The Mahommedans of Bengal are raising subscriptions for the Sultan,
and have addressed a memorial to the Queen, in which they say they have heard with apprehension that efforts are being made in England to overthrow the Ministry, because they wish to defend the Sultan, and they wish to represent that the majority of the Mussulmans in India look upon him as God's Vice-gerent. They therefore beg her Majesty not to alter her policy. The petition, which is full of arguments minimising the atrocities in Bulgaria, reads as if it had been written by some English Tory in Calcutta who had received a hint that the Lieu- tenant-Governor wished to render the Cabinet some sort of aid, and the answer to its prayer is nearly final. This country ex- pended an army and thirty millions in defending the Sultan in the Crimean war, and was rewarded by a mutiny, having for its avowed object the restoration of the Indian Mahommedans to their ascendency under the Mongol House of Tiroour, and the expulsion of the British from the Empire. That Mabom- medans in India wish Mahommedans to triumph in Europe is likely enough and natural enough, but that their sympathy is more active than the sympathy, say, of Italian Catholics for the Temporal Power, is most improbable. The Wahabees, the really dangerous Mahommedans in India, will, in Arabia, regard the fall of the Sultan as the fall of their own most dangerous antagonist.
