Page images
PDF
EPUB

colleagues, but truth is always useful, and take care to make us acquainted with it.

you will

of

The means which your situation affords you often ascertaining the real policy of other Cabinets towards us, heightens the importance of your functions, and of your despatches.

Another field presents itself for your observations. You will arrive at Constantinople at a moment when the Sovereign is bringing about reforms there, which attack at the same time all the institutions of his states, the customs of his people, and the individual interests of many millions of his subjects. They cost his predecessor his throne and his life.

The present Sultan pursues them with more force, and his means are terror or death. But if a re-action ever takes place it will bear the same character. It will involve the extermination of the reigning dynasty, it will produce a frightful anarchy; and when one considers that the reforms have been commenced with the finances in a state of embarrassment, amidst symptoms of progressive decay, and that the Grand Seignior smothers in oceans of blood the projects of revolt, which nevertheless seem daily to revive,-it is difficult to

believe that his reign and his government will be of long duration.

Russia can on no hypothesis regard so vast an undertaking with indifference, and one of your chief duties will be to watch the different effects of it with the greatest attention. If the Sultan succeeds, this success may for a time retemper, so to speak, the Turkish Government, and give it a confidence in its strength which Russia would immediately feel the effects of.

This is an additional reason for accustoming the Turks from henceforth to show us a proper respect, to ensure for ourselves, by a scrupulous execution of our treaties, the consideration which ought always to be our appanage at Constantinople, and to hasten the pacification of Greece,

If this same undertaking fails, it may bring about the fall of the Ottoman Empire. We should then see the accomplishment of one of the greatest events of history, an event involving for us the gravest interests.

It is absolutely necessary that such a revolution should not take us by surprise, and your Excellency will have deserved well of your Sovereign, and of your country, if you inform us of the precur

sive signs of this catastrophe sufficiently in time to enable the Emperor to prepare his measures, and to exercise an influence proportionate to the dignity, and to the wants of Russia, on the political combinations which might replace the empire of the Crescent. We shall take care to send your Excellency further instructions, as soon as we learn the results of our explanations with the Cabinet of London.

(Signed)

NESSELRODE.

THIRD INSTALMENT OF THE GREEK LOAN.

In one of our earliest Numbers we stated, that "in the East, and especially in Greece, Lord Grey's "Cabinet left Russia absolutely nothing to de"sire." If any thing could add to our regret, that we should have been hitherto prevented from laying before the world the tragical history of that unfortunate country, Greece, it would be the rumour that the Governments of England and France are about to pay the third instalment of the loan guaranteed to King Otho, by the treaty of May 7th, 1832. Our first impression on hearing it was, that the anarchy and civil war to which Greece is a prey, had awakened in our rulers those feelings of generosity so peculiarly British, and that the Cabinet of England, with that ignorance and inattention to the past history of Greece, which has uniformly marked every act connected with that country, has again imagined that pecuniary means are really all that is requisite to restore to Greece order, security, and good govern

ment.

We assert, without fear of contradiction, that the main cause of all the miseries of Greece, since the battle of Navarin, has been our having, in the first place, given any money at all to the Governments of Greece; and, secondly, in having uniformly contrived to place the disposal of that money in the hands of a foreign, and anti-national faction in that country.

Our readers will be surprised at hearing, that not only the Greek nation has never applied to any foreign Government whatsoever for a pecuniary loan, but that the National Assembly, which confirmed the election of King Otto, expressly stated, that the previous recognition of the national debt, due to the British Capitalists, was the only step calculated to secure to Greece a true political existence, and that a British Minister, by one single act in opposition to that Assembly, destroyed the credit of Greece, and simultaneously committed his country to the irremediable sacrifice of three millions sterling.

The sagacity and financial intelligence of the Primates of the Morea, as exemplified in all the State Papers of that interesting people, enabled them at once to see the fundamental and fatal

« PreviousContinue »