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concern for British commercial interests. And the Times special correspondent, who has recently been travelling in those parts, has just told us of the flagrant insult which was placed upon our small detachment by a local chieftain within a few miles of Bushire, and which must have done much to neutralise any advantages to be expected from its passage up the road. In Khorasan, too, robberies have been of frequent occurrence. Many caravans of merchandise have been looted, and a number of murders have been committed. In fact the general condition of the country could not well be worse.

As to the actual Government prevailing at Tehran it is a queer jumble of discordant elements. The first Cabinet constituted after the crisis in July 1909 included naturally such prominent personalities as the Sipahdar and Sardar Assad. But it was openly said at the time that these gentlemen were by no means the stamp of person wanted by the more advanced Constitutionalists, and that they were intended merely to serve as influential figure-heads until such time as the more liberal and better educated young Persians should find it advisable themselves to take up the reins of government. Accordingly a more or less puppet Ministry was formed, to be answerable for the executive measures of the new régime, whilst the actual power was retained in the hands of a Committee of twenty-five of the more prominent 66 young Persians," who (on the lines of the Committee of Union and Progress in Turkey) hoped to control the Ministers without sharing their responsibilities. Like all such secret juntas their insolence and underground machinations soon rendered them intolerable, and before many weeks had elapsed they were obliged to dissolve and to metamorphose themselves into an Advisory Commission" or " Directoire Directoire" consisting of forty members and including some of the chief personalities of the Cabinet. The most recent news from Tehran shows that the capital has again been in a state of turmoil for some days, owing partly to the murder of the great Mujtahid, Sayed Abdullah, and partly to the usual Cabinet changes. We now learn that Sipahdar and Sardar Assad have definitely resigned, and have taken their seats in the Majlis as simple deputies; and that a new Cabinet has been formed containing some of the most progressive, and it may be hoped enlightened, of the young Persians.

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The National Assembly which met in September last has done

little or nothing to assist the executive body or to straighten out the tangle of the administrative machinery. Many of the members are violent and unreasonable extremists, devoid of any practical governing experience or of the most meagre educational acquirements. Their one idea of maintaining the national honour is to declaim with virulence against the two Powers, who, whatever their faults and failings, have alone rendered the continuation of Persia as a nation (to say nothing of its Constitutional form of Government) a possibility; and to fling bitter accusations at the heads of the responsible Ministers. In the circumstances it cannot be wondered at that matters have gone steadily to the bad. The finances of the country are in a shocking state of disorganisation, and no coherent effort has been made to adjust them. A proposal for a loan by the two Powers on certain, perhaps rather stringent, conditions, has been refused, and the government of this huge country is conducted from hand to mouth, from day to day, upon such pickings as can be acquired from the bleeding of political opponents (such as the Zil-es-Sultan, &c.) and the scraps which can be spared by the Customs and by the provincial Governors from their own pressing needs. It is not surprising that the Ministers resign again and again, and that Tehran is perpetually in the throes of a Cabinet crisis.

All this naturally reacts on the provinces where the administration is in a state of absolute chaos. The young Persians having not a single man in their ranks of executive experience or with the character and authority necessary to govern a province, they have been obliged to fall back upon the officials of the old régime as Governors and Governor-Generals, and have endeavoured at the same time to curb their powers by the despatch of a number of young and totally inexperienced men to fill such offices as Chef de Cabinet, Chief of Police, Chief Justice, &c. The result, as might have been expected, is that the old order and the new are inextricably intermingled in a state of bewildered and bewildering confusion. The Governor finds himself checked and thwarted at every turn by youths who a couple of years ago would not have dared to speak to him; whilst owing to his own ignorance of modern administrative methods and ideas he is unable to exercise the smallest influence or control over the various minor offices by which he finds himself encumbered. Thus it is every man for himself. The young gentlemen suddenly elevated from nobodies

to personages of considerable local importance, are inflated with the most preposterous ideas of their own dignity and power, and although totally unable in the great majority of cases to carry out the smallest practical reform, they spout political economy and international politics with gusto, and squabble amongst themselves for such pickings as are still procurable. Such of the old officials as still remain regard all this effervescence with hearty contempt; but finding also that it interferes with their immemorial privileges of peculation, they resent the new order of things intensely and would end it to-morrow if they could.

