Page:Wallachia and Moldavia - Correspondence of D. Bratiano whit Lord Dudley C. Stuart, M.P. on the Danubian Principalities.djvu/23

 as friends, and treats them as such. In Turkey they are welcomed guests. If they ask her, she gives them lodgings, grants them pensions, and even pays them indemnities. They travel everywhere with her passports, are received in every country by her ambassadors, have their entrees to all her ministers; but when they would return into their country,—oh ! then all is different! The Porte, commissioned as she is to act as police for the sake of Russia in the Principalities, deems herself obliged to refuse them admission; for, being her friends, being Roumanians, they are very naturally the enemies of Russia.

If the Porte has not yet been able to shake off the crushing and humiliating yoke of the Czar, can one reasonably hope that abandoned to herself, she will know how to do so in the future ; especially after all the humiliation which she is suffering, stroke by stroke ? In less than half a year, indeed, she has been alternately forced and insulted by France, Austria, and by Russia. She observes to the French minister, that the firman which he asks of her relative to the holy places, will bring Russia on her back, and M. de Lavalette, to re-assure her, threatens her, and himself wrests the firman from her. The Montenegrins, at the instigation, of the Austrians and the Russians, rebel against the Porte; they even extend their depredations to the Turkish provinces bordering upon then-territory, and the Porte is not permitted to call them back to respect, she has not the right to defend herself against their aggression. She is compelled to recall her troops, and to make apology toward that same Austria which, four years ago, thought she had a right to call on the Russians to reduce the Hungarians, whose revolt was certainly at least as legitimate as that of the inhabitants of Montenegro. Lastly, Russia, likewise, must have her say to the Porte; Prince Menschikoff then arrives at Constantinople, and begins by failing in respect to the Sultan, by insulting the Porte, by carrying the resignation of the minister, with whom he was to negociate, and ends by plainly declaring in his ultimatum, that his master intends to be in future the master also of Turkey.

What must above all sadden and discourage the Porte, is to