Page 116 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

74 BRITISH POLICY IN TIIE PERSIAN GULF.

Government and territory, whether on the grounds of leniency and
indulgence in the exaction of more moderate taxes, superior military
prowess and renown, or greater commercial advantages) anticipates
from a numerical increase to his subjects, and consequent improved
revenue and influence.
The first principle of our policy enjoining, for obvious reasons, a total
non-interference in local matters concerning only themselves, and the
false position in which the assumption of the right of insisting upon
every fugitive being given up to his own chief would evidently place
us, as being calculated to remove the only check at present existing to
the tyranny and oppression of the chief over his subjects, constitute
powerful arguments against affording the required guarantee, or inde­
pendently striking a blow at the root of the evil, however much it may be
desirable to remedy it.
The piratical Arab Chiefs, satisfied of the advantages obtained by
the establishment of the Maritime Truce, which, by common consent,
precluding hostilities with each other, removes the chance of a relapse f
into a system of general depredations, and unprovoked aggressions, are
now quite as much interested in its maintenance as ourselves; and of this
they exhibited ample proof in their united readiness to rehew it for so
long a period as ten years, or even more, had such been desired
or deemed expedient. As before observed, however, it would be
too much to suppose that so radical a change has been or will
for a length of time to come be effected, as to-admit of the total with­
drawal of that influence and political control which have, from their
wise and mild exercise, rendered this Gulf, whose coasts are inhabited
by a brave, rapacious, and cruel people, brought up and nurtured from
their childhood among scenes of bloodshed, and licentious and treacher­
ous warfare on land, comparatively as safe and open to the trade and
navigation of vessels of all nations, as the seas of any other portion
of the world.