The Military Convention between Turkey and England is not yet
concluded, and hangs fire, apparently, on two points,— the proclamation of Arabi as a traitor, to which the Sultan had agreed, but from which he is always trying to be excused ; and the question of the landing, which the English say must not be at Alexandria, while the Turks insist that it either should be, or, at least, may be, at Alexandria, if it is found unsafe to laud at Aboukir, as it well might be. It is not very easy to judge whether either the Sultan or the English Ambassador is serious in the intention to sign this Convention. The farce of pretend- ing that the neptiation is on the very verge of completion appears to have gone on very cheerfully for a fortnight at least, but there has been no completion; and probably Lord Dufferin will soon declare that the time for it has past, and that the British Government must now do alone what the Turks declined, at the moment of difficulty, to help us to do. Besides, the tradition of the Porte is dilatoriness ; the only thing the Turk has learned to do well is to kill time, and in this case there are such serious dangers in action, that we cannot expect action at all.
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