Before we had learned that the Christians of the Lebanon
had profited by the protection offered to them from France and Eng- land, we had intelligence of the new outrages at Damascus, where the Christians have been massacred by wholesale. In a letter to the-Emperor Napoleon, dated on the the 16th of July, the Sultan has expressed his grief for these outrages, and con- veyed the assurance of his endeavour to reestablish order in Syria. There never has been a question as to the desire of the Sultan to restore order any more than of his interest in that result; but it cannot be overlooked, that these recent events confirm the warnings by whieh Russia justified her original interference in the affairs of Turkey. We were then told that if more direct and active steps were not taken by the European Powers, the fanatic Mnssulman population would be guilty of massacres such as we have now witnessed. The truth of the warning in no degree justifies, even retrospectively, the method by which Nieholas sought to interfere ; but it has a very material reference to the far more decorous appeal which the Emperor Alexander has made to his brother sovereigns.
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