interpreter, who is to be present to protect their rights. That is the value of the word "protection;" it means no more than the right of having a certain advocate or attorney. The Capitulations with France allowed her in this manner to protect other persons, not her subjects, being without natural protectors; but these persons were not subjects of Turkey, they were "certain Latin priests." No stipulation was required to obtain this right. Turkey refuses it to none. A private individual may exercise it: any foreigner may claim such protection from any foreign agent. France, however, made use of this purely fictitious right, carrying it to the extent of deporting the so-favoured individuals, and, in her very admirable instructions in 1792 to her consuls in the Levant, these functionaries are required to send out of the country any of those Latin priests who rendered themselves obnoxious by intermeddling in local politics, so as not to compromise the French Government with the Turkish.

I think, Sir, you will now apprehend the bearing of a general, vague, and abstract right of interference with nearly 20,000,000 of Turkish subjects in Europe and Asia-for Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Catholics, &c. will be practically included. You will perceive that the more vague, the more unmeaning the contract or note may be made, by so much will it be the more dangerous; if any of your readers do not apprehend it, their eyes may be opened by an illustration.

Suppose that the Emperor of the French had obtained a similar sanction in England, and could make it apply in the same manner to Catholics,-then, if a question of a Catholic trust came for adjudication before the Lord Chancellor, the French Consul would take his place beside the gentlemen with silk gowns, and so argue the case, to the disgust alike of the bench and the bar; if, notwithstanding his science and eloquence, the Chancellor demurred to the view taken in the instructions from Paris, the matter would be immediately transferred from Westminster to Downing-street, there to be decided between the French Ambassador and the English Foreign Minister. In this analogy we must suppose a French fleet with an army of disembarkation at Dover, the entrance of the Thames open and unguarded, and the other Powers of Europe consenting parties to the general arrangement, and, moreover, with their navies locked up in the Black Sea or the

Baltic, having bound themselves by treaty not to use their physical preponderance in passing those limits. What, I ask, would be the condition of the internal Government of England, what the burning indignation in the heart of every Protestant against the detested Catholic name? Would you not have Lord George Gordon mobs-would you not have assassinations and burnings, to justify, by this explosion of Protestant fanaticism, the bombardment of London? Would you not have the Catholics of England turning to the Emperor of the French, even although he had officiated in lieu of the Archbishop of Paris, and had told his flock, striking his forehead with his fist, as did Peter the First, "Here henceforward is your Pope and your God!"

The object of the Emperor of the French would be the creation of a body of partisans; his instructions consequently would be, always to support a Catholic claim, and always to oppose a Protestant one; the cases would not be confined to those of corporate rights and administration, but would extend to every individual interest-not merely as in conflict with other individuals, but as regards the payment of taxes, the jurisdiction of rulers as well as of courts, and would apply to every quarrel in the streets. Reverting to the case of Turkey under the approaching settlement, which I call upon you to labour to prevent, such an incident as this might and will arise.

The Ambassadors of England and Russia are seated to→ gether in a room in the "cross street" of Pera: a row takes place below; a Turk has knocked off the cap of a Greek, or the Greek has stabbed the Turk, and is seized by the officers of justice: the Russian Ambassador starts up, exclaims, "This is unbearable," and calls out to his janissaries to go and rescue the Greek. "Oh!" exclaims the English Ambassador, "you have no right to exercise an exclusive influence; we are to clog you." Yes," replies the other, "it is a common note, and, therefore, you are bound also to interfere. If you do not perform your duty, you cannot prevent me from performing mine; it remains for you but to thank me for relieving you from the performance of the engagements you have contracted."

The course which I have here described is exactly that which the British Ambassador would himself take in reference to a British subject. When one of the 8,000 so-called persons resid

ing in Turkey happen, as is not unfrequent, to assassinate a Turk, he is taken out of the hands of the native authorities, is sent to Malta for trial, is acquitted for want of evidence, and can in three months return to assassinate another. It is the same with respect to all minor crimes.

The matter will not rest with, as the case may be, the defence of the injured or the liberation of the culprit. The Turkish Government and the Turkish people have been accustomed to submit to such proceedings in reference to foreigners, but they will draw between these and this interference in regard to natives, a distinction not visible to European diplomatist. The courts of law will resist; the Porte may resist too, the people will rise; blood will be shed, one or two Russian cavashes will be killed, perhaps also an attaché, or a consul or two; and then it will be a case for reprisals. Observe that Russia, in the Treaty of Adrianople, has given herself a right of reprisals, not for the payment of debt, but as the penalty of any alleged violation of stipulations; that these reprisals are not to be a sequestration of property, but acts of war. Observe that there lies a capital exposed to bombardment, and a squadron ready for bombarding it, a tanto, and with water and provisions on board, at the extreme point of the Russian territory nearest to the entrance of the Bosphorus, the distance being 200 miles, the wind almost always favourable, and the sea across which they would have to pass relieved by the treaty of 1841, "for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire," from the possibility of the inconvenient presence of the men-of-war of other States. Such is the action that has to be clogged by an interference that sanctions it.

