'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎272] (343/748)

272
PERSIA
whole households have sometimes been extirpated. The sympa
thetic and not too squeamish visitor will like them. They will
cause the cross-grained or sensitive to blaspheme.
I have spoken of the attitude towards them of the State, and I
may here summarise what will appear over and over again in these
Persian P a g es ) i n the statement that nowhere have the baser and
policy more contemptible aspects of Persian government been
so noticeable or so calamitous as here. The intestine warfare of
the last century led Fath All Shah, who, though timid, was suf
ficiently astute, to see that the pbwer of the sovereign could only
be effectively maintained in Persia by one of two means unques
tioned military superiority on the part of the monarch, which it
required a Nadir, or, in a less degree, an Agha Mohammed, to
e ff ec t or a policy of dissension among the tribes themselves. He
sedulously devoted himself to the latter object, and has been fol
lowed therein by his successors. The very feuds of which I have
spoken, and by which members even of the same tribe are distracted,
have been made the instruments of State policy. One tribe has
been pitted against another tribe, one chief against another chief;
and thus the animosities of individuals or communities have served
the purpose while relieving the purse of the sovereign. At the same
time that the tribes have been incited to mutual destruction, their
leaders have been torn from their homes and, while nominally
detained as hostages, have been subjected to the corrupt and
demoralising influences of the capital. Their tenure of office and
their restoration to their people have been dependent upon their
willingness to serve as tools of the policy and conduits to the ex
chequer of a corrupt administration. The only chieftains with any
shadow of real power now left in Persia are the Khan of Kuchan,
the Amir of Kain, and the Vali of Pusht-i-Kuh. Simultaneously,
the armament of the tribes has been discouraged ; the poverty of
the chieftains has brought with it a decline of the horse-breeding
establishments for which they were once famous; and where the
Tliats of Persia formerly constituted her armed strength on the
battlefield, they are now disabled, disloyal, and broken.
impera may be a good enough motto for the imperator, but it is a
fatal one as applied to his victims ; and the Kajar kings will have
the mischievous distinction in history of having sapped and deci-
mated the manliood of their country.
In the sixteenth chapter of this work I brought my survey of