[p.49]addressed to Mr. Walne (H.B.M’s Consul) by the Indian merchants and others resident at Cairo, informing him of Mohammed Shafi’a’s birth, character, and occupation as a vendor of slaves, offering proof of all assertions, and praying him for the sake of their good name to take away his passport.  And all the Indians affix their seals to this paper.  Then Mohammed Shafi’a threatens to waylay and to beat the Haji.  The Haji, not loud or hectoringly, but with a composed smile, advises his friends to hold him off.

One would suppose that such a document would have elicited some inquiry.But Haji Wali was a Persian protege, and proceedings between the Consulates had commenced before the petition was presented.  The pseudo-British subject, having been acknowledged as a real one, must be supported.  Consuls, like kings, may err, but must not own to error.  No notice was taken of the Indian petition; worse still, no inquiry into the slave-affair was set on foot[FN#7]; and it was discovered that the passport having been granted by a Consul-General could not with official etiquette be resumed by a Consul.[FN#8]

[p.50]Thus matters were destined to proceed as they began.  Mohammed Shafi’a had offered 5,000 piastres to the Persian Consul’s interpreter; this of course was refused, but still somehow or other all the Haji’s affairs seemed to go wrong.  His statements were mistranslated, his accounts were misunderstood, and the suit was allowed to drag on to a suspicious length.  When I left Cairo in July, Haji Wali had been kept away nearly two months from his business and family, though both parties-for the plaintiff’s purse was rapidly thinning-appeared eager to settle the difference by arbitration:  when I returned from Arabia in October, matters were almost in statu quo ante, and when I started for India in January, the proceedings had not closed.

Such is a brief history, but too common, of a case in which the subject of an Eastern state has to contend against British influence.  It is doubtless a point of honour to defend our proteges from injustice, but the higher principle should rest upon the base of common honesty.  The worst part of such a case is, that the injured party has no redress.

“Fiat injustitia, ruat coelum,”

is the motto of his “natural protectors,” who would violate every law to gratify the false pride of a petty English official.  And, saving the rare exceptions where rank or wealth command consideration, with what face, to use the native phrase, would a hapless Turk appeal to the higher powers, our ministers or our Parliament?

After lodging myself in the Wakalah, my first object was to make a certain stir in the world.  In Europe your travelling doctor advertises the loss of a diamond ring, the gift of a Russian autocrat; or he monopolises a whole column in a newspaper, feeing perhaps a title for the use of a signature; the large brass plate, the gold-headed cane, the rattling chariot, and the summons from the sermon complete the work.  Here, there is no such Royal