"دليل الخليج. مجلد I. القسم التاريخي. الأجزاء Iأ و Iب. ج.ج. لوريمر ١٩١٥" [‎١‎٢‎٢‎٤] (١٧٨٢/١٣٧٩)

1224
quiel resideuce at Basrah for their future Agents there : it silences for ever that new
.jingled but dangerous doctrine of the Porte, the anniial change of them. It is what
has ever been practised by the Lerant Company in almost all the considerable scales
of the Levant for the sake of their commercial affairs ; and by these means it is that
their Consuls seldom or never meet with molestation in their respective establish menti.
'J he expediency and advantage of such a Birat is manifest and clear ; tiie attainment
of it was the doubtful point, and the more than doubtful, not only because of the
extreme indisposition and aversion in the Porte to it, but because of its being in itself a
new establishment, never practised byus before at Bassora, and an innovation in the
eye of the Porte. In spite, however, I have succeeded; again 1 congratulute you upon
it; and may the Company long enjoy the fruits of my success.
The Baraat ran in the name o£ Mr. Garden, who had been acting
as Agent at Basrah while the negotiations at Constantinople
were in progress; but the Ambassador assured Mr. Wrench that
this was immaterial, and that after a little time had elapsed it would
be easy for him to obtain the substitution, in a way that was customary
elsewhere, of his own Dame for Mr. Garden's.
In 3 765, some difficulty was experienced in inducing the local
authoiities in lurkish Iraq to respect and obey the recent commands
of the I orte and the Sultan j but it was understood that their resistance
was due to a bribe that some native merchants, who were opposed to the
grant of Consular powers to the British Agent, had administered to the
Pasha of Baghdad; and Mr. W rench and his council seem to have
entertained no doubt that Mr. Garden, who was then at Ba.-hdad,
would be able to arrange matters with the Pasha, especially if he were
authorised to make him a present larger than the bribe. The Agent and
Council understood that if the Consular powers of the Agency were
recognised in practice, they would be able to land goods for native
clients at the Company's premises and, on making themselves responsible
to the Turkish Government for the duty payable by their customers, to
hand them over direct to the importers, who would thus be spared
the trouble and expense inseparable from the passage of goods through
a Turkish custom house. The result of this procedure they expected to
be that native merchants in general, and particularly the Armenians,
whose import trade from India was the most considerable of all, would in
future arrange to have all their goods consigned to them in British
bottoms, by which means the receipts in consulage at Basrah would be
increased and the Company re-imbursed for the heavy outlay that must
have been incurred on their account at Constantinople. Whether,
however, this interpretation of the scope of Consular powers proved to be
correct, or whether the financial results were such as the Agent antici
pated, does not, apart from one indication in the year 1769, on which we