200 
the cattle grazing below, generally at the eye. One of them, near 
the hot-wells, flew at a bull; and wounding him in the eye, threw 
him into a violent agony; he tore up the ground in a furious 
manner, and foaming at the mouth, died in about half an hour. 
Marre was the nearest Mahratta town of consequence to the 
hot- wells; by crossing the river, it was within a pleasant walk, and 
we made frequent excursions to an excavated mountain in its 
vicinity. Marre is fortified, large, and populous; the governor 
resided at Poonah, inattentive to the misery of the people, whom 
his duan, or deputy, oppressed in a cruel manner: indeed the 
system of the Mahratta government is so uniformly oppressive, 
that it appears extraordinary to hear of a mild or equitable admi- 
nistration; venality and corruption guide the helm of state, and 
pervade the departments: if the sovereign requires money, the 
men in office, and governors of provinces, must supply it; the 
arbitrary monarch seldom inquires by what means it is procured: 
this affords them an opportunity of exacting a larger sum from 
their duans; who fleece the manufacturers and farmers to a still 
greater amount than they had furnished: thus the country is sub- 
jected to a general system of tyranny. From the great chieftains 
and nobles of the realm, to the humblest peasant in a village, 
neither the property nor the life of a subject can be called his 
own; all bow to the iron sceptre; having no law to protect them 
from oppression, no clement sovereign to redress their grievances. 
When Providence has blessed the land with the former and the 
latter rain, and the seed sown produces an hundred fold, the Indian 
ryot cannot, like an English farmer, behold his ripening crops with 
joyful eyes; conscious that the harvest may be reaped by other 
