Page:Wallachia and Moldavia - Correspondence of D. Bratiano whit Lord Dudley C. Stuart, M.P. on the Danubian Principalities.djvu/18

 the preservation of the Turkish empire; if, on its ruin, the Muscovite domination must be extended. These happy dispositions the Porte cannot second better than by following your wise counsels, in giving satisfaction to every just demand of the Christian population of the empire. Will it do so? The doubt is at least permitted, if we refer to the precedents of the Turkish government. They indeed are such as might tempt one to believe that its constant maxim has been to treat the Christians of the empire, and the people who are its tributaries, with so much the less justice, as it had assurance of their devotedness. A high Turkish dignitary, to whom I observed that the Roumanian patriots were the natural friends, the real friends of the Turks, and how wrong the Porte was, in sacrificing them to the vengeance of the Czar, its eternal and implacable enemy, answered me with a touching naïvete: “ We are not careful to busy ourselves about our friends, for we know they will undertake nothing against us; but we must endeavour, by every means, to please our enemies, to prevent them from annoying us.” Yet, to be just, we must acknowledge that the Porte has not perhaps been always free to act otherwise than she has done, till now. Two recent examples are, it seems to me, calculated to prove this. We may recollect how, in the question of the Polish and Hungarian refugees—a matter in every way of secondary interest to the Porte—that government, feeling itself strongly supported by England, could resist at the same time both Austria and Russia; notwithstanding that in the intoxication of victory, both might have made it a casus belli; whereas in the question of the Danubian Principalities, which far differently concerned both her dignity and her interests, when Russia had not yet recovered from the terror caused by the European revolution of 1848, the Porte, meeting with no support either from France or England, yielded; and so compromised both the old reputation of Turkish good faith, by treacherously destroying the Roumanian constitution, which she had solemnly recognised some days before, and her own existence, by laying the Principalities at the mercy of the Czar. The language I hold will not, I hope, cause me to be accused of partiality for the