The Sun.
London, England, 1844-02-08 00:00:00

who was in Colonel Stoddart's service during his first captivity,
and afterwards in Captain Conolly's. This man was in confinement,
together with others of Captain Conolly's servants, including
Yowoof, the Greek, in the Black Well, and confirms in many
particulars, the statement of Mahomed Suleh Akhoonzadeh.
formerly given in the Times. He was liberated, and shortly
afterwards heard :that Mahomed Suleh and Allandad Khan had
been put into the Well. About forty days after his libe-
ration he received orders from the officers to leave
Bokhara; and he went to Herat, where he was
seven months ill, and he then went to Meshed. He was told
at Herat by Gool Mahomed, another servant of Captain Conolly,
who had been in the well with hint, but who was released two or
three days after himself, that he, Gool Mahomed, was in Bokhara
at the time it was declared that the officers had been put to death,
but that he had never seen any one who had witnessed their exe-
cution, which was said to have taken place in a small square near
the pris on, which, however, was not much frequented. Goel Maho-
med said he took courage, and ventured to go t 3 the place of execution
about a week after the event: He examined it carefully, but
was unable to find any traces of blood, or of earth recently dug,
nor were there any mounds like graves. For these reasons Gool
Mahomed thinks they were rot killed, and Rejib himself hopes
they are not dead, for the Ameer, he says, has a practice of secretly
putting people Into prison, and ofplacing them under the charge of
one person, who is certain to suffer death if he reveals their exist.
once. He confined one of his Viziers in this manner fbr five
years, whom he finally liberated.

An envoy from Bokhara bad arrived in Teheran, but Colonel
Shell had heen unable, in consequence of the Shah and his Minis.
ters being out of town, to communicate with him before the dcpar.
ture of his messenger.

Sir S. Canning sends home by a messenger dispatched on the 3d
of January, a report from the British Vice-Consul at Trebizond,
dated December 11, stating that eight natives of Bokhara had
arrived there- oq a pilgrimage to Mecca, having left Bokhara
six months previously; and -passed through Meshed, Teheran,
Tabreez, and Erzerum. These persons say that they left in
Bokhara an English " Miralai " (Colonel), who had been a resi-
dent there for three years, had become a Mussulman, and on doing
so had received from the Ameer the title of Khan and the situa-
tion of Chief of Artillery, and was named by the Ameer Abdul
Semmet Khan. He is a totik man, having a long dark beard,
and has with him a companion, a—middle-sized man, with a
short light beard, who served Abdul Semmet Khan as secretary,
but they did not know if he had become a Mussulman. Both were
In the confidence and favour of the. Ameer, and seemed to enjoy
freedom, more particularly the Colonel or Khan, who was admitted
in the presence, and allowed to sit at the side of the Ameer. Both
lived in a large dwelling, or fort,allotted to them. This statement was
first made to the doctor of the quarantine; the British Vice-Consul
received the same account from four of the party, whom he
saw first ; but although the other four, who came in after-
wards, confirmed the statement respecting the English Colonel
cr Abdul Semmet Khan, they did not confirm that regard-
ing his secretary. They said the latter might be in Bokhara, but
they had not seen him, They had ftequently seen the Colonel,
and had received alms from him.

Some of the companions of he above party reached Trebisond
on the 15th of December, and the quarantine doctor told the Bri-
tish Vice-Consul that they confirmed the statement of the others,
though they had no previous communication with them.
With respect to the foregoing statements from Treblzond,
it is to be observed that a person, named Abdool Samar Khan,
appears continually in the correspondence of the Foreign.
office, in connection with the officers. Colonel Stoddart's re.
lease from his first confinement was effected by the instru-
mentality of this person, and both of the officers lodged in
his house for a short time after Captain Conolly's arrival,
and Captain Conolly got horn him a sum of nearly 1,600/.
(3,000 tillahs). Of this person Colonel Stoddart wrote, in
March, 1841, that he was a native of Aserbijan, and arrived
in Bokhara about four years before ➢ that he was 57 years of
age, forty of which, on and off, he had been with the British,
having been drilled by them at Tabreea, and lived with them in
India ; that alter his arrival he persuaded the Ameer to let him
drill the Persian slaves, and he had accordingly disciplined a large
body of them, with twelve guns, with a powder factory and a fur..
time for casting guns, &c.

Colonel Sheil calls this person the Chief of Artillery at
Bokhara, and he received a letter from him in June last,
dated March 24, 1843, in which he refers to the money ad.
vanced by him to Captain Conolly. He did net mention the
death of the officers in this letter, though he sent a manu-
script dated March, 1841, given to him as a keepsake by
Captain Conolly. lint after saying that the officers were
taken from his house on the breaking out of the insurrection at
Caubul, he goes on—" All my exertions In their favour were fruit-
less, and these were so strenuous that the Ameer began to enter-
tain suspicion of me, and treated me with harshness.; As he who
contends with fate will injure himself, my efforts were fruitless."

BRITISH MERCHANTS AND PRO-
PERTY AT MOTE VIDEO.