Such is the immunity from punishment which you are now about to establish for 20,000,000 of men, no longer foreigners resident on sufferance, but the natives of the land, who are henceforward to see in the Emperor of Russia a type of freedom, such as never entered into the dreams of a sans culotte. Thus is anarchy to be enthroned-to involve, in the first instance, the Powers of the West in an intervention on its soil, leading to a war between themselves,-then and then only can the Dardanelles be occupied.

The present arrangement may not realise all, but the door is opened from the moment that any condition is attached to the evacuation of the Principalities. They must be evacuated unconditionally, an indemnity must be paid to Turkey, other

securities must be taken; into which the length of this letter prevents my at present entering. But, Sir, you may rest assured that if the powers can be brought to agree in any stipulation whatever, bearing this way, a danger is incurred a thousandfold greater than the passage of the Pruth; and if the withdrawal of that army be necessary to obtain this stipulation, most certainly will it be withdrawn.

In the meantime, the Russian troops will have consumed the harvest, and thereby open in England a market for Russian grain, drawing into Russia some millions of money, and adding to the receipts of the treasury 15 per cent. upon the exports. A small profit of £5,000,000 or £6,000,000 will have been made for the moment at the expense of the British artizan; and next year, on some new complication, she will return on other grounds. And this is the most favourable view of the case.

You have long professed a lively interest in the fate of Turkey, you have long recognized the maintenance of that Empire as at once the most important, and the only permanent interest of England, connected as it is, and alone is, at once with the maintenance of the peace of Europe and of your supremacy in India; but you have been alarmed lest that empire should not be able to maintain itself, and you have deplored as the cause of its danger the misuse of its resources, the dilapidation of its military power, and the disaffection of its Christian subjects. At one and the same moment you are startled with the discovery that it actually supplies to Europe one-third of its enormous consumption of grain; that it possesses a magnificent army of incomparable spirit; but, above all, that its Christian subjects are not the dupes of its enemy, and not united in faith to Russia. Are you now overjoyed in the sense of the security you have regained? No! each discovery falls on you only as an embarrassment; each evidence of Turkish strength, by leading to resistance, has become an annoyance. You apply yourselves first to extinguish her trade; secondly, to nullify her army, and to convert it into a source of danger by sanctioning invasion, and proclaiming peace; and you are about, thirdly, to force the whole mass of Christian Rayahs, as you did the Greeks in 1826, into dependence on the enemy you dread, and the protector they abhor! Such conduct exhausts the most powerful feelings of the human breast-contempt and

indignation; it surpasses in its bootless iniquity, almost the conceptive faculties of man. How can you thwart Russia's plans, you who cannot comprehend your own acts.

Your task, Sir, has but commenced; the siege operations of a century and a half have now been completed, the zigzags and trenches dug, the third parallel drawn, the silent labour of spade and mattock is at an end, the breaching batteries are unmasked, the assault is carried to the foot of the walls, the fabric of European power totters, the time of foresight is gone by, the struggle has come, and we who live on the earth shall see with our eyes and feel in our bodies the drama performed and the penalty inflicted.

TIME IN DIPLOMACY-THE "EUROPEAN RECOGNITION."

August 11th.

SIR, I have to express to you my gratitude for the insertion of my letter of yesterday, by means of which you have enabled me to put within reach of those to whom the management of affairs is confided, warning beforehand. After the event, words are useless; the still voice of reason, the whisper of truth, or the storm of public rage and opinion are equally in vain. In the Agorai of Greece, and the Senate of Rome, the Ambassadors of Foreign Powers were introduced to make their statement in open debate, with those of the other party, to hear and to reply; but now all is managed in whispers ; and, instead of knowledge preceding counsel, it is concealment. The only chance of arresting evil measures is predicting them so that they may see that to be a snare laid for them by others, which they imagined to be a profound combination of their own.

This habit of secresy superinduces in the nation heedlessness of causes in operation and excitation upon events. All they care for is news, and consequently they never think upon a subject until it is too late for any advantage to be derived from their reflections.

On the present occasion the Russian Cabinet has pushed