Page:Historyofpersiaf00watsrich.djvu/295

 aside the suggestions of dignity and the promptings of gratitude. Thus we read that when his Britannic Majesty's Government decided upon handing over to the authorities in India the management of the relations between Great Britain and the Persian court, the Shah consented to the change under the belief that the envoy from India would lay before him an offering upon the same costly scale as that which Sir John Malcolm had brought from the shores of Hindostan. But the Government of Fort William no longer felt the necessity of paying a very heavy price for the good-will of the Shah and his ministers, and accordingly their envoy was instructed to limit his offering to the sum of fifty thousand rupees. The anxiety of Fetteh Ali on this point was so great that he directed those who had access to the envoy on his way towards Tehran, to endeavour to extract from him some information regarding the amount of the present which he intended to lay before the king. These endeavours were not attended with success, and the envoy arrived at the court without having given any hint as to his intentions. Upon this the Shah sent two of his ministers to wait upon the envoy with the express purpose of asking him how much money he intended to offer to the king; and when these vizeers had ascertained that the offering was to be fifty thousand rupees, they did not scruple to affirm in the name of their master that the Shah, by being offered so small a sum, would consider himself to have been almost deceived, since in accepting the proposal made to him to receive an envoy from the subordinate Government of India, he had of course taken it for granted that the offering to be made to him would be on the same scale as that of the former envoy from