doubtful whether it ought to be passed this Session. He hoped his hon. Friend would press his Amendment to a division.

Motion agreed to.

Debated adjourned till Monday next. And it being now ten minutes to Seven of the clock the House suspended its sitting.

of our Mission should be diminished, and that from the Imperial Treasury proportionately increased, so that the status quo was advocated only by Lord The Clarendon and Mr. Hammond.

Select Committee, after balancing the opinions of those distinguished men, came to the almost unanimous conclusion that

"While they have received conflicting evidence of the highest authority on either side of the

The House resumed its sitting at Nine question, they on the whole incline to the opinion of the clock.

SUPPLY.

Order for Committee read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

that the Persian Mission should be placed under the authority of the Secretary of State for India; but that if the responsible Advisers of the Crown decide that such change is not for the public interest, they recommend that the members of the Persian Mission generally should be selected by

the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from Her Majesty's Indian Service, and that the pre

sent charge of £12,000 a-year on the Indian Revenues, for the expense of such Mission, should be diminished so as to throw a larger proportion

DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH PERSIA. | of the expense upon the Imperial Revenues."

RESOLUTION.

MR. EASTWICK, in rising to call attention to the state of affairs in Persia; and to move

"That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient that the recommendation of the Diplomatic Committee of last year be carried out, viz., that

the control of our relations with Persia be trans

ferred to the India Office, or that the payments for the expenses of our mission to Persia be readjusted.'

Lord Granville, so far from carrying out those recommendations, had acted in direct opposition to them, and the subject, therefore, now assumed a more serious and important aspect than ever, for it was not now simply a question whether the India Office or the Foreign Office should deal with Persian matters, but also whether a Select Committee having decided in favour of one view, it was competent to the Secretary of State not only to disregard that view, and neglect every part of the recommendation, but even act in the utmost possible opposition to it. Even that was not all, and it would be his painful duty to

show to the House that the action taken

said, the subject was carefully weighed by a Select Committee of this House last Session. The evidence of Lord Malmesbury, of Lord Derby, of Lord Lawrence, and of Lord Mayo-whose opinion was given in writing-of Sir Henry Rawlinson-the greatest living authority on all matters connected with by Lord Granville in this matter, quite Persia of the hon. Member for Chatham independently of considerations adduced (Mr. Otway) who was at that time before the Committee, had been in the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs-highest degree unwise and impolitic. and of Sir John Kaye, was strongly in favour of the transfer being made; while that of Lord Halifax, Sir Henry Bulwer, Mr. Hammond, and Lord Clarendon went to show that things should remain as they were now. Sir Henry Bulwer's opinion, however, was qualified

in this manner

Having been compelled to make this serious charge against the policy of a Minister, for whom personally he had the highest respect, he trusted the House would allow him to go fully into the matter, for without doing so it would be impossible for him to completely substantiate his statement. He might also say that he had no opportunity of giving evidence before the Committee; and although, in general, he should be quite content to rely on the statements of such men as those whose names he had mentioned, yet, as was said in the Ethics"Each judges well the thing he knows;' and he might say, without presumption, that in the matter of which he was now

