Page:Wallachia and Moldavia - Correspondence of D. Bratiano whit Lord Dudley C. Stuart, M.P. on the Danubian Principalities.djvu/24

 find herself forced and treated without consideration, even by those to whom she looked for aid and assistance. I would call to mind the proceedings of M. de Layalette, towards the Porte, and it would perhaps not be difficult to find more than one instance wherein the ministers of Great Britain have treated her with no more regard.

To judge by the haughty and imperious ways assumed in their dealings with the Turkish government, one would say that the ambassador of the great powers at Constantinople suppose themselves in a conquered country. For a mere nothing they turn the Porte upside down; they must have governors re-called; ministers dismissed; and extraordinary satisfactions, exorbitant and humiliating to the Sultan. The representatives of England and France, quite as much as their colleagues, seem occupied about only one thing; Which shall be the first at the Porte? Which shall speak the loudest ? They thus torment and demoralize the Porte, without any benefit to their governments; for in these sorts of steeple-chases, and strifes of arrogance, they will be always surpassed by the Russian enemy. Another crying abuse, with, which the ambassadors and consuls resident in Turkey may be reproached, and which should be made to disappear at once, is the right they arrogate of granting a sort of half-naturalization to the Rayahs or Christians of the Ottoman empire. These men, supported as they are by foreign power, under whose protection they have placed themselves, have almost always the advantage over their adversaries, in the disputes they have with the Rayas remaining faithful to the Turkish government. Thence a crowd of injustices to the prejudice of these last, and for the Sultan, disaffection and disrespect in his empire.

Those who still maintain that the quarrel now pending at Constantinople is, in the eyes of the English government, only a religious quarrel, which does not concern it, doubtless do a-wrong. I, on the contrary, am certain that at the present moment it comprehends all the gravity of the question, and that in putting itself in accord with the French government, whatever determination Russia may take, it will be easy for