4 78 
APPENDIX, N* II. 
upon the ground of a simple contract between the customer 
of Constantinople and the English factory, with the excep- 
tion of very few articles enumerated in the capitulations) , 
yet, for the sole reason above mentioned, Rashid EJfendi, 
then in office, voluntarily and formally exempted Mr. Liston 
from any farther discussion of the subject : a memorable 
instance of that exemplary good faith manifested by the 
Ottoman Government in the observance of treaties, and 
particularly shewing its equitable construction of their 
meaning relative to the English. 
“ Since the time when the Black Sea formed, as it were, 
a lake encircled by the Turkish territory, circumstances, 
unnecessary to trace here, have transferred a part of the 
Euxine coasts to Russia : and collateral causes have ren- 
dered the House of Austria participator in the same privi- 
lege of access to the Black Sea, although not possessing, 
like the former power, any territorial property in its shores. 
However natural it might be for any Power, which was solo 
possessor of the key of those inland waters, to conceive its 
duty, as guardian of the commerce and navigation of its 
subjects, best fulfilled by a rigid exclusion of strangers; yet, 
the ice once broken, by the admission of a single foreign 
flag, the arguments for the original system of monopoly 
not only cease to be tenable, but actually change their 
bearing in favour of another order of things ; whereby the 
excessive benefit of the first grantee shall be shared and 
subdivided with one or more competitors, leaving the parti- 
cular shades of their rivality out of the question. So far 
from the Turkish coasting-trade being interfered with by 
the direct voyages of foreign vessels, it is rather to be 
expected that the seamanship of the Ottoman mariners 
would be improved by the example of a naval nation like 
the English, and the ship-builders be advanced in their 
art by the inspection of more perfect models. The Govern- 
ment can always keep the concourse of foreign shipping 