speaking, he had had special opportu- maintained such control, but had apnities of knowing. For five years he pointed to the Mission its own officers. was employed in the Indian diplomatic In dealing with the first epoch, he would service on the frontier of Khelat and begin by referring to some remarks Afghanistan, and hence became practi- which he addressed to the House on cally acquainted with the border politics the affairs of Central Asia on the 9th of of those countries, including Persia. He July, 1869. He then pointed out that was Assistant Secretary in the Secret Persia was our oldest ally in the East, Department of the India Office during and on that account, as well as others, the whole time that Department had deserved consideration. Disregarding a charge of Persian affairs. Subsequently letter which Queen Elizabeth on the 25th he was employed by the Secretary of of April, 1561, confided to Anthony State for Foreign Affairs on a special Jenkinson, merchant, and which was service connected with Persia in this addressed to Shah Tamasp, but produced country, and was then appointed by him no results, he might say that the first Secretary of Legation at Tehran. He re- epoch commenced with the arrival of the mained three years in Persia, and was valiant knights, Sir Anthony and Sir sent on two special missions there, first Robert Shirley, and their followers, at to the Caspian Provinces and then to the Court of Shah Abbas the Great in Khorasan. Finally, he had the honour 1602, about three-quarters of a century. of being Chargé d'Affaires and of nego- before we established relations with tiating a Convention, in the first in- Turkey. Persia was then a formidable stance personally with the Shah. He Power, and so far from "the Bactrian might add that he was, he believed, the Sophi," as Milton called the Shah, "reonly Indian officer appointed to diplo- treating from the horns of the Turkish matic service in Persia by the Foreign Crescent to Tauris or Kasvin," Abbas Office. On those grounds he trusted inflicted on the Turks, on the 24th of that he should be allowed to travel a August, 1605, near Tauris, or Tabriz, little beyond the pages of the Blue Book, one of the most sanguinary defeats they so as to place the subject he had in hand ever sustained, more than 20,000 Turkish fully before the House, and he entreated heads having been brought to him on the House to consider that it was a sub- the field of battle. An alliance was then ject which deserved the most serious formed between Abbas and the East attention, lest that "great and fatal India Company, and in 1622 their joint error" spoken of by Malcolm's biogra- forces wrested the Island of Hormuz, pher should be perpetuated, "from "from or Ormus, as Milton called it, from the which," to use his words, "have already Portuguese, and transferred its great sprung disasters and disgraces, to be and flourishing trade to Gombroon, which succeeded, it is feared, by other evils of has ever since borne the name of Bandar a no less melancholy kind." The history Abbas, or the port of Abbas. Two years of our relations with Persia was unique after Sir Robert Shirley was sent by in diplomatic annals on account of the Abbas to the Court of James I., and strange way in which the control of those Sir Dodmore Cotton came from Charles I. relations had been shifted again and on a return embassy to Persia, but both again from the East India Company to Shirley and Cotton died a few months the Crown, and from the Foreign Office after arrival in that country, and all our to the India Office, and vice versa. Not dealings with Persia relapsed into the to dwell, however, too much on these hands of the East India Company, whose changes, he would divide the whole agents were at the head of flourishing period of our connection with Persia factories-first at Bandar Abbas, and into three epochs. The first, and by far afterwards at Bushahr, Basra, and Bagthe longest, was that in which the ma- dad. Those agents were always well nagement of our affairs in Persia was received by the Persian Government, left almost entirely in the hands of the and the first epoch passed in peace and East India Company. During the second good-will. But these relations, which the Foreign Office for the most part con- continued nearly two centuries, had trolled our relations with Persia, but more of a commercial than a diplomatic was content to leave Indian officers at character. Purely diplomatic relations the head of our Mission in Tehran, while began in 1799, when Lord Wellesley since the third epoch it had not only resolved on sending Captain Malcolm to

vernor General, and as they became the fons et origo of all the subsequent disputes about Persia between the India Office and the Foreign Office, he must dwell on them for a moment, in order to

had never hitherto been disclosed. The truth was, then, that the Royal Envoy would have been sent back by the Persians from Shiraz, in the same discourteous way as Captain Pasley, Malcolm's avantcourrier, had it not been for a subtle device of Sir Harford, who had been long enough at Bagdad to take the exact measure of the Persian Court. With a view to the difficulty he would have to encounter, Sir Harford had provided himself with a magnificent diamond which had been in the signet ring of Karim Khan, who ruled Persia in 1759, had been brought to Bombay by some Armenians, in 1772, and had at the time when Sir Harford was preparing for his mission found its way into a shop in Bond Street. That diamond Sir Harford purchased for considerably less than its value, and kept it about him ready for use when the crisis came. When, therefore, Nasrullah Khan, the Prime Minister of the Prince Governor of Shiraz, told Sir Harford he could go no further, Sir Harford, having exhausted all other arguments, arose from his seat, and said

Persia to negotiate an offensive and defensive alliance with Fath Ali Shah against the French. Malcolm's embassy had in it all the elements of success. He was himself handsome, gallant, and courtly, a bold horseman, and an ex-point out the real facts of the case which perienced soldier, and the officers who accompanied him were worthy of their leader. The portraits of one of them, Mr. Strachey, are still to be seen in the palaces of Ispahan, and an ode written in his praise by the Shah himself is so celebrated in the East that when, many years afterwards, Dost Mahommed was introduced to a gentleman of that name he instantly began to recite a stanza from it. In short, such was the favour in which Malcolm was held that he had no difficulty in negotiating a treaty with the Shah, which was signed in January, 1801, and by which the Persians bound themselves to "expel and extirpate the French" if they attempted to enter Persia. But the brilliant impression made by this embassy was suffered to die out, and the Treaty was never ratified by the English Government; so that just before the Peace of Tilsit, in July, 1807, when Bonaparte sent General Gardanne to Tehran with 70 French officers to discipline the Shah's troops, they were well received at the Persian Court, and the star of the French was for a time in the ascendant. This success of the French Mission alarmed both the East India Company and the English Government, and they simultaneously endeavoured to counteract that sinister influence. Then was seen the strange and unseemly spectacle of rival Envoys, from the Sovereign and the quasi-regal Company, struggling with one another for priority of access to the Court of the Shah in order to expel the French intruder. Malcolm, sent by Lord Minto from India, reached Bushahr on the 10th of May, 1808, and returned without being allowed to see the Shah on the 12th of July. In August, Sir Harford Jones, the Royal Envoy, sailed from Bombay for the Persian Gulf, was admitted on the 17th of February, 1809, to an audience with the Shah, and on the 12th of March following negotiated a preliminary treaty which re-established our alliance with Persia. Now, as the failure on the part of Malcolm and the success of his rival had always been imputed to the superior influence of a Royal Envoy over one sent by a GoMr. Eastwick

