'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎483] (542/714)

INSTITUTIONS AND REFORMS 433
tion of a nation's birthright in favour of foreign speculators. We
have seen m other and contemporaneous cases enough of the evil
effects of a country or a people sustained and exploited by foreign
capitalists, and falling a prey to successive gangs of selfish adven-
turers—according as subconcessions are granted in a descendino-
scale by the parent government or company—to know that it is
not by such methods that national stability is built up. Persia
may be, and is, deplorably infirm; but she will never be able to
stand if she voluntarily surrenders the use of all her limbs Her
regeneration must doubtless be worked out by foreign aid, and to
some extent by foreign capital—as is now being attempted—but
native enterprise, native industry, and native resources must play
some part 111 the undertaking, or an artificial redemption will only
have been achieved at the cost of national atrophy. England would
seemingly have been placed in a position of overwhelming political
preponderance by the realisation of the Eeuter Concession. But it
would have been at the expense of the best interests of Persia, and
since it is one of the objects of this book to show that Persian
interests are British interests, or, in other words, that a strong-
Persia should be the object of British diplomacy, we may con
gratulate ourselves that a scheme which postulated the reduction
of that country to impotence broke down.
It was said at the time of the Renter Concession that one of
the reasons for confiding powers so enormous to a single individual
Conces- 01 ' to a single company, was the desire of the Persian
mongers ,p ov e™ment to escape from the conflicting offers of a
lorde of foreign speculators, who, ever since the openino-
of the Indo-European Telegraph in 1865, had settled down upon
Persia, and were clamouring for a share in the division of the spoils.
For a time the collapse of the Renter scheme frightened away these
harpies; but as confidence was re-established, and more especially
when, under the friendly pressure of the British Government, con
cessions such as those for the navigation of the Karun river and
the Imperial Bank were• granted, they began to reassemble; and
on the return of the Shah from his last European journey a crowd
of these interested applicants descended like a flight of locusts upon
ieheran. ^ The air was full of rumours of concessions for the exclusive
introduction, or manufacture, or growth of wine, sugar, glass,' tele-
piones, electric light, and in one instance for a monopoly of all agri
cultural produce ! To a temperament and to tastes such as those of