_Sept. 9._ _Friday._--Every thing continues still increasing in price, and in an increased ratio the sufferings of the poor: if they leave the city they are stripped and driven back; if they remain they are starved; and even the dates are just come to an end, upon which for near three weeks, both the people and the cattle have been feeding. The Pasha has this day taken the jewels of his wives to sell, from which and some other signs, I am led to think his course is nearly run, and that ere long he will follow the fate of his predecessor. Ali Pasha told the Suffian-Effendi, who went out to him to endeavour to accommodate matters, that he had come for one head only, but that after the way in which he had been treated, he would not be satisfied with less than _ten_; and if, at that time, which was nearly a month ago, he had determined to take ten, I fear a hundred would not now satisfy him.
A poor Roman Catholic priest was with me to-day, telling me of his distress, while one of his opulent flock was sitting by him. He said the Jews would not allow their poor to beg from others; by which I thought he meant to give a pretty intelligible hint that his flock ought to be ashamed. But his rich hearer only said, "The Lord is merciful, and he will provide." On this side the desert, the professing Christians are not certainly priest-ridden as they are in most Roman Catholic countries, or even on the other side of the desert, in consequence of there being no powerful and wealthy communities like the monasteries in Mount Lebanon, to bring down the heavy arm of the Turks upon them; for without the Turks they can do little, and these petty governments joyfully interfere in their strifes to extort money from both parties, though in this respect, Bagdad has been better off than most Pashalics for nearly sixty years past, since the time of Suliman Pasha, whose slave the present Pasha was, but liberated on his death. Since him there have been Ali Pasha, Suliman Pasha the younger, Abdallah Pasha, and Seyd Pasha, all of whom have been murdered after a longer or shorter period. Daoud Pasha has now been fourteen years in possession of the power he obtained by the murder of his predecessor, and seems now not far from sharing the same fate.