'Precis Containing Information in regard to the First Connection of the Hon'ble East India Company with Turkish Arabia, as far as the Same Can Be Traced from the Records of the Bombay Government, together with the Names of the Several British Residents and Political Agents Who Have Been Stationed at Bagdad [Baghdad] and Bussorah [Basra] between A.D. 1646 and 1846, accompanied by Other Information' [‎104v] (212/226)

[ xl ]
weakness and cease to trouble tbe districts nearest home, and with them
would disappear the bands of petty plunderers who follow in the rear of
the great tribes and beset the roads under cover of their names.
But the operation of this system is by no means to be contemplated
as confined to the Arabs close at hand. Its principle would infallibly
extend to all the tribes which at present inhabit Mesopotamia and the
cultivable districts in its vicinity, forcing- them to become peaceable
cultivators of the soil, or to retire into the further deserts whence they
originally came. Already have the advantages of a fixed home and culti
vated lands become so apparent to, and appreciated by, the Arabs of all
the large tribes that, in spite of their prejudice against the occupation of
itself, it has become their great object to possess themselves of such
lands, and rather than forego the comforts of such acquisitions and sub
mit to be driven from these fixed abodes, they would undoubtedly consent
to settle down in them as regular agriculturalists and to pay a rent
accordingly; the progress of this process has already been made manifest
by several examples, although the weakness of the Turkish Government
and its rapacity in collecting has sadly retarded, and in many cases put
a stop to, it altogether.
Nor let it be imagined that an undue facility for carrying these pro
jects into effect is here assumed. That the Arabs would at first unwil
lingly submit to control is granted, but that they could offer no formid
able or available resistance to a well organized system of expulsion from
Mesopotamia is equally certain. In all cases, where they have been
opposed with energy, they have invariably fled from the contest. They
are only formidable in their own deserts, and to travellers or caravans too
weak to offer resistance even in their quarrels with each other; their
affairs are seldom bloody, and in every instance where Europeans, even in
the smallest numbers, have been the objects of attack, they have receded
and fled in consternation from their discipline and resolution. Thus a
sense of the superiority of a well conducted and properly disciplined
force, directed by a firm and well organized Government, would infallibly
drive them from the abodes of civilized men or free them to become such
themselves.
No reasonable doubt can, therefore, be entertained that an almost
unlimited supply of labourers will, under proper management, be obtained
to improve the resources of the Pachalic. Were Mesopotamia tranquil,
were its inhabitants made to feel the blessings of security to person and
to property, were it, in short, to receive the boon of a just and firm Gov
ernment, speedily indeed would it be repeopled. Thousands and hundreds
of thousands would flow in from the surrounding and other less happy
countries, and the rulers of these would be forced to treat their remain
ing subjects mildly to avoid an utter depopulation of their territories.
Let us look a little therefore more closely into the nature of these
revenues.
The fertility of Mesopotamia, especially of its lower alluvial portion,
has never been matter of question. It produces all the grains of Lurope
in abundance, together with rice, maize, sugar, cotton, indigo, mulberry for
silk, and every sort of fruit in profusion. All that is required to call its
fertility into action is water, and the remains of ancient canals, with which