At the private conference in Constantinople between the Reis Effendi
and the representatives of France, Russia, aud England, on the 28th October, the Turkish Minister put into the hands of the diplomatists a note setting forth some of the grievances of Turkey. It will be found in extenso in a subsequent page. It is curious in many respects. In the first place, it presents a cata- logue of wrongs, negative and positive, whose accumulation reflects disgrace upon those Powers who have undertaken to mediate between the two Eastern countries—to teach the infant Christian nation how to behave with decency at the board of diplomacy, and to save the Turkish empire in its dotage from gratuitous insult. The event proves that they have utterly neglected both duties ; and that, with a mass of private injury which probably no one thinks of repairing, they have suffered so complicated a quarrel to grow up, that violence—some " armed peace "—may be necessary to settle it.
Again, every time that Turkey commits one of these overt dis- plays of energy, it does something which shows its unfitness to be where it is. Along with admissible complaints of outrage, it puts the un-European complaint that the newspapers of a foreign country "disseminate pernicious ideas, and tend to excite the Sul. tan's subjects to revolt." A crusade against the Greek press is one of the decorous acts demanded of the Greek Government, under pain of having "its interests, and commerce, and affairs, requiring the support and intervention of' the Turkish Government, ob- structed and treated with little favour" Some European Govern- ments have a sufficient dread and hatred of the press ; but none would ask the intervention of three foreign powers to save it from- the effect of " leaders " in the newspapers of a fourth foreign country. Yet the Four Poweraare pledged to maintain "the integrity of the Ottoman empire" in the teeth of Greek editors, and to sup- port the " independence " of Greece at the hazard of irritating the Turk and inflaming to some pitch of suicidal absurdity what little may remain of the spirit of MAHOMET the Second.
