation and trade.