This Explains How A Subordinate, Whose Pay Is L200
Per Annum, And Who Spends Double That Sum, Can Afford, After Twelve Or
Thirteen Years' Service, To Purchase A House For L2,000 And To Furnish
It For As Much More.
Besides which, the condition, the ideas, and the
very nature of these dragomans are completely Oriental.
The most timid
and cringing of men, they dare not take the proper tone with a
government to which, in case of the expulsion of a Consul, they and
their families would become subject. And their prepossessions are
utterly Oriental. Hanna Massara, dragoman to the Consul-General at
Cairo, in my presence and before others, advocated the secret murder of
a Moslem girl who had fled with a Greek, on the grounds that an
adulteress must always be put to death, either publicly or under the
rose. Yet this man is an "old and tried servant" of the State. Such
evils might be in part mitigated by employing English youths, of whom
an ample supply, if there were any demand, would soon be forthcoming.
This measure has been advocated by the best authorities, but without
success. Most probably, the reason of the neglect is the difficulty how
to begin, or where to end, the Augean labour of Consular reform.
[FN#20] In a previous chapter I have alluded to the species of
protection formerly common in the East. Europe, it is to be feared, is
not yet immaculate in this respect, and men say that were a list of
"protected" furnished by the different Consulates at Cairo, it would be
a curious document.
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