Abbas Meerzâ was, at this time, a young prince of engaging manners, handsome in person, and gifted with quickness and discernment. Owing to his intercourse with Europeans, he had thrown off many of those habits of state and ceremony which are so punctiliously observed by persons of high rank in Persia. He was now exercising his battalions, and he rode along the lines without an attendant. After the review, seeing the Elchee's curricle with a pair of fine Arab horses, he desired to have a drive. It was the first carriage of the kind he had ever been in, and he was quite delighted. As the horses trotted along the road to Teheran, he ordered his attendants to return. "Go," said he, laughing, "and tell my father I am on my way to his capital with the Elchee."
The curricle which had so delighted the prince was afterwards given to the king, who was equally pleased with it; and still more with the rapid movements and quick firing of two pieces of horse-artillery, which were presented to him. "These," he said, "will destroy all my enemies." The Elchee stated that what he had brought were only models, which the ingenuity of his majesty's subjects would soon copy; and suggested that it would be necessary to make roads for wheel carriages; and roads, he added, if generally introduced, would be found alike useful for pleasure, for commerce, and for war.
The wisdom which prompted this advice was lauded to the skies. Roads were admitted to be a great and obvious improvement, at once ornamental and profitable to Persia. Plans for making and keeping them in repair were required and furnished. The royal mandate, the Elchee was told, should be issued immediately: and he was much pleased at the thought of having given rise to a measure so good, and which he considered as preparing the way for the permanent improvement of the country. But, aware of the difficulties likely to obstruct the plan, he begged the minister of finance, Ameen-ood-Douleh, to confine the first attempt to the communication between Sooltâneah, Teheran, and Tebreez; and advised that the results of this experiment should determine the further prosecution of the scheme.
The minister of finance, who was as remarkable for his plain manners as for his plain sense, acknowledged the justice of this suggestion. "But you know Persia," was his concluding significant remark; which sufficiently informed the Elchee that his project of road-making, however easy of execution, from the nature of the country and climate, would share the fate of other schemes, which it was then the fashion at the court of Persia to adopt, commence, and abandon. These highways required labour; which labour, political economists would have told the king, must be paid for by money, by provisions, or by the remission of other exactions. But this information would have been of little benefit, for I never knew a man, who, with all his good qualities, would listen with so little patience to political economists, as the king of kings, Fatteh Ali Shâh; for that monarch, besides the habits and prejudices of his condition, has personally an insurmountable objection to all measures which include disbursement.