374 A HISTORY OF PERSIA. It is said that he had never meant that these orders should be attended to, and that he had given the pro- vincial governors to understand so. The result was that they seldom or never had been attended to ; but the odium of the non-payment had fallen on the governors, while the credit of liberality had remained with the Haji. The consequence of this truly Oriental system of can- vassing for popularity was, that the Ameer-i-Nizam now found upon his hands an enormous amount of govern- ment liabilities. He had the alternative of meeting them or of damaging the credit of the Shah by rejecting bonds issued by a minister of state. Most Persians would have attempted to evade choosing between these alternatives by having recourse to some ingenious subterfuge ; and it is to the credit of the Ameer that he preferred boldly to face the difficulty. Probably no financier ever found himself to be placed in a more embarrassed position than that of Meerza Teki Khan in the beginning of the year 1849. Since the accession of the Shah no money had been paid into the royal treasury, and on the other hand the expenditure was necessarily heavy. The army in the field in Khorassan depended for its existence en- tirely upon the central government, and that government was in the unfortunate position of lacking the credit which could only result from confidence in its stability. But in addition to the financial difficulties to be over- come, there was the embarrassment to be dreaded from affronting and impoverishing so many powerful and un- principled men. Colonels there were who had been drawing pay and receiving clothing for regiments which actually did not exist. The royal body-guard, during the reign of Fetteh Ali Shah, had consisted of an efficient
