 Unfortunately, it will be difficult to discover any direct evidence against him...(His) ambition and passion for intrigue verify one's conception of the worst specimen of a medieval ecclesiastic".Lord Dufferin, writing to Her Majesty's Secretary of State Lord Russell on 19 December 1860, stated that Tobia Aoun exercised a "sinister influence" in Lebanon, and that his "withdrawal from Beirut was insisted upon as a necessary preliminary to all chance of peace".In this dispatch, Lord Dufferin insinuates that Tobia Aoun is responsible for the 20,000 pistols imported directly into Lebanon between 1857 and 1860.