18 
ORGANISED MILITARY FROM THE TRIBES. 
parties, and particularly conciliating that from which advantage 
may be derived, European refinement denominates mere policy 
of conduct; a sort of prudent finesse, which disguises truth 
without uttering falsehood, and deceives without a stain to 
honour. But when we discover the same motive of self-interest 
actuating the ruder people of the East, where the mind is not 
yet educated to make or to understand these subtile distinctions 
of morals and niceties of speech, we see the principle of selfish 
circumvention in all its nakedness, hideousness, and vice: men 
lie, and flatter, and cheat, and betray, with no more touch of 
shame, than Lord Chesterfield probably felt when he wrote his 
political laws of simulation, dissimulation, &c. 
Our present visitor had been only a short time one of the 
mountain-hostages at the court of the Shah ; but almost all 
the chiefs of respectable tribes go in turns, as voluntary pledges 
for the fidelity and peaceable conduct of their several clans. 
Nearly the whole of these ancient people of the Persian high¬ 
lands are now brought into such effective acknowledgment of 
the Shah’s supremacy, as to yield obedience to his claim on their 
different tribes, for a certain number of their men properly 
armed, to serve him in his wars, whenever he may choose to 
demand them. About three years ago, two battalions of infantry 
were raised from the tribe of the chief in question. It may 
easily be imagined how unused the free-born, and in all respects 
untramelled, savages had been to discipline of any kind, and 
that refractoriness would be exhibited accordingly. Captain 
Isaac Hart, late of the 65th regiment, (who, with other brave 
Englishmen, had emulated the fortunes of the Shirleys in Persia,) 
was entrusted with the difficult task of bringing these rough sons 
of the desert to the smooth docilities of a European drill. He 
