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 UPRIGHTNESS OF THE AMEER. 375 regiment of six hundred horsemen. During the reign of that monarch's grandson it had been increased, upon paper, to four thousand men, but reduced, at muster, to three hundred. Nor was the state of things in the civil department at all out of keeping with that of the military department. Many persons were in the receipt of large pensions which had been granted by Haji Meerza Aghassi without the slightest reference to any service rendered by them ; and as many of these stipendiaries were priests and men of influence, the task of compelling them to relinquish their prey was all the more difficult of accomplishment. Nevertheless, the Ameer had the firm- ness to cut down the expenditure of the government, and to reduce or discontinue the pensions that had been granted to so many idle princes and priests. The most extraordinary, and even unaccountable, part of his con- duct in the eyes of the Persians, was that he was utterly inaccessible to bribery. This being the case, the money which he refused to accept was employed for the purpose of upsetting him. The Shah had shown himself to be possessed of sufficient firmness to resist the attempts that had been made to induce him to dismiss from office the Ameer-i-Nizam ; and his Majesty had even insisted on giving to his Minister, in opposition to the wishes of his mother and all his relations, the hand of his only sister. The discontented noblemen, therefore, despair- ing of being able to move the Shah, resorted to other means for obtaining the dismissal of the Ameer. There were at that time in the citadel of Tehran about two thousand five hundred soldiers of regiments belonging to Azerbaeejan, and these men were bribed to mutiny, and to demand the life of the prime minister.