TURKISII POLITICS: TIIE FINALE.
IN July 1839, immediately after the death of Sultan MAHMOUD, MEHEMET ALI intrigued with the party at Constantinople opposed to KHOSREFF Pasha, for the purpose of getting himself appointed Vizier. He nearly succeeded : but for the counter-intrigues of Lord PONSONBY and other European diplomatists, there is every reason to believe he would have succeeded. By thus attaching MEHEMET ALI to the service of the Porte—by employing to con- solidate the Ottoman power the chief whose ability to weaken it had been experienced—the empire might have been reorganized. The experiment has been successfully made again and again, both in feudal Europe and in various Mahoinetan States. But Lord PALMERSTON would not allow it to be tried : Lord P.anntsawrow ordained that MEtrEmET Ant must be crushed. Two years have elapsed; blood has been lavishly shed at Acre and else- where ; almost a whole army has been killed by famine and disease in evacuating Syria; Syria has been reduced to a state of anarchy : how stand matters at Constantinople in July 1841 ? We quote from the Morning Chronicle, a supporter of Lord PAL.. MERSTON and his policy—" The Divan seems resolved, after having made the moat of its European allies, now to turn round and con- ciliate its potent enemy Mehemet Ali, nay to make use of him as a support, if not as a General and Minister of the empire. The policy, if ably acted upon on one side and honestly agreed to on the other, might not prove a bad one." So the wisdom of' Lord PALMERSTON and his colleagues has brought it to this, that much money has been spent, much human suffering occasioned, and Europe driven to the verge of a general war, in order that an ar- rangement, about to be made by the Turkish Government in 1839, might be concluded two years later, under less promising circum- stances !
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