PART II.

THE LEVANT AND RED SEA.

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CHAPTER I.

Commercial Resources and Legislation of Turkey.

THE Greek Byzantine Emperors, whom the populace of Constantinople raised at pleasure to the throne, or hurled into the dust, had above all things to provide-cheap bread. The neighbouring provinces were consequently prohibited from exporting wheat; but this, like all other attempts against nature, instead of supplying the capital, depressed and exasperated the provinces, and ended by ruining the Empire.

The Turkish system was simplicity itself; it enacted by law, and sealed by religion, that rule of administration which belongs to the earliest times. Unfortunately, however, the Greek system was not entirely blotted out with the Greek Empire, and, without the necessity, the Sultans followed the practice of their predecessors, so far as to prohibit the exportation of grain.

This state of things lasted 376 years, from 1453 till 1829, when, after many ages of security, Constantinople was once more placed between foes on the North and South, traffic by sea was stopped, and she was in want of bread. She had still the two continents open, but the corn administration (Moubaya), invented to feed the capital, blockaded it as effectually by land as the Russian squadrons by sea. Under the presence of absolute famine the old laws were suspended, and instantly pienty reappeared.

Since Russia obtained access to the Black Sea, her attenion has been given to the cultivation of wheat. Her soil, her climate, the distance at which she is placed, a difficult navigation, and a frozen sea during several months of the year, presented to such an enterprise great obstacles: the Bosphorus, too, was then dosed d against, this comm commerce, Her perseverance has triumphed over all, even to the causing of the prohibition to be repealed by the Porte for the passage outward of her corn, while for that of Turkey it was retained in force. Across the narrow arrow seas of t of the Ottomans, and between their vast uncultivated plains, Russia sent her cargoes to the markets of Europe, received in return those monies which place her in the position to aim at the empire of a' reasoning but stupid age- -a warlike but venal world.

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The Turkish Empire is composed of countries that in former times were the most flourishing on earth. The conditions of the tenure of land, the relations between proprietor and occupier, present no systematic impediment to prosperity. It t possesses the most remarkable natural facilities for transport. The sea, which only washes the borders of other states, penetrates into its centre, and gives it a maritime coast of about 1200 leagues, or twice and a half that of England, and five times that of France. The rivers communicating with these seas traverse the most fertile regions. Egypt has her Nile the rich plains of Syria touch or approach the sea coast, reaching the Gulf of Acre to the south, and joining the Orontes on the north; to the east flows the Euphrates. The mountain chains of Asia Minor run all east and west, so as to allow the plains and watercourses to penetrate from the sea to the interior; by the four rivers that run to the west and the two that run to the north, the elements are afforded of a system of internal water-carriage through its whole extent. Roumelia is traversed by the great artery of Central Europe, the Danube, which a canal of five leagues would cover with craft, letting the Black Sea into the land, carrying it right up to Hungary, and so uniting to the Bosphorus, the repose and prosperity of the Austrian Empire.

These provinces are placed under the most happy sky: they neither know the rigours of winter, nor the intensity of summer: a frugal and docile population of nearly forty millions is sprinkled over a soil not yet broken to labour, or fashioned by art.

With such a surface for the growth of corn, with such facilities for its transport, Turkey would unquestionably have seized upon the commerce of the world, if the sentence had not gone forth against her: "You shall not traffic in the stores of your granaries, the flax shall dry upon the stalk, the olive shall rot under its tree, the forests shall never descend from the mountains, nor the brass and iron, the gold and silver, emerge from their entrails." This sentence the Sultan Mahmoud undertook to reverse, but the times were no longer when an Ottoman Sultan was his own master. He did not dare to say to his people, "Enjoy the gifts of Providence ;" he did not dare to say to the nations, "Come and trade with my people.

Turkey nevertheless had for the basis of her system freedom of trade: this freedom was avowed and consecrated in

A recent work on Turkey has the following:

"If some of our enterprising countrymen, acquainted with commercial pursuits were to visit these provinces of European Turkey, they would find a rich field, as yet unexplored: I found a most anxious desire on the part of the inhabitants to establish a more intimate commercial connection with Great Britain for the disposal of their timber, corn, and cattle, which seemed to lie upon their hands without the possibility of a sale.

