I am treading on forbidden ground; I have nothing to say to politics: if I had, this chapter might be more amusing. I could tell of French and English schemes for harlequin-changes, which were to leave my Persian friends no remains of barbarism but their beards! of Mahomedan princes trained to be reformers, of the sudden introduction of the fine arts, and of the roving tribes of Tartary and the wild mountaineers of Fars becoming, by the proper use of a few cabalistical phrases, disciplined regiments. These, and many similar transformations, were meant to prove that we lived in an age when any instructed or enlightened man might, if furnished with the necessary implements of pen, ink, and paper, effect any given change, on any given nation, in a few months.
This was not the first time that such experiments had been tried in Persia; for, besides a knowledge of the civil and military arts of Europe, efforts had been made to teach the Seffavean monarchs and their nobles to understand the laws, institutions, and governments of the more civilized world. The sarcastic and penetrating Gibbon, when speaking of the attempt, observes, "Chardin says that European travellers have diffused among the Persians some ideas of the freedom and mildness of our governments: they have done them a very ill office." This may be too severe; but if instruction is of a character to diminish happiness, without furthering improvement, he would be bold who should call it a blessing. A medicine may be excellent in itself, yet, from the peculiar habits and constitution of the patient, it may act as a poison. These and many similar sentences of wisdom I have now and then uttered, when talking about the proposed sudden regeneration of the Eastern world, but I never could obtain a hearing. My plans of slow and almost imperceptible change, which were not confined to the teaching half a dozen individuals, but embraced a whole people in their operation, have been ridiculed as proving nothing but the sluggishness of my understanding. When I have pleaded experience, I have been accused of giving that name to prejudice; my toleration of systems out of my power to alter, and interwoven with every feeling, habit, and enjoyment of the communities in which they prevail, has been referred to my narrow views; and all my pretensions to discernment and judgment have been called in question because I have persuaded myself, and tried to persuade others, that Asiatics, though they are not so fair as we are, though they are of a different religion, speak a different language, and have neither made the same advances in science nor in civilization, are, notwithstanding these disadvantages, not altogether destitute of good and great qualities, both of head and heart.