PALMERSTON POLICY. 493 



nople, she has looked upon Turkey as a prey that cannot escape the 

 talons of her Eagle ; and when the Imperial Autocrat ordered his fleet 

 to sail from Sevastopol for the Bosphorus, it was his own property 

 that he felt he was going to protect, and not that of the Sultan. 



The'other powers of Europe are alarmed, and justly so, at the ap- 

 pearance of the Muscovite flag before the walls of old Istambol, and 

 have loudly demanded their departure. But while they have sought 

 to repel the perfidious intervention of Russia, they have thought pro- 

 per themselves to interfere between Ibrahim, who has the whole 

 nation in his favour, and the Sultan Mahmoud, who has nothing left 

 but his divan and his court. Mahmoud has arrived at that pitch 

 when he can no longer reign but under the patronage of Russia. His 

 navy exists but in name ; his army is without chiefs, dispersed, demo- 

 ralized, and without one principle of re-organization in its ranks. 

 Surrounded by ignorant and corrupted counsellors deprived of the 

 advice of a single man of honesty or talent exposed to the deadly 

 hatred of his people troubled by unceasing revolts exhausted by 

 the tributes to which he is subject, Mahmoud has not a chance in his 

 favour. His remains of power, nay, even his life, are now at the 

 mercy of a popular tumult from which it would be difficult to gua- 

 rantee either one or the other. 



Whatever, therefore, may be the good-will of these powers, it is 

 utterly beyond their means to save both the Sultan and the empire 

 that time has gone by. It was in 1829, before the passage of the 

 Balkan by the Russian army, that their intervention might have pre- 

 served Turkey. The treaty of Adrianople marked the term of 

 Mahmoud's power, for since that period it has been but nominal. 



The fatal error of not intervening in 1829, we admit cannot be laid 

 at the door of the present ministers, for they were not then in 

 power ; but what we accuse them of is, not redeeming this over- 

 sight of our diplomacy, when a favourable opportunity presented it- 

 self. In fact the true policy of the great powers of Europe, is now to 

 support the Pacha of Egypt a policy, we admit, not of choice but 

 of necessity. Ought France to allow the Russians, those constant 

 enemies of her glory and her liberty, to establish themselves at Con- 

 tantinople ? Ought she to suffer to be compromised, the future pros- 

 pects of her Algerine colony, by allowing to be forcibly torn up those 

 seeds of civilization in Egypt, and at a moment when the glorious 

 career of re-civilizing the northern shores of Africa is before her ? 

 Again Can Austria see without fear and apprehension, the Russian 

 battalions upon her Eastern frontier ? What compensation, and what 

 guarantee can she hope from pursuing a I'outrance, her defensive 

 policy ? And lastly Is it the interest of Great Britain, that Russia 

 should seize a position so threatening to her Indian empire 

 two seas, locked like two basins, upon which, she might, in perfect 

 security, form and exercise a navy that may one day wrest from her 

 the trident of the seas ? What, to pursue our questions still further, 

 would then become of that European balance of power, which the 

 British, French, and Austrian cabinets are so desirous of maintain- 

 ingand of that kingdom of Greece, which, with so much difficulty 



