Page:Historyofpersiaf00watsrich.djvu/401

FOREIGN INFLUENCE IN PERSIA. 381 of the place, totally failed in securing the object of his mission. The propositions which he had been instructed to name were at once rejected, and the priests of Meshed even urged the advisability of putting him to death. The Salar, however, not only protected him from vio- lence, but treated him in the kindest manner, and sent him back to Tehran as the bearer of a proposal that a son of Fetteh, Ali Shah should be named governor of Khorassan, and that the Salar should be his vizeer ; the Azerbaeejan troops being withdrawn. These terms were rejected by the Ameer-i -Nizam. / Before this period it had been customary in Persia to concede an unusual degree of deference to the opinions and wishes of the foreign representatives accredited to the Persian court ; the influence of either the English or the Kussian Mission being in the ascendant for the time, according as the inclinations of the Shah or of his mini- ster of the day leaned towards England or towards Kussia. To such an extent was this interference in the internal affairs of Persia allowed to be carried, that foreign repre- sentatives were sometimes requested to take under their protection individual subjects of the Shah. Thus at the time of the departure of the young king from Tabreez for Tehran, the English consul was asked to protect the Armenians resident in that place. The Ameer-i-Nizam did not fail to perceive that it was unbecoming that a govern- ment should not regulate the affairs of its own subjects, and he accordingly determined for the future to set himself against foreign interference in matters that only concerned Persia. Every impartial person must admit that the right of granting protection to subjects of the Shah, which was assumed by foreign ministers,