Minister Pearson to the Secretary of State.
Teheran, August 22, 1906.
Sir: I have the honor to confirm my dispatch of the 12th instant, reading as follows:a
I inclose a copy of the Shah’s decree, with translations in English and French.
I have purposely deferred this dispatch in the hope that I might obtain fuller and more definite information on the subject of the proposed constitution and of its chances of success, but the whole matter is still involved in mystery and the rumors on the subject are so vague and contradictory that I do not consider them worthy of communication to the department.
[Page 1217]The impression is general among my colleagues and in the best informed political circles that nothing substantial and permanent will grow out of this sudden movement for reform. Among the many reasons advanced in support of this opinion I may cite the following:
- 1.
- The great body of the Shah’s subjects have no idea of the meaning of “constitutional government.” The Persian language contains no equivalent for “constitution “as we understand the term.
- 2.
- The mass of the people are illiterate; not one in a thousand can read and not one in ten thousand can write the Persian language, if we except the city of Teheran.
- 3.
- There is no middle class, whose intelligence and interests could form the basis and the guaranty of constitutional government.
- 4.
- Outside the cities not one person in a thousand is a freeholder, and it is estimated, in the total lack of statistics, that 3,000 persons, including the Shah, own three-fourths of all the land in the kingdom and virtually all the productive agricultural land.
- 5.
- History does not record a single instance of successful constitutional government in a country where the Mussulman religion is the state religion; Islam seems to imply autocracy.
- 6.
- It is generally believed that the mullahs, or Mohammedan priests, who sided with the reformers or revolutionists in the recent agitation and whose influence gained the victory for that party, will soon return to their traditional support of autocratic ideas. It is pointed out that these ecclesiastics joined in the revolutionary movement in order to compel the payment of their pensions or official salaries, which were three years in arrears, and that as soon as this financial transaction is accomplished this all-powerful caste will become at once pacified and revert to its former leanings, leaving their sincere secular colaborers to shift for themselves and to build up, if they can, a structure of free government without any solid foundation.
However these things may work out, it is certain that a committee of eight, appointed by the revolutionary leaders, is now actively at work on a constitution, a novel and difficult undertaking in the ancient Kingdom of Iran, which since the time of Ahasuerus has patiently supported a score of dynasties without once attempting to divide or to question the rights of the governing monarch.
The further development of this struggle will naturally attract the interests and sympathy of the friends of liberty throughout the world.
I am, etc.,
- Supra.↩