British commonwealth, whose voluntary service counts high above the unwilling service of compelled soldiers. If the world-empire of England has roused the envy of Powers who would be glad to assist at her dismemberment, she has yet taught the lessons of freedom to her great dependencies so unreservedly that France or Russia, Germany or the United States would not profit by our defeat. Australia, Canada, South Africa, and probably India are strong enough to stand alone against hostile attack. The free trade policy of England which in these days is questioned by impoverished landlords is, in reality, a chief support of our power, as it neutralises the jealousy of other nations, whose vanity may suffer but whose pockets are filled by our success. If, like France or Russia, we closed our foreign possessions to outsiders by hostile tariffs, a league might well be formed against us. But England claims no privileges which she does not share with the rest of the world. It is French stockholders who have most benefited by the pacification of Egypt, and German merchants and financiers amass their fortunes under the British flag preferentially to their own. The so-called selfish policy of England has been, since the triumph of free trade, a cosmopolitan unselfishness unparalleled in history.

Having sketched the positions of the competitors for Asiatic supremacy, we will now consider the country most immediately affected by their rivalry; which is Persia, geographically the neighbour of both, seeing that Afghanistan, as a subsidised state, may be held to be attached to the British Empire. So much has been written of Persia lately that I will not repeat what may be found in admirable travels and handbooks, but a brief notice of the results of the late reign is needed to make the present position intelligible.

The late Shah Nasiruddin, signifying Defender of the Faith, was, for his time and country, an enlightened, prudent, and liberal-minded ruler. It is not possible to apply to his conduct and administration a standard of comparison which is only applicable to Western countries and constitutional forms of government where progress is largely due to popular sentiment and initiative, while the slow conservatism of the East opposes its vis inertia and its traditional and religious opposition to all change, however beneficial. Nevertheless, his reign of nearly fifty years would compare not unfavourably with an equal period of storm and stress and feverish reform and revolution in many Western countries. In every direction substantial progress has been made. The administration of justice has been rendered both more certain and more merciful. Schools and colleges have been founded, for the late Shah was interested in education and was himself acquainted with French, Arabic and Turkish, and in Persian was a poet of some merit, while the diaries which he published after his European tours have had a wide circulation, not

only in Western countries but in Persia, where they enjoyed the honour, which English authors may well envy, of compulsory purchase and a special tax. The greatest defect of the Shah was his avarice, which was immense and insatiable; and although this is a fault common among Oriental despots, who feel that their power can only be made secure from attack by the command of a full treasury, yet it injured and often ruined his schemes for the development of his country. If he had been content to spend some portion of his hoards on public improvements, on the repair of ancient reservoirs and watercourses, and the construction of roads and bridges, he would have brought under cultivation tracts of culturable land which are now desert and would have largely benefited both his own revenue and the general trade of the country. But he could not make up his mind to spend money, and required every improvement not only to pay for itself, but to bring a large contribution to his own treasury. The concessions which were given to all comers for manufactures, mines, tramways, roads, banks, monopolies for lotteries, electric lighting, tobacco culture, and other schemes were in no case assisted by State money; but all had to surrender a share of their profits, real or problematical, to the Shah. The consequence was that the greater number of these industrial undertakings, which, in a strange country and among a suspicious population, required constant support and large pecuniary assistance from the Government, soon withered and disappeared, and the Shah not only lost his anticipated profit, but solid and honourable financiers were deterred from adventuring in so unpropitious a country. The ground was left free to less honest speculators, who applied for concessions, not to work them seriously but to pass them on for a consideration to others who might successfully plant them in the often credulous markets of Europe. Disaster followed, the credit of Persia was lowered, and sound enterprises were seriously injured by the collapse of worthless speculations.

