MR. M'NEILL QUITS THE COURT. 311 him by such means was futile. Ten days elapsed, and no further communication took place between the British legation and the Persian court ; but on the 30th of May, Mr. McNeill had again a private audience of the Shah, and pointed out to his Majesty the discrepancy between the language held by his Ministers and that held by himself. Two days later the British envoy received from the Persian Government a despatch, with the con- tents of which he may well have been surprised, since, while it made some show of concession on other points, it treated as an invasion of the Shah's independent sovereign rights the terms Mr. McNeill had employed, in accordance with the king's own request, with regard to the offensive light in which the siege of Herat was looked upon by her Majesty's Government. The treatment to which the British Minister had been subjected had now brought to an end the amount of patience which the calmest of men could be expected to display, and Mr. McNeill accordingly reluctantly arrived at the determination of quitting the court of the Persian king. The Shah had failed to redeem one of the many promises he had made to comply with all or a part of the demands which had been submitted to him, and had evaded every attempt which Mr. McNeill had made to procure adequate redress for the detention and ill-treatment of his messengers. The conduct of the Persian government with regard to the proposed treaty with Prince Karnran, which it had at first accepted, and which it afterwards declined to conclude, and the use which had been made of Mr. McNeill' s compliance with the Shah's request that he would furnish him with a suitable pretext for quitting the enterprise in which he
