The correspondent of the Daily News in Batoum complains that
the Sultan is very selfish. The troops in this place have not been paid up for four years. They receive only advances of pay, and these in paper so depreciated that it will only purchase half as much as silver, and the officers are too poor to renew their uniforms. The distress is most severe, but in the midst of it an order has arrived, and has been obeyed, to purchase a dozen Circassian slaves for the Seraglio, at a price which would pay the regiments for a month. The correspondent considers that the story will discredit the Sultan's Government in England, but he forgets the line which pro-Turkish enthusiasm has taken. It is because the Turk—robbed, unpaid, and despised by his own chiefs—still clings to the ascendancy of his caste, that he is regarded in England as so admirable. If he were well and regularly paid, and well treated, and considered a human being, the Tories would only look upon him as a soldier, but now he is regarded as a patriot. The Sultan, therefore, in wasting every- thing on himself, is only eliciting those virtues in his clan which induce Englishmen to expend millions in supporting their authority.
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