But, it may be asked, what of the popular Assemblies elected under the new Constitutional laws at each provincial centre? Surely here is an equipoise to official corruption and incompetence, and the means of casting the light of public opinion upon dark places. Unfortunately this is far from being the case. Hitherto the provincial and municipal "Anjumans" have displayed not the smallest energy or initiative, and beyond worrying the executive authorities now and then with some ab urd triviality, or by the display of some prejudice or fanaticism, they have exercised no influence whatever on public affairs. The fact is, of course, that such a thing as public opinion as directed towards the administration of the country, even when an attempt is made to embody it in popularly elected deputies, cannot be evoked in an instant in a country like Persia accustomed for centuries to autocratic rule. The deputies, many of whom are Mullahs, meet, and chat, and smoke the "kalian"; but as they have not the very vaguest notion how to conduct any public business, or what public business it would be advisable for them to interest themselves in, no result can reasonably be expected from their deliberations. It is a case of the blind leading the blind. The period of preparation has been too short and the national spirit too supine for men of the right stamp to have been evolved; and except for reactionary and greedy clericals on the one hand, and violent Turk and Caucasian revolutionaries on the other, no men of character and natural gifts, so it would seem, can be found in the Persia of to-day.

What, then, will be the end of all this talk of Constitutionalism and of this new Government which established itself with such seeming success on the ruins of absolutism only a year ago? It is too soon to prophesy as yet, but two possible avenues seem to lead into the future. The one points to a united, Constitutional

Persia, which, having accepted European guidance and tuition for a few years, will eventually, after a more or less prolonged apprenticeship, find herself able to shake off foreign leadingstrings, and to emerge strong and really independent, conducting her own administration with her own trained and proven leaders. Given the bright intelligence, and the genuine, if somewhat emotional patriotism possessed by so many of the young Persian party, such a dream should be by no means impracticable. But alas! two very serious obstacles would seem to stand in the way of its realisation. The first is the lamentable vanity which is so marked a feature in Persian character, and which precludes so many Persians from either seeking or ensuring a good example. Up to a point they may appreciate or even imitate what other nations have achieved. But the dogged unswerving perseverance of the Japanese, as also their capacity to select all that is best in modern civilisation, seem alike to be beyond the scope of the present-day Persians. Whilst even supposing them to possess these qualities, we must always bear in mind that vast reactionary organ, the Shia Church, with its vested interests, its fanaticism, and its hatred of progress and modern enlightenment. That is indeed a serious obstacle to overcome.

The second alternative for Persia's future to which allusion has been made above is that which has hung over the country like a threatening pall ever since the date of the signature of the AngloRussian Convention, and which the continued presence of Russian troops in Northern Persia has kept constantly in mind. No patriotic Persian can ignore it for an hour, and the young Constitutionalists writhe under the menace like schoolboys under the threat of the lash. They dread the thought of this grim Northern invader with his millions of armed men and vast military organisations. They know that Russia has already in the past swallowed some of Persia's fairest provinces in the north-west, and that she is well able to swallow even a greater slice should her opportunity come. In the past it may be that Persia looked to England to save her in her last extremity; but disillusionment has now come, and she knows that England has her own hands too full for any quixotic enterprises on behalf of a weak and unprofitable neighbour. At last the Persians realise that strength must come from within. Is it too late for them to take the warning to heart, and even now to set their house in order? ZAWWAR.

CANADIAN RECIPROCITY WITH THE

UNITED STATES

THERE are many sides to this question. There is that of the United States as a country and the United States as the home of opposing parties and varied shades of fiscal feeling and forms of fiscal faith. With it I do not propose to deal here. There is that of Canada with its national or purely Canadian interests, its traditional or historical feelings based upon past experience and continental relationship rather than upon present facts, its conditions of Empire relationship and obligation, and its local problems of industrial development and agricultural opinion. There is, also, the growing importance of the British standpoint and the effect of reciprocity upon policies and proposals now before the electors of the United Kingdom.

So many currents exist in Canadian feeling, so many and varied are the elements of opinion-mixed up as they all are with partisan prejudices and sentimental considerations-that it is not easy to get at the exact truth of the matter. What light does history throw on present conditions? In this respect there are three distinct periods. The first was that of Colonial infancy stretching through the days of the fur trade and lumber exports and wooden shipbuilding; the years of trade stimulated in one direction by the British protectionist and preferential policy and restricted in others by the Navigation Laws. During this period the commerce of British America was comparatively slight in volume, its people actually imported wheat as late as the "forties," and they were so dependent upon the heavy preferential duties accorded by the Mother Country that the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 threw them into financial disaster, caused intense depression in Upper and Lower Canada and evoked the

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