With regard to what followed, I think that
I had better give Burton's own words, as they will show very distinctly
what were the culminating causes of his recall:
"He (the Wali) actually succeeded in causing the Foreign Office to
confine me to Damascus at a time when the climate was peculiarly hot
and unwholesome--mid-July. I was suffering from fever, and the little
English colony was all in summer quarters. He affected to look upon a
trip to the Hauran as an event pregnant with evil to his administration,
and actually composed a circular from me to the Druzes. I was actually
compelled, in return, to make known Rashid Pasha's maladministration of
Syria, his prostitution of rank, his filling every post with his own
sycophants, who are removed only when they have made money enough to
pay for being restored; his fatuous elevation of a Kurdish party; his
perjuries against the Druzes; his persistent persecution of Moslem
converts to Christianity in the teeth of treaties and firmans; his own
sympathy with the Greeks, and through them with Russia; and, finally,
his preparations for an insurrection in Syria, should Egypt find an
opportunity of declaring her independence. I meanwhile continued to
push my demand for the six million piastres claimed by British subjects
in Syria. My list shows a grand total of eleven, and of these five are
important cases. On July 4, 1871, I wrote to the Foreign Office and to
the Ambassador, urging that a Commission be directed to inquire into the
subject and to settle the items found valid.
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