Page:Statesman's Year-Book 1871.djvu/496

 460 TURKEY.

1862, contracted with the Ottoman Bank and Messrs. Devaux, Paris, at the rate of 68, was secured on the tobacco, salt, stamp, and license duties, and the general revenues of the empire ; while the sixth loan, of 1863-4, contracted also by the Ottoman Bank, at the same price, was issued on the security of the Imperial customs and tithes. The seventh loan, of 1865, likewise contracted through the Ottoman Bank, and issued at 66, was charged on the security of the sheep- tax of Roumelia and the Archipelagus, and the produce of the mines of Tokat. Finally, the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh loans, of 1866, 1867, 1«69, and 1870, contracted through the Societe Generale of Paris, and Messrs. Louis Cohen and Son, Paris, were issued on the security of a variety of special taxes, imposts, and tithes, as well as on the general revenues, ' present and future,' of the empire.

The home debt, consisting of a great variety of State obligations, issued at various periods, and amounting in the aggregate to about 2<» millions sterling, was consolidated by two Imperial decrees published in March 1865. These decrees established a system of public management for the General Debt of the Empire. A Great Book was instituted, in which all the liabilities of the Empire are inscribed, under the direction of a high officer of State, called the Governor of the General Debt. The internal debt under the new law of I860 consists of obligations at 5 per cent., with a sinking fund of 1 per cent. The obligations are printed in Turkish, English, and French. bearing a fixed value in the currency of the language. The interest is ordered to be paid half-yearly, at a fixed rate of exchange, at Constantinople, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Frankfort. The sinking fund is employed in the following manner: — 'A sum of 1 per cent, on the original nominal value of the bonds issued, together with the interest of bonds previously amortised, is to be annually applied t< 1 amortisation. With this sum bonds are to be purchased to the no- minal amount of 1 per cent., at the market price of the day. Tin- difference between the market price of the bonds and their nominal value is to be applied to a reserve fund, which is to preserve the equilibrium of credit.'

The present state of the finances of Turkey, and especially the public debt, is described as follows by Mr. Henry Page Turner Bar- ron, H. M.'s first Secretary of Embassy at Constantinople, in a report to the Foreign Office dated February 11, 1867, written in conse- quence of special instructions from the British government to inves- tigate the financial state of the empire. ' To give anything like a trustworthy balance sheet of the Ottoman treasury,' Mr. Barron says. to enable the minister himself to produce such a document. All. therefore, that can be done is to present certain facts and to draw from them the inferences which they would seem to justify.' ' The
 * is an impossibility. It is very doubtful whether the elements exist