as at various times been hampered by
speculators who tried to make money by misleading the public. Their
speculations were always based on the prestige of the bank. For instance,
take the Bushire Company and the Fars Trading Company, Limited, companies
started by native merchants. They illegally issued bank-notes which,
strangely enough, owing to the security found in the Imperial bank-notes,
found no difficulty in circulating at a small discount, especially in
Shiraz.

Naturally, the Imperial Bank, having in its conventions with the Persian
Government the exclusive right to issue bank-notes payable at sight,
protested against this infringement of rights, but for a long time got
little redress, and some of the fraudulent bank-notes are to this day
circulating in Southern Persia.

Sooner or later this was bound to interfere with the bank, as the
natives, unaccustomed to bank-notes, confused the ones with the others.
Moreover, the enemies of the bank took advantage of this confusion to
instigate the people against the Imperial Bank, making them believe that
the word "Imperial" on the bank-notes meant that the issuing of
bank-notes was only a new scheme of the Government to supply people with
worthless paper instead of a currency of sound silver cash. In the
southern provinces this stupid belief spread very rapidly, and was
necessarily accentuated by the issue of the illegal bank-notes of local
private concerns, which, although bearing foreign names, were merely
Persian undertakings.

Necessarily, the many foreign speculations to which we have already
referred, cannot be said to have strengthened confidence in anything of
European importation; but the grand successive abortions of the Belgian
and Russian factories--which were to make gas, sugar, glass, matches,
etc.--are hardly to be compared in their disastrous results to the
magnificent English fiasco of the Tobacco Corporation, which not only
came to grief itself, but nearly caused a revolution in the country. It
is well-known how a concession was obtained by British capitalists in
1890 to establish a tobacco monopoly in Persia, which involved the usual
payment of a large sum to the Shah, and presents to high officials.

The company made a start on a very grand scale in February, 1891, having
the whole monopoly of purchase and sale of tobacco all over Persia. No
sooner had it begun its work than a commission of injured native
merchants presented a petition to the Sh