We have lately felt it our duty to direct public
attention to the cruel position in which the sangui-
nary hostilities carried on by the forces of Buenos
Ayres, under the command of General Rosas, against
the Republic of the Uruguay, have placed numbers
of our countrymen, who are engaged in commercial
pursuits in the city of Monte Video. Our readers
have been apprised, in particular, of the formal decla-
rations made, and repeated assurances given, by our
Minister in the Plata, of the determination of her
MajestT's Government .to afford all that necessary
protection "-so justly due" to our countrymen in that
city, in answer to the pressing representations to Mr.
Mandeville personally, of the danger they must be
exposed to in the event of Rosas being permitted to
invade the territory of Monte Video. This declara-•
tion appears to have been nullified—these assurances
have been disgracefully violated, by the whole course of
subsequent events. Since the battle of Arroyo Grande,
the arms of the Argentine Confederation and its squa-
dron, under Rosas, have carried all the horrors of
war, the savage extermination of human life, and the
wanton destruction of property, through the territory
and to the very walls of Monte Video; burning and
pillaging every chattel, all merchandise, stores, &c., in
the rem,test degree of Monte Video ownership, in
their ruinous operations. From the waste and pil-
lage thus perpetrated on the defenceless customers
and connexions of British merchants, who had sup-
plied them, in the usual manner, upon credit, British
property to the enormous amount of between one and
two millions of pounds sterling has been sacrificed ;
and many of our couutrymen have thus been ruined.

The charges made in -the following letter against
Mr. Mandeville, our Minister—(especially the insinua-
tion that he has thus receded from his public and
private assurances as to the protecting aid of a Bri-
tish armament, out of a desire to maintain his own
friendly personal relations with Rosas)—are of too
grave a character, we apprehend, not to call for a
searching examination by the House of Commmons.
The whole of the case is succinctly stated by our Cor-
respondent, whose letter we subjoin, together with
its documentary disclosures :
Sze,—The reply (marked B.) of the Earl of
Aberdeen to a letter lately addressed to him by the
Liverpool Mexican and South American Association, is
only a repetition of the promises so often made by her
Majesty's Government, that protection should be afforded
to British interests in Monte Video. Now how stands
the case in reality, as between the British merchants
and the Executive ? If the public were once awakened
to a sense of the numerous losses sustained by the mer-
chants who trade to Monte Yideo, and if it can be proved
that they have been the victims of the unaccountable line
of conduct pursued by our Government, it is to be hoped
that investigation before Parliament will at least visit the
authors of all this loss with well-merited retribution.
The merchants of Monte Video charge our Foreign
Executive with havingpractised a wilful and cruel decep-
tion upon them ; with having paraded before them, in
the most unequivocal manner, a determination on the
part of our Government not to permit any invasion of
the Monte Videan territory by the army of Rosas ; with
having given them the strongest assurances, through the
British Minister in the Plate, Mr. Mandeville, both be-
fore and after the battle of the Arroyo Grande, that
Great Britain would not permit the invasion. These are
undeniable facts, attested by the British residents on the
spot, appealed to in the memorial to Mr. Mandeville, and
to thisovernment, and not attempted to be denied.
Were denial attempted, the official letter of Mr.
Mandeville to the Monte Video Government at the
time, confirms it in the most ample manner beyond
dispute, and in again handing you the copy of that
Minister's letter to the Government of Buenos Ayres of
December 16 (the only one which has been made public,
and cannot be denied—marked A.) the British mer-
chants are prepared to produce further, and still stronger
proofs, from the official communications of Mr. Mande-
ville to the Monte Video Government, that he did assure
that Government and the British public generally of
the firm resolve of her Majesty's Government to prevent
any invasion : but no denial of these facts has been or
will be hazarded—they are too strongly recorded. The
fatal confidence into which our unfortunate countrymen
were lulled—the amount of property which they were
thus led to confide, as before-,- to their customers—the
sweeping loss of nearly all that property which they
were doomed to sustain—and their present perilous
position, both as to life and property—all this train of
evils has been caused, by whom ?—by the foreign
enemy? by some unexpected political or natural convul-
sion ? Quite the reverse. By the deliberate recorded
acts of our own Government, with full knowledge of
facts, and ample warning from the merchants here of
the approach of the political changes against which it
was necessary to guard. The amount of property thus
sacrificed is variously estimated, at from one to two mil-
lions sterling, involving the ruin of many parties. In
contequence of the previous assurances of probation
from the foreign Executive here, and in consequence of
Commodore Purvis having refused to permit . the
blockade of the port by sea, the British mer-
chants here, even after the news of the siege
of Monte Video by the army of Rosas, still entertained
a hope that the apparently cruel indifference of Mr.
Mandeville to their situation, and the unaccountable in-
consistency of such desertion after his previous declara-
thins, would receive its merited condemnation at the
hands of our Government, and that an effectual though
tardy protection would still save their friends at Monte
Video from further suffering. But to their grief and
surprise the reverse has proved to be the case; they
learn now that Mr. Mandeville is to be their only refuge,
that Commodore Purvis is to obey him, and, as a fit
commentary on such mode of protection, Mr. Mandeville
immediately announced his acknowledgment of the
blockade of Monte Video by Rosas' squadron, thus
giving all the assistance in his power to Rosas' force.
Such conduct on the part of our Government seems
inexplicable; those who previously wished to ground
their exculpation on the blunder of Mr. Mandeville, now
find to their dismay that he acted by orders, and is sup-
ported in all he has done. Explanation—speedy, un-
equivocal explanation, is loudly demanded ; the mer-
chants of Monte Video appeal to their countrymen and
demand inquiry. Those who are inclined to find some
apology for our Government have endeavoured to sup-
pose that in the first instance Lord Aberdeen did in-
struct Mr. Mandeville to be prepared to interfere and
prevent any invasion by Rosas; that Mr. Mandeville
follom;ed those instructions so far as entering a protest
in :his said letter of the 16th December, but shrunk
from actual coercion (although his force in the
river was ample •on Commodore Purvis's arrival)
until further orders reached him. - The inference
from his subsequent conduct is, that Lord Aberdeen
forgot, or neglected the matter. No deCisive orders
1 were given, and Mr. Mandeville quietly saw jails

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