The Evangelical Alliance recently sent a deputation to Turkey to
complain of the persecution of some Christian converts, who have been seized by the conscription, and the deputation de- manded a personal audience of the Sultan. The Papal Nuncio, who is in theory an Ambassador, had had one, and were not they as good as a Papal Nuncio ? Sultans, however, dislike lectures ; the audience was refused, and the Alliance is so angry that on Tuesday it sent a deputation to the Foreign Office. Lord Derby was just the man for them. He was all for freedom of opinion, and especially of religious opinion ; he thought their facts correct, though there was a conflict of evidence about some of them ; he had interfered on behalf of the persons seized, to get them trans- ferred to regiments in which Christians were serving, and it would never do to exempt converts because they were converts ; and after all, Orientals were not Europeans, and not to be judged as if they
were. There was no answer to so much common sense, and the deputation went away sadly, having greatly impaired their own prestige by mixing up a case of religious persecution—on which they seem to be in the right—with a mere affront to their own dignity on which they are in the wrong. Why should a Sultan receive unaccredited persons from a foreign country who are going to scold him for transactions he knows nothing whatever about? They saw the Grand Vizier.
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