"I go, then, and I take with me this gem which I hope to lay at the feet of the Asylum of the World." At the same time he drew from his breast a glittering casket, which he opened and displayed the enormous diamond. The Persian Minister, who had been sitting in an attitude of supercilious indifference, lost his balance both metaphorically and literally at the sight, and called out in breathless haste-Stop, Elchi, stop! I will send off an express courier to the Shah, and stop, at all events, till the answer is received." The answer came, Sir Harford was conducted to the capital, and was ushered in at one gate of Tehran while General Gardanne and his 70 officers were congéed out at the other. In the narrative published by Sir Harford of his Mission, the purchase and presentation of the diamond were mentioned, but nothing was said of these remarkable circumstances, but he heard them himself from General Sir James Sutherland, who was an eye-witness of the whole transaction. It seemed almost incredible; but it was matter of history

"Persia was placed under the superintendence of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in 1836, in consequence of its being supposed that

the counsels of Great Britain would have more

the name of the Sovereign, than if tendered merely on behalf of the East India Company, and from that time the representatives of the British Persian Government under credentials from the Government have always communicated with the Crown, although they were also provided with credentials from the Governor General of India. But, under existing circumstances, there is no longer the same motive for separating the superintendence of British relations with Persia from that department by which it can most conveniently be exercised, for it could not be questioned that the interest of Great Britain in Persia is founded

on the position which this country occupies in India, and that almost every matter which might have come under discussion between this country and Persia more or less concerned the British Government in India."

The despatch went on to say, with re

"In order to secure uniformity, it may be convenient that the credentials for Ministers and

commissions for Secretaries of Legation and Conthe Foreign Office, although sent, when ready for signature, to the India Office, in order that the Secretary of State for India may submit them for Her Majesty's signature, and that the seal may

suls in Persia should continue to be made out in

that Sir Harford drew bills on India to the enormous amount of £70,000 for the expenses of his mission, which, with the price of the diamond and the other pre-weight with the Persian Government if urged ir sents, must have cost considerably over £100,000, and Lord Minto was so chagrined at Malcolm's failure, that he not only dishonoured the bills but threatened to send an expedition to the Persian Gulf a threat which certainly might have endangered the liberty, and even the life of Sir Harford. The affair, however, ended in Malcolm being sent on a third mission to the Court of Fath Ali Shah, where he was received with so much favour as to prove that had he taken with him a diamond of the same value as that brought by Sir Harford Jones, he would, on his second mission, have been received with equal courtesy. The Shah offered to give him command of his whole army, and to appoint Eng-ference to the credentialslish officers to discipline it, and had our Government been wise enough to empower Malcolm to accept that offer, he did not hesitate to say that, in all probability, the Russians would never have crossed the Arras, and we should never have embarked in an Afghan and Persian War. But the Foreign Office was anxious to conciliate Russia rather than to build up a rampart against her. Malcolm was recalled, and one of the most distinguished officers he left behind him was soon after cruelly put to death by the Russians, when lying wounded after an encounter between them and the troops of Abbas Mirza, the heir apparent. From that time to this, the shortsighted policy of the Foreign Office had been to cripple Persia in all her move-pany," ments, and to drive her step by step into the arms of Russia. In 1823, Mr. Canning, who was then Foreign Secretary, transferred the management of our relations with Persia to the Board of Control, on the express ground that "the objects of our intercourse with Persia were principally, if not purely, Asiatic." So things continued till 1836, when Lord Ellenborough, never very friendly to the East India Company, retransferred Persia to the Foreign Office. This arrangement lasted till the 12th of November, 1858, when Lord Malmesbury, with the full consent of Lord Stanley, again transferred Persia to the India Office. The grounds for this change were thus ably stated by Lord Malmesbury

VOL. CCXII. [THIRD SERIES.]

then be affixed to them at the India Office. The Secretary of State with a special duty, would, by Queen having the power to charge any individual my proposal, simply place the duties and responsility of the Persian Mission in your Lordships' hands instead of mine."

