"مذكرة تتعلق بالملاحة في نهري دجلة والفرات". [ظ‎‎٤‎١] (٢٨٤/٨٣)

66
company's rights, and as to (2) that action to
enforce the company 's claims should bo postponed
until an understanding on the main question had
been arrived at.
To explain the change of view adopted by the
Law Officers as regards the agreement of 1846, it
is necessary to refer to the " fuller information
afforded to them, which was apparently supplied
in the following memoranda :—
1. Memorandum (Mr. Kennedy), the 20th July,
1883, Confidential, 4838.
Mr. Kennedy (then head of the Commercial
Department of the Foreign Office) in the course
of his memorandum discussed the firman of 1834
and the arrangement of 1846, and referred to
Consul-General Rawlinson's statement (1845) that
boats under the British flag had navigated the
river (presumably the Shatt-el-Arab and the
Tigris up to Bagdad) for forty years, and to
the company's statement (20th May, 1880) that
in 1846 the firm of Messrs. S. Lynch and Co.,
and others, both Persian and Indian subjects,
possessed boats of 150 to 200 tons burden
navigating the rivers. He remarked that the
Porte, as well as the local authorities, had sought
to pass over the agreement of 1846, and to make
the British right of navigation dependent on the
firman of 1834, to which view the company had
not been averse, because by running together
the arrangements of 1834 and 1846 they were
able to claim a monopoly of navigation as against
other foreign vessels. He concluded his memo
randum by suggesting (a) in reference to the
firmans and vizierial letters issued by the Porte
that the distinction between the Euphrates and
Tigris as separate rivers was a western idea and
did not exist in local nomenclature, and (6) that
the facts of the case as shown in the whole
correspondence and by long usage were not full y
before the Law Officers in 1881.
2. Memorandum (Mr. Plowden), 31st Julv
1883, Confidential 4838, p. 17.
Mr Plowden 's memorandum was drawn up in
the form of observations on Mr. Kennedy's
memorandum. He contended that the firmans
«n 18 " ( ' 1 "' """ d »
with the Chesney expedition and the other for
the secunty of Captain Lynch when two of