Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — Persia Since the Shah’s Return. [ARTICLE]

Persia Since the Shah’s Return.

The Cologne Gazette states that the Shah’s visit to Europe has occasioned many alterations in the external appearance of the upper and middle classes in Persia. Shoes are worn, the baggy trousers are reduced, the chin is shaven —an innovation obnoxious to the orthodox Mohammedans—the cap is not so high, and the whole dress is a mixture of Armenian and European fashions. But chairs are not adopted; they are used only for European visitors, while the natives fold their legs on the cushion or footstool. In religious matters the old fanaticism is less frequently displayed, and the missionaries enjoy great liberty. The numerous Armenian Christians are conscious of the protection of the Russian Ambassador, and their influence is materially increased by many of the foreign residents marrying their daughters, as European wives often go to Europe and are a burden rather than a comfort to their husbands, while the Armenian women are not inferior in looks to their English sisters. The old abuses in the Government still exist. The army is a real plague-spot. Only day laborers and the poor are enrolled, the rich purchasing exemption by presents to the officers. Three marks a month are regularly paid to the men, but all allowance for clothes is curtailed; so that the soldier in order to live is driven to plunder, in which he only too gladly indulges in the most brutal fashion. The tendency to dishonesty is an ineradicable element of the national character, and is only repressed in Teheran under the immediate eye of the Shah There alone the lower Classes breathe freely, for they do not suffer from the general” tyranny of officials of all grades, and the” soldiers dare not invade the houses and fields and take what they please without payment. The famine of 1874 has inflicted serious wounds on the country. The English arbitrators who traversed Seistan during the time of the greatest distress to settle the boundaries of Persia passed days without seeing a child or hearing a song. They estimated the mortality at 1,500,000, more than a quarter of the” population. The railway projected by Baron Reuter is at a standstill. It is hoped that an equivalent will be found for it, as the Shah is very anxious for improved communications, and recently ordered a survey for a horse railway from Teheran to Schah Abdul Azim, while he has summoned postoffice officials from Austria to organize a postal service.