left to slumber. Russia ceased to be the patron of liberty of commerce, sacrificed her protegés, retracted her demands, and smoothed down her countenance. "Her end was gained."*

But at this moment the Ottomon Empire, shaken from without and agitated from within, was floating upon the tide of experiment: if old institutions were in danger, habitual abuses had also lost their hold. The results of 1829 could not be forgotten: the incessant vexations connected with trade, surrounded the doors of every minister with hosts of harassing supplicants; disorder would not be silenced, the precariousness of the position in reference to Russia by the very measures into which she had driven them, could not fail to obtrude itself upon graver minds. Above all the necessities of the Sultan, then intently engaged in creating an army, forced the Divan to devise, or at least to listen to schemes by which the restoration of commerce might be made subservient to the replenishing of the Treasury.† Thus arose the proposal made by Turkey, who had never before proposed any novelty, and the mission of a special Ambassador to England with no less an object than the revision of the whole system of commercial legislation.

At this time, England's trade with her ancient customers had been cut off, by the avowal of her minister, the ancient channels had been blocked up, and she required to bring new trafficing worlds into existence. The countries of the Con

See "England, France, Russia, and Turkey," where these facts will be found published, in 1835, under the sanction of the then English Ambassador at Constantinople. It has been urged on me by persons who would be esteemed the first authorities in the matter that I am wholly mistaken in attributing Russia's conduct on this occasion to such deep design, or indeed to any design at all; and that it is to be explained by the fact that these Apaltators, were chiefly Russian agents, and that largely profiting in the system, had found means to induce the Russian Government to overlook it. All I can say is, that in this case, as in many others, accident favours the skilful, as fortune does the brave.

+ This idea was afterwards followed in the Budget of 1841, when it was proposed to meet a deficiency by a reduction of taxes.

tinent had in peace combined to make commercial war on this nation, which, during the last struggle, had saved most of them from subjugation, subsidised while protecting them, and had been in the hour of victory as heedless of her interests, as in that of danger, she had been prodigal of her blood. Mistaken theories in some, political animosities in others, in many both conjoined, had prompted a blockade of customhouses, inflicting loss, implanting notions inimical to her prosperity and feelings dangerous to her power.

Against this concert we had striven by arguments, professions, statistics, and reduction; we appealed to resemblances of manners, community of science and literature, friendly recollections for benefits conferred, gratitude from Dynasties, who owed to us their thrones or their existencewe planned thirty-two commercial treaties; but all in vain. Repulsed and discomfited, we turned from the East to the West, and from the North to the South. The House of Brunswick arrayed all Germany in a hostile league, sympathetic France rejected our yarns subsidies, auxiliaries, and all the muskets in the Tower could obtain no hospitality for our wares, from the Houses of Bourbon and Braganza: the new continent, rivalling meanwhile, the antipathies of the old, was equally deaf to the charms of Downing Street. At last, sick of defeats, and worn with toil, the President of the Board of Trade exclaimed, amid the cheers and laughter of the House, "Thank God, we have done with commercial treaties."

How now stood the matter with Turkey? What sympathy had we to expect who had attempted to burn her capital, who stood the avowed patron of her revolted subjects and the close ally of her deadly foe? Whose professed community of interest, had ever been exhibited in hostility of act? We burdened with duty her wares, and refused her reciprocity, who alone in Europe, or the world, gave free admission to our industry, who suffered us to enjoy the carrying trade of her coasts, conceded to us the faculty of internal traffic, and permitted to our subjects settled in her dominions the exercise

1

of every municipal, commercial, and judicial function, un shackled, unwatched, and untaxed.

