Sir E. Hornby has addressed a long letter to the
Times on Turkish Bonds and the means of providing for them. He thinks that Turkey will not, after the war, have more than 122,000,000 a year of revenue ;—will she have half that, in cash ?—he discredits the idea of general reforms sufficient to produce prosperity ; and he advises the bondholders to limit their efforts to obtain- ing reforms in some particular place. He would, in fact, have them reduce their claim to three per cent., or £6,000,000 a year, on condition that their agents are allowed to exercise a thorough supervision of all fiscal arrangements in a district large enough to provide that amount of surplus revenue. The plan is a striking one, and if the Turks would consent to it, and honestly hand over, say, Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, and the Islands, to their creditors, it might succeed. The only difficulty—but then it is a fatal one—is that the Sultan and the Pashas do not want a sound fisc for the benefit of their creditors, but for their own benefit. How would their harems gain by creditors being paid ? If, indeed, the creditors would pay the Sultan per- sonally a million a year to make their agents farmers-general of certain fixed provinces, paying all they could get to them, some- thing might be done, but even then the farmers-general would be baffled by resistance which it would require troops to quell. The true policy of the bondholders is to get their debt divided among the provinces, and then look to the Turk's successors for payment of half their claims. The Cretans, to take a small example, would give 20 per cent. of their revenue for freedom.
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