A PERSIAN PARLIAMENT.
11111E condition of Persia has perhaps lost recently some
of its immediate interest for the West. Russia and Great Britain are very unlikely to fight just now either for its protectorate or its partition, Russia being for the moment paralysed, and our own country in the hands of a Government which will certainly not be tempted into a policy of expansion. Nevertheless, journalists will continue to watch the progress of events at Teheran with some interest, because of an experiment which the ruling classes there appear inclined to try. The old Asiatic method of government has gone on in Persia for a. hundred and eleven years ; i.e., ever since in 1795 the Kajar family—Turco- man adventurers they were—fought their way to the throne. The Government has been a despotism of the extreme kind, tempered only by eiaeutes, usually instigated by the mullahs, and occasional local rebellions, hitherto always suppressed with successful severity. The resources of the State have been expended ou the Court, the Army, and the Provincial Governors, who have usually been selected from the cadets of the reigning family, and are therefore in practice beyond appeal. As prosperity has disappeared the fiscal rapacity of the Government has increased, and the population has declined by more than fifty per cent., until at last the sums received by the Treasury are inadequate to keep the machine in movement, and the great men at Teheran are faced with three alternatives. They must sell the inde- pendence of their country to Russia and Great Britain in return for loans ; or by paying no one they must allow the country to sink into anarchy ; or they must try some plan for the reinvigoration of the State. Unfortunately, the only plan which has ever succeeded in Asia, at least as Asiatics think, is no longer open to them. They would in other days have expelled their dynasty, have selected a new one of greater ability, and for three or four genera- tions—possibly even for more, as happened in Turkey—have restored to the country a sensible, if despotic, administra- tion. The population would then have revived, the water- works which in Persia are essential to profitable agriculture would have been reopened, and the remains of capital now hoarded underground would have been released for the many Asiatic manufactures for which Persians, who are a bright people full of industry when you let them keep its fruits, have displayed for centuries a natural aptitude. Unhappily, the mass of the peasantry are incapable of combination, while the active sections of society, who are perfectly capable, and are indeed always intriguing, are cowed by the idea that a change of dynasty would be followed by an immediate inrush of European Powers. The Persians no more want to be governed by the Russian " Tobin," whose methods they fairly well understand and detest, or by Indian civilians, whose thoughts are so apart from their own, than we wish to be governed by German officials, whom, nevertheless, we perpetually describe as more efficient than ourselves. A few leading men seem, therefore, to have been attracted by the idea of the Russian Liberals, and have succeeded in inducing the dynasty to tolerate a proposal for calling a Parliament. The good people among them think that in that novelty there may be some hope of good government, while the bad people believe that an Assembly will be able to put ou taxes and raise loans, and so set the crumbling machine going again. The experiment, which is the first of the kind yet made in Western Asia, will be watched with interest, especially in India, where its success would enormously develop the demand, as yet quite inchoate, for self-government. If Persians can govern themselves wisely and strongly, so also can Bengalees. That will be the deduction made by peoples who do not at heart believe that they have any- where any intellectual superiors. It will be watched
also in Europe, where the success of any Asiatic State in reviving itself would put an end to many vague hopes and some definite ambitious.
For ourselves; we are unable to believe that the " reform " will be successful. The Persians are very bright, but they have no training whatever in self-govern- ment, and the reform they want is a good dynasty instead of a bad one. It is nearly impossible to give them improved legislation, for in a Mussulman State legislation must always agree with the sacred law ; and even if it were possible, the result would be no better than what is called " reform " in a great American city. It is the Executive which ruins Persia, and Parliament will never permanently improve the Executive. The debaters who made them- selves powerful would grasp at the government of provinces and display as much fiscal rapacity as the courtiers ; and it is from fiscal corruption, and tyranny for purposes of extortion, and not from bad laws, that Persia needs relief. It is this difficulty, and no inability to argue about good government, which has for so many thousand years kept the different races of Asia true to their con- stant demand for " Saul instead of Judges." At, some point or other the Persian Duma will affront either the Kajar family or the soldiers ; and a tnau of ability, probably a tyrant who, like the first Kajar, has the idea that, as revenue can be obtained only from the peasants, the peasants must be protected, will rebuild the old system of governing from above with absolute authority, and, until his dynasty goes rotten, will revive the life, and in a certain way the happiness, of the ancient Persian kingdom.
Our own country has no interest in the matter, except in our natural wish that the Persians, who once had commerce and a literature, should enjoy those benefits again. To annex Southern Persia, as has been so often suggested, would be only to add to ourselves a new burden,— a new chance of insurgents, who might possibly find allies. The development of India through the mechanical science of the West would pay us far better than to acquire further thousands of square miles of ruined territory ; and if Russia, under any form of popular control, takes to conquest again, it will be to conquer regions of which Constantinople and Gallipoli are the objective centres. Why should she engage iu a rush upon India, where every Mussulman would in such a con- tingency stand by the British Government, and where such an army as they could produce, led by British officers, and with the British Army as their spearhead, would hurl her back as rapidly and completely as she was hurled by Japan ? As for her entrance through Persia to the Persian Gulf, she would in assuming such a position place herself once for all within the grip of the British Navy, which at present cannot reach her, and which could, if she estab- lished a great arsenal on the Gulf, at any time drag the Russian Army two thousand miles from its main depots to a climate in which the soldiers would die like flies. There is no point at which British pessimism so impairs British strength and burdens British energy as in this incurable apprehension that at some not remote period we shall be defeated by Russia in a struggle for our primacy over the great Asiatic peninsula.
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