It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the events now taking place at Constantinople. The attention of every politician in Europe is fixed upon them. Above all, the English public ought clearly to understand the relation in which this country stands with Turkey, the nature of the mighty interests at stake, the magnitude of the question which may arrive at its solution tomorrow, or may impend during months, or even years.

A great and ancient empire, a member of the European states system, is rapidly passing away. Of this even the most indifferent speculators are at last convinced. No one pretends to doubt that the Ottoman power is falling. Influences are acting against it which its tottering frame and decrepit spirit cannot, by any possibility, withstand. Two of the principal governments of Europe are employing all the art and force at their disposal to undermine it. A third has lately sought to prevent the success of those intrigues by more unscrupulous intrigues of its own. A fourth—we mean Great Britain—though apparently resolved to maintain Turkey against external attack, seems utterly at a loss respecting the manner in which the inevitable result of her internal decay is to be provided for.

Meanwhile, it is certain that the catastrophe, whether we provide for it or not, is approaching. The Porte has not for a long period been independent. It has been under the protection of a British ambassador. Its integrity is virtually gone. Up to this moment, however, by advising and assisting, by patching and repairing, the mouldering fabric has been preserved erect, and our influence in Eastern Europe has enjoyed a just preponderance, because there was a state, nominally independent, on the shores of the Bosphorus. That security is now failing us. To foreign intrigue and aggression are added domestic corruptions, impoverishment, and disorganisation, so great that every statesman and journalist of any importance confesses the further existence of the Ottoman Empire, as it stands, to be utterly out of the question. We now have, in addition to the general information which previously existed on the subject, an important pamphlet, written “by One who has Resided in the Levant,” in which the writer exposes the true condition of the Turkish dominions. He shows that many false ideas have been propagated on this subject, and many such, we know, are circulated by the paid agents of the Porte. However, the author of Hints on the Solution of the Eastern Question removes any doubts which might have lingered in our minds. And what is his picture of the empire whose territories are soon to be disposed of? Its fleet is a mere show; its army is an ill-paid, undisciplined, and spiritless rabble; its finances are exhausted, and rendered more miserable through the attempt to replenish them by fraud; the pride of the nation is gone; the incapacity and peculation of officials are only equalled by the poverty and discontent of the people; a conflict of foreign factions has usurped the place of the legitimate government in the capital; open and irrepressible revolt is spreading in the provinces, and, instead of a single favourable sign appearing, every day brings the eruption of a new malady, and the exposure of new weakness.

Statesmen and merchants in Great Britain are alarmed. They exclaim that one more effort must be made to preserve the integrity of the Turkish empire, in order that Russian arms or politics may not sweep our influence, our commerce, and our interests as an empire out of Eastern Europe as well as the Mediterranean. We tell them they will lose their labour. The resuscitation of a dead power is hopeless. The Ottoman state is palsied, paralysed, fed upon already by insurrection and the territorial avarice of its neighbours. Therefore our diplomacy can avail nothing in this direction; we cannot prevent the fall of the Turkish empire. Fall it will, whether we assist or oppose. There remains, then, the question—how shall the inheritance bequeathed by this defunct government be disposed of? The distribution of it among Russia, Austria, France, and Great Britain is proposed. To that we have more than one answer. It would be morally iniquitous. It would disarrange the whole balance of Europe. It could not well be effected; and, even if it were, would infallibly lead to future wars. Chiefly, however, we insist that it would be a flagitious crime, against which the sense of this age would revolt. No one who supports the idea ought ever again to say one word condemning the partition of Poland and the annexation of Cracow. Besides, difficulties almost insuperable present themselves at the very first contemplation of the idea, even if we omit the argument that it would be the worst policy for a free country like ours to add millions of population and the area of many ancient kingdoms to increase the mass of humanity already suffering under the despotism of Austria, Russia, and France.

There remains, then, but one alternative, which is proposed by “One who has Resided in the Levant,” and has been accepted by our leading journalists. This is the erection of a Christian state upon the ruins of the Ottoman monarchy. The Greeks, as the most numerous, the best civilised, the most intelligent, and the least prejudiced people in Eastern Europe, would, of course, form the basis of the new arrangement; and an independent powerful Greek government might be set up in place of an effete and crumbling despotism, which threatens every hour to fall, and overwhelm in its descent the tranquillity of the world. The Greeks have already the focus of a state. They are the rightful possessors of the country which it is now proposed to restore to them, and they were only deprived of those countries by an invasion like that of a banditti. The establishment of a free Greek power in the present dominions of the Porte, appears, therefore, the only facile and safe solution of this formidable question.

Commercially, nothing could be more advantageous to Great Britain than such an arrangement as this. Politically, it would be of utmost benefit, because a real barrier would thus be erected against the tide of Russian power, and the gates of the east would be once more secure. As it is, our influence throughout Western Asia and Eastern Europe, and even our position in India, stand ready to be shaken by the first collision of national interests in the Dardanelles. The development of our trade is slow, and the amount of our manufactures consumed comparatively small. We are pledged to uphold a state which cannot continue to exist, and which, in the religion, manners, interest, and opinions of its ruling nationality, is completely dissevered from our own. If we seek to ensure perpetuity to a system like this, plainly the result will be that we shall disgrace ourselves, without benefiting our protégé. Treaties are valuable because they are the depositions of the agreements of nations under a common public law, but there is a law paramount to treaties, and the moment we attempt to oppose our conventions to the course of nature, our diplomacy becomes worse than contemptible. —Sunday Times.

“The erection of a Christian state upon the ruins of the Ottoman monarchy,” and that state “an independent, powerful Greek government,” opposed to Russian aggression, is an “alternative” beyond the compass of possibility. The progress of the northern king is not to be stayed by such a device as this. He is by faith already Greek; and when he comes against Stamboul, he will establish a state upon the ruins of the Moslem empire, that will be as independent, powerful, and Greek, as “our leading journalists” can wish; but not anti-Russian, as they would fondly hope. A Greco-Roman dominion sceptred by the “Prince of Ros, Mosc, and Tobl,”—Russia, Moscovy, and Tobolski—is the “Christian state” soon to be founded “upon the ruins of the Ottoman monarchy.” The Bible declares this, and the opposition of France and England will only expedite the catastrophe. It is truly cheering to see the end approaching. A few years will place Nebuchadnezzar’s Image upon its feet among the mountains of Israel, with the Greek element embodied in its “belly and thighs of brass.” Then “will I raise up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and make thee, O Zion, as the sword of a mighty man, saith Jehovah. And the Lord shall be seen over them, and Ephraim shall go forth as the lightning; and the Lord God shall blow the trumpet, and shall go forth with whirlwinds of the south.” Coming events cast their shadows before. The “alternative” of “our leading journalists” is one of these shadowy forms. The Greek state will come up; but they must accept it as presented to the world by one who is destined to move the heart of Britain as British hearts were never moved before.

EDITOR.

JUNE 17 1853.

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