Turkey and Russia stand in commercial legislation, as the north and south poles. The one prohibits nearly all the manufactures of England, and seeks to enforce the imports of her raw produce; the other admits all the manufactures of England and prohibits the export of her raw produce. The foreign merchant in Russia is surrounded and hampered by the most minute and oppressive restrictions: he is in every point inferior to the native. The foreign merchant in Turkey enjoys the fullest immunities, and is placed above the native. The Russian system is the result of no theories, it is a mere calculation as to how commerce is to be used for political purposes. The Turkish system, in as far as it is restrictive, proceeds from no theories, but is the result of the success of Russia in interfering with her internal regulations. Turkey is engaged in no design against any neighbour to carry thither either political influence or restrictive system. Russia is engaged in designs against all her neighbours, and wherever she esta blishes her power, there follows her system. Against Russia England takes no step, either to enlighten the people or to resist the Government; but favours her commerce, befriends her political ends, lends to her the whole weight of her power to support her aggressions, and extend her system. Yet these two systems stood in balance because the two empires did so, and we ought have thought of Turkey a little while, serving Russia so much. With her activity pervading the world England had no time to consider what might be effected with the empire through which flowed the Danube, and the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; which held in its hands the Isthmus of Suez and the Strait of the Dardanelles; which extended from the torrid zone to the snows of the Caucasus, from the Adriatic to the Persian Gulf, whose dominions in Europe, Africa, and Asia (exclusive of Arabia), equalled France, Germany, Italy, and Spain; which was all agricul tural, and where freedom of trade was the law of the State. This empire had to come to her to propose that mutual

abolition of restriction which she in vain had been preaching all round the globe.

This appeal, strange to say, was not from the Porte to the English Government, but from Sultan Mahmoud to William the Fourth. The Ambassador was charged to say :

"The Sublime Porte, who appreciates and esteems at its true value the importance of these relations with one of the most enlightened and powerful nations of the world, knows also, Sire, that they have already secured the attention of your Majesty, and doubts not that a benevolent system of reciprocity will soon come to be con sidered by the Government of your Majesty as a means of fortifying and increasing that desirable union which exists between these two high Courts."

So that it would appear that the Turkish Government relied more on the friendship of the King, than on the principles of the Administration.

To the Porte it was not a simple matter of regulation : had it been so, it needed not to send to England. It was a delicate and precarious negotiation, in which it was essential to succeed if once they adventured upon a step; their position was alarmingly insecure at home, they were under the Treaty of Hunkiar Skelessi, and the Russian debt was unliquidated. They could not venture on a rupture with Russia without the assurance of the support of England, and without that support so assured beforehand, they knew by hard experience that a rupture with Russia would be a rupture with England. They wished then that England would make one of those proposals to them, that

she was scattering over the earth, so that they might appear only to consent

CHAPTER II.

Negotiations with Turkey.

BETWEEN the period when this mission was planned, and that when it arrived in England a discouraging change of administration had taken place. The party favourable to Free Trade had fallen from power, and the Duke of Wellington, whom the nations of the East had been taught to consider as a servant of the Emperor, was Prime Minister.* The two grounds of hope were thus cut off, and it proved impossible to effect anything. I owe it, however, to the Duke of Wellington to say, that he neither closed the door to discussions, nor wrapped himself up in mystery and reserve! He entered frankly into the subject, and even laboriously perused statements of the case both with reference to the matters of trade and with respect to the means of political existence of that empire; and then rejected the overtures upon two grounds: First, his theoretic opinions upon taxation which were in favour of those upon trade; secondly, on his conclusion, which nothing could shake, that Turkey was past salvation. He hesitated not to charge upon Lord Grey the ruin of that Empire in his admission of the Treaty of Adrianople, and subsequently of that of Hunkiar Skelessi. That, however deplorable such a result might be,

*The change of Administration was announced from St. Peters burgh in these terms: A marshal of the Emperor is now minister in England."

+ Lord Grey with whom discussions were simultaneously carried on, concurred with the Duke of Wellington in his opinion respecting Turkey, but attributed to him the catastrophe, saying, that it had been sacrificed by his own misjudgment of the war of 1828, and the conduct of the Government of which he was a member during that

war.