He had already shown that this idea, to which Lord Malmesbury refers, that

"The counsels of Great Britain would have

more weight with the Persian Government if urged in the name of the Sovereign than if tendered merely on behalf of the East India Com

was founded on a misapprehension which sprang from the subtlety and reticence of Sir Harford Jones. But, at all events, as Lord Malmesbury shows, whether the idea was true or false, there was an end of it when India passed from the Company to the Crown. The Shah knew well enough that the Duke of Argyll was of equal rank with Lord Granville, and that if the credentials of the officers of the English Mission were drawn out at the Foreign Office, and the Persian Minister was under that Office in all matters of Court ceremony as one of the Corps Diplomatique, it would be far from a disadvantage to Persia that its business should be transacted with the Duke. In fact, the Persian Minister often discussed matters

2 N

with the Duke, just as the Shah fre- | one recommendation of the Committee, quently transacted business with the Representatives of Foreign Governments through a Minister other than his Foreign Secretary. He himself, when at Tehran, arranged most of the important matters he transacted there through the Amínu u'Daulah, and not through Mirza Said, the Foreign Secretary. Lastly, we had the positive testimony of Sir Henry Rawlinson that "no distinction was ever made between the Queen's Envoy accredited from one Department or from another Department of the State," and all who knew Persia knew that Sir Henry Rawlinson, accredited from the India Office, had a hundred times more influence than Mr. Alison, who was accredited from the Foreign Office. This allusion, therefore, needed no further comment, and he hastened on to say that after this change in 1858, the sixth which had occurred, they might have expected to "rest and be thankful;" but Lord Russell was no sooner in office than, with characteristic impatience, he reversed everything which had been done, and acting, no doubt, on the advice of Mr. Hammond, brought reluctant Persia back under the control of that functionary; and he said boldly, what he knew to be the case, that since then there had been repeatedly approaches to a positive rupture. Well, now, he had pointed out that the first epoch in the history of our relations with Persia ended with Malcolm's failure in 1808. The second terminated on the 3rd of September, 1854, when Mr. Murray, a purely Foreign Office employé, was appointed Minister at Tehran, for from that time to this, with the exception of Sir Henry Rawlinson and himself-and their career was short-there had been no Indian officer at the head of the Mission, and that was a matter to which Lord Lawrence and others attached the most serious importance. Now, he was going to found his chief argument for transferring Persia to the India Office upon the results of that substitution of Foreign Office employés for Indian; but before he did so he wished to dispose of the arguments which those who gave evidence before the Committee in favour of the Foreign Office view submitted to consideration. Of these, the statements of Sir Henry Bulwer told almost as much on one side as on the other; Lord Halifax supported Mr. Eastwick

though he rejected the other two propositions; Mr. Hammond told us little or nothing, and what he said was hardly consistent; and Lord Clarendon alone spoke decidedly, though as he (Mr. Eastwick) would now show, his arguments would not bear examination. Now, what were these arguments? The first was that, except with regard to the Persian Gulf, India had nothing to do with Persia; the second, that the Shah would be "very much hurt and offended" at being excluded from European diplomacy, and put into the Indian circle; the third, that it was for our interest to keep Persia out of that circle; and the fourth, that the progress of Russia in Central Asia would bring Persia every day more and more into the pale of European influences. Now, the exception that except the Persian Gulf India had no connection with Persia, meant excepting a trade of several millions which India has with the Gulf, excepting the Residency at Bushahr, the Agency at Basra, the Residency at Bagdad, the Residency at Muskat, the naval force in the Gulf, the telegraphic communication along the 1,000 miles from Bushahr to Karachee, the line of steamers which runs between those places, for all of which India paid. It meant excepting the Treaties the Indian Government had with the Arab tribes of the Gulf, and with the Imam of Muskat, the disputed sovereignty of Barhein, the slave trade which India paid to put down. Surely that was a large-a monstrous exception. But to waive all that, he asked, had India no frontier line to the east of Persia, extending for 300 miles between the subsidized Khelat State and Persia, and 600 miles between Persia and the semi-Indian and occasionally subsidized State of Afghanistan, which line Indian officers-General Goldsmid, of the Bombay Army, and Colonel Pollock, of the Bengal Army-were at that moment engaged in settling? And why were Indian officers engaged in that duty? First, because England was in no way interested in the matter, except on account of India, while to India it was a matter of vital importance-of peace or war. Secondly, because Mr. Alison either never would, or never could, settle anything in Persia, but was indebted to Indian officers-first of all, he could not help saying, to himself, and