There was nothing of the religious bigot about Násiruddin, and there is no probability in the story that his assassin was a Bábi, commissioned to avenge the death of the founder of the sect and the persecution of his followers. The truth is that, with the exception of a few local outbreaks of intolerance on the part of the orthodox priesthood, who find it easy to excite the populace, Bábism, which is to Muhammadanism what the Reformed Faith was to the Church of Rome, or Kukaism to the creed of the Sikhs, has been not only tolerated but protected in Persia by the Shah. At the beginning of his reign, when the extravagant pretensions of the founder had excited both irritation and alarm, the sect was persecuted with some ferocity, but it has been gradually acknowledged that Bábism is a religious and not a political propaganda, many of the Ministers belong to it, secretly or openly, and its adherents are said to include two-fifths of

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the population. In any case, the Bábis had no grievance against Násiruddin, and their persecution was of small account when compared with the tender mercies of the Inquisition or the cruel treatment of Jews and Dissenters by Russia. Even the Kukas, in the Punjab, some twenty years ago, were ruthlessly suppressed when, like the Bábis in 1850-52, they began to play with rebellion. formers must not complain of martyrdom, and the Bábis have only been sufficiently persecuted in Persia to render them interesting. Many of their communistic and socialistic doctrines have of late years been given less offensive prominence, and their general principles, which inculcate freedom of judgment, the abolition of the wearisome ceremonial of Islam, and the emancipation of women, are quite in sympathy with the spirit of the day, and in time may stir the stagnant waters of Muhammadanism throughout the world. The assassination of the Shah is more likely to be due to some private wrong, or to the inflammatory teaching of men like Jamaluddin, an intriguer well known in London society, whose extradition the Persian Government is now endeavouring to obtain from the Porte, and who, in conjunction with others, has been stirring up hatred and ill-will against the Shah and his Government for several years past.

Not only the Bábis were protected by the Shah, but the Jewish, Armenian and Zoroastrian communities, which at the time of his accession were in a very miserable condition, have been well treated, and their position materially improved. Especially has this been the case with the Parsis, mostly resident in Yezd and Kirmán, descendants of the old Zoroastrian rulers and people of Persia. The state of these was so hopeless that large numbers emigrated to India, where they have become loyal and valuable citizens. But they did not forget their poor co-religionists left behind in Persia, and, in 1854, an association was founded for their relief by Mr. Manakjee Nasserwanjee Petit, father of Sir Dinshaw Petit, Bart., who still presides over it. Warmly seconded by the efforts of the Indian Government, Sir Henry Rawlinson and the British ministers at Teheran, the Parsis obtained from the Shah the abolition of all special tribute and taxes which had before been levied upon them, and they are now in no worse position than the Muhammadan community.

The Shah Nasiruddin showed much discretion in the conduct of his foreign relations with England and Russia. These are, indeed, the only Powers with which he is vitally concerned, although Turkey, which adjoins the whole western frontier of Persia, is often obstructive and never friendly, for Shah and Sultan are rival potentates in the Muhammadan world, representative respectively of the Shía and Sunn forms of that creed. Especially at the mouth of the united Tigris and Euphrates, with the competing ports of Busrah and Muhamrah, do Persian and Turkish interests come into collision, and the question