"In the interior of Bulgaria and Upper Moesia, the low prices of provisions and cattle of every description is almost fabulous compared with the prices of Western Europe. A fat sheep or lamb usually costs from eighteenpence to two shillings, an ox forty shillings, cows thirty shillings, and a horse, in the best possible travelling condition, from four to five pounds sterling. Wool, hides, tallow, wax, and honey, are equally low. In the town and hans by the road side, everything is sold by weight; you can get a pound of meat for a halfpenny, a pound of bread for the same, and wine, which is also sold by weight, costs about the same money."

the treaties with all countries. The productions of foreigners were not loaded with duties; she did not wage a war of exchange against her neighbours; she did not dream of the protection of national industry; the talons of the fisc did not gripe salt and tobacco; and no octroi blockaded the dwellings of men.

Whence the mysterious contrast? Why this monstrous yoking of a living man and a carcass? The cause is explained by its effects in Turkey nothing could be bought that Russia sold; but for all articles which Russia did not sell, the markets were open without stint or limit. This prohibition has made Russia what she is; it was a singular effect of her greatest military triumph, that the war which placed in her hands the second capital of the empire ended with reversing the balance between the victor and the vanquished; for after the removal of the restriction on the corn trade occasioned by the pressure of her blockade, no European vessel would have passed on to the Black Sea, but would have laden on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The reimposition of the restriction was now a new enterprise, and its accomplishment a new victory: it was achieved in the Treaty of Adnoupe, by means of a stipulation for unlimited freedom of trade. Every Russian, or every subject of the Porte, who chose to go to Odessa for a passport, or to seek the protection of a Russian consulate, might traffic far and near free from all charges, save that of the nominal Russian tariff. Russia at the time had not one native subject or merchant in Turkey, but soon the whole country was 'covered with her "subjects;" they possessed themselves of all the channels of industry; they broke through the whole order of administration; every difference was solved in their favour by a threat, for to this commercial stipulation Russia had appended for any remissness or neglect the unparalleled penalty of "reprisals."* The Porte at last fell back on

VIIth Article of the Treaty of Adrianople.--Russian subjects will enjoy throughout the whole extent of the Ottoman Empire, as

Prohibition; the old capitulations, while they conferred on strangers the privilege to come to buy and sell whatever they chose, were not enunciations of principles but merely grants of favour, and they specially reserved the right of prohibiting the exportation of any article in cases of scarcity. The revival of such a pretension may appear a very weak device, and one which would only expose Turkey to new humiliations and embarrassments. The prohibition of the article was of course with a view to the sale of firmans for its exportation, those who purchased them stood in the light of servants of the government. As article after article came thus to be monopolised, the dissensions with Russia were brought to a close by the extinction of the trade out of which they had originated, or by the transfer of the individuals from the class of Russian subjects to that of Turkish farmers. The Treaty of Adrianople was now more flagrantly violated than by the small abnormal duties hitherto imposed; nevertheless the terrors of the "casus belli" clause were

well on land as at sea, the full and entire liberty of Commerce which the Treaties assure to them. The liberty cannot be infringed in any case or under any pretext, by any prohibition or restriction of whatever kind, nor as the consequence of any regulation or measures whether of interior administration or legislation. The Russian subjects' ships of merchandise shall be protected against every violence and every fraud. The first will remain under the exclusive jurisdiction and police of the Minister and Consuls of Russia; the Russian vessels will never be subjected to any visit on board whatever, on the part of the Ottoman authorities, neither in the open sea, nor in any of its ports or anchorages, and merchandise or produce belonging to the Russian subjects, after having acquitted the duties established by the tariff shall be freely sold, deposited or transported, from one vessel to another, whatever nation that vessel may belong to, without the Russian subject having need to notify the fact to the local autho rities, and still less to ask them their permission; and if, which God forbid, any one of these stipulations should be infringed without full and prompt satisfaction being made, the Sublime Porte recognises beforehand, the right of the Russian Court to consider such infraction an act of hostility, and to have récourse immediately to reprisals against the Ottoman Empire.