Page:Wallachia and Moldavia - Correspondence of D. Bratiano whit Lord Dudley C. Stuart, M.P. on the Danubian Principalities.djvu/25

 it to bring Turkey out victorious, from the crisis in which the bad faith and the vileness of the cabinet of St. Petersburgh have thrown her. It is even to be hoped that the scandalous and perilous struggles of which, of late, Constantinople has been the scene, will be a great lesson for all the world. Turkey will understand that she ought never to traffic with her honour and her right, and the great Western powers will also understand that to continue in the Eastern question the policy of expedients and adjournments, which they have hitherto adopted, would be to play the game of children, who in shutting their eyes, think they escape the danger which threatens them ; and that they ought to take advantage of this fine opportunity afforded them by the Czar, to inaugurate a more worthy policy, one capable of opposing a bar to the ambition which at every instant threatens the existence of the Ottoman empire, and the peace of Europe. This great result might perhaps be obtained; by establishing that, to prevent the return of complications which occasion anxiety to the whole of Europe, the Porte, henceforward, shall not be bound to answer demands which she may judge encroaching on her dignify and independence ; unless she has first submitted them to the examination of the powers of her friends and allies, and decided with them upon the answer she has to give, and that such answer shall be held mutually obligatory on all the powers concerned in framing it. No power would dare to refuse a proposal made in this sense, and presented collectively by France and England, and all would find in it a guarantee against their own attempts to renew abuses which they had accustomed themselves to exercise towards the Porte. Certainly there is not now a single sensible and sincere man who does not desire the preservation of the Ottoman empire; who does not wish that England and France would take such a resolution as should seriously ensure its perfect independence—its full sovereignty; and spare the civilized world the pain of constantly hearing these unjust and barbarous words.—The partition—the dismemberment of Turkey ! Dismember Turkey ! Why not rather Austria or Russia ? So long as the political system now predominant in