is still one of difficulty and promises future trouble. But at Teheran, the English and Russian Legations are the only ones of consequence. Sometimes the exceptional activity or ability of the Minister of France, or Germany, or Belgium, or the United States may give to one or the other an unusual or factitious importance, but these phenomena are transitory, and Persia thoroughly understands that her foreign policy is little more than the conduct of her relations with Russia and England. This knowledge the Shah utilised both to maintain peace abroad and order at home, and to supply his treasury by playing on the jealousies of each Power by turns, and granting to one concessions which were balanced by subsequent favours to the other. Nor can Násiruddin be blamed for a line of conduct which was the only one which insured him so long and prosperous a reign. He played the game with skill and success, in strong contrast to Amir Sher Ali Khan of Afghanistan, whose clumsy imitation of the Shah cost him his kingdom and his life. Only once, in 1857, did Násiruddin come into hostile contact with England, when his armed attempt to recover Herat, the ancient Persian capital of Khorassan, brought Sir James Outram with a British army to Bushire and the Karun, when a swift campaign restored to the Shah the power of seeing clearly the conditions under which a Persian monarch must be content to rule. It has been plausibly argued that it was unwise for England to have then retired from the Persian Gulf without any territorial indemnity, and that the annexation and permanent occupation of Bushire and Muhamrah would have given us the undisputed command of the Persian Gulf, and the control of the chief commercial routes from the coast to the interior. But a more far-sighted statesmanship would urge that no policy is so economical as disinterestedness. Our refusal, at that time, to dismember Persia for our own advantage convinced not only the Shah but the Ministers and the people that we were the sincere friends of Persia, and that our ambitions did not include conquest or annexation of the country. The same lesson taught to Afghanistan when we withdrew from the country and refused to annex Kandahar, for which there was both reason and excuse, has transformed a suspicious neighbour into an ally confident in the honesty of our intentions, and our moderation in Afghanistan confirmed the friendly feeling of Persia to England. Object lessons in disinterestedness convince nations who regard mere protestations as the idle wind. It may be questioned whether our position in the Gulf would have been favourably affected by the retention of Persian seaports at the cost of the alienation of Persian sympathy. So long as England holds the command of the sea she will dominate the Gulf and the trade routes from the south. Should she lose that command, the question of her influence in the Persian Gulf will become of infinitesimal importance.

The policy of Russia towards Persia has been a record of constant

aggression, the absorption of province after province, district after district, frontier villages and the head waters of the mountain streams along the whole northern border. The treaty of Gulistan in 1813 merely stereotyped the results of continual aggression by Russia from the year 1800, when Georgia was annexed by the Emperor Paul, Mingrelia, Ganja (now Elizabethpol), Talish, Immeritia, Darband, Bákú and Persian Dághistán, Shewán, Sheki, Karábágh and Moghan. Persia surrendered her right to have ships of war on the Caspian sea, and to-day the Shah is not allowed to fly the Persian flag on his own yacht in those waters, a barbarous insult little to the credit of Russian intelligence. In 1825, a three years' war, ending with the treaty of Turkmanchai, gave Russia further concessions; in 1840, she seized the important island of Ashoráda for a naval station, and although Násiruddin contrived to avoid open war with his powerful neighbour, he had to endure constant encroachment on his northern border, especially on the Atrek river, as a comparison of the map which accompanied Sir Henry Rawlinson's work on England and Russia in the East with the latest published maps of Persia will clearly show. This book may still be recommended to those who desire to study the Persian question, as the best and most authoritative statement of the political situation in Central Asia, and the lapse of time has in no way destroyed its value.

The attitude of England and Russia towards Persia is clear and well defined. England has no desire for territorial aggrandisement at the expense of Persia, and she has proved this by her action in 1857. She is anxious to assist in the regeneration and development of Persia, to encourage its ruler to improve his administration and by his personal example and authority to abolish the system of universal corruption which now prevails, owing to the practice of every office from a governorship to a clerkship being sold to the highest bidder, with the permission to recoup himself from the people, who, though not overtaxed, are tormented by the burden. of illegitimate fines, perquisites and requisitions. England would persuade the Shah to start beneficent schemes of irrigation, to restore the reservoirs and water courses which have fallen into decay, to improve the means of communication, especially roads, to develop the industrial resources of the country, which are considerable, both in mineral and vegetable products, to double the revenue from Customs by an honest system of collection, and to reorganise the currency, the disordered condition of which is the cause of constant irritation and discontent, and is the most immediate necessary reform. If England could see Persia strong and prosperous she would be content, and the peace of Asia would secure a new and powerful guarantee. Nor in the industrial schemes which England is ready to assist with her capital does she ask for any exclusive privileges; and the advantages which may accrue from a more extended commerce