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90 tossed and dashed against each other as by a storm. The Turkish sailors escaped many of them by swimming to land, and by boats, and, in their rage, murdered all the Greeks they could meet with, and set their towns and villages on fire. Smyrna and Constantinople itself were in a fearful panic. Elphinstone had promised the czarina to break through the Dardanelles and attack the Turkish capital; but Alexis Orloff, who had shown the utmost imbecility in the war both on land and on sea, dared not attempt it. The English insisted, and led the way to the mouth of the Dardanelles, but the cowardly Russian would not follow, and the English officers quitted the fleet in disgust, and without receiving any reward for their signal services. When they were gone, Orloff ordered four pictures to be painted of the different phases of the destruction of the Turkish fleet, by Hackert, and then returned to St. Petersburg, where he was received with the highest honours, and named by the empress thenceforward, Orloff Tschemekoff.

In order to divide and reduce Turkey, the Russians made an alliance with Ali Bey, the viceroy of Egypt, and engaged, in return for his refusal of all assistance to the Porte, to aid him in his designs on Syria. They besieged, in conjunction with him, Jaffa and Damietta, but with little effect. They then invested Lemnos, but were driven thence by the bold enterprise of Gazi Hassan, who was born in Persia, and sold as a slave to a Turk in Rodosto. For his successful assault on the Russians, and their utter route, he was made lord high admiral. From that time the Russians could effect little against the Turks, except that they, in 1771, had managed to rend the Crimea from Turkey under pretence of acknowledging its independence. This was the last event of any importance in the war which was terminated in 1774, by the peace of Cainardgi, when the Crimea was pronounced an independent state.



Such were the lawless aggressions and sanguinary deeds of the Russian demi-savages, which the English government, stoneblind to the future, had been aiding to the best of their ability; and now they saw enough of their mistake in bringing the Muscovites into the Mediterranean to make it necessary to increase their own fleet. The mischief, however, was not to end here. Europe expected to see Turkey at this time absorbed into Russia; but the jealousy of Austria and Prussia saved it; but they, at the same time, turned the greedy eye of the czarina on another prey—Poland, and the three powers becoming joint robbers of nations, soon after consummated their crime of the first partition of that country.

The domestic business of the session commencing with this year, was chiefly of an ecclesiastical character. Sir William Meredith presented a petition from two hundred and fifty of the established clergy, including many professors of civil law and physic, who prayed relief from subscription to the thirty-nine articles of the church of England, without which no degree could be obtained at either of our great universities, and no student even could be admitted at Oxford. The subject had been warmly discussed in the newspapers and pamphlets, and in public meetings. Sir William contended that enforcement of these articles only propagated perjury; and the petition itself stood upon the right of all Englishmen to enjoy the benefits of these