THE AMERICAN DIFFICULTY WITH THE PORTE—A RUSSIAN CALL FOR AID FROM THE UNITED STATES.

Southland Times, Issue 602, 10 December 1866, Page 3

THE AMERICAN DIFFICULTY WITH THE PORTE— A RUSSIAN CALL FOR AID FROM THE UNITED STATES.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette, Sept. 21.) The Russians, or at all events, some Russians, have discovered that the Christians at Larnaca in Cyprus are being shamefully persecuted, which may or may not be true, but at all events needs confirmation, and they consider that the best remedy for such a persecution would be an American squadron in the Levant, because the Miantonomoh could blow the whole of the Turkish fleet into the seventh hell, or at least the sixth, for the seventh is already engaged beforehand for the hypocrite's, as they know well enough in the Eoreign Office at St. Petersburg, and dislike Mahomet's scheme accordingly. Ko doubt it could do so, considered as a matter of naval gunnery, and from a strictly dynamic point of view. Eut it is very hard to see why it is to do so as a matter of policy, setting all questions of morality or of authentication entirely on one side. And one is^ not accustomed to the spectacle of Russia in the Levant taking up the position of a

wronged schoolboy calling on a digger brother for help. But it is hardest of all to see how the two events come to be connected. The general appeal to America is clear enough ; the Russian press is now free, and if a Russian public writer has an intimate Eussian alliance at heart, he speaks out from his heart audits fullness, just as an English public writer would do. But why on earth should they go to Cyprus to consummate their alliance ; or, if to Cyprus, why to Larnaca instead of the more appropriate bowers of Paphos and the classic seats of young Love ? We remember that some two months ago an obscure unnoticed paragraph appeared in an out of the way corner of one or two of the daily newspapers, taken from the Levant JEAerald, giving an account of a rather serious difference between the American Consular Agent at Larnaca and the Turkish Governor— the agent not being a true American, but a Levantine Prank, according to a most reprehensible system quite abandoned by Prance, in process of abandonment by England, but adhered to by America in fir too many cases for so truly great and enlightened a nation. To the'best of our recollection the question at issue was the riyJA.: either of conscription or taxation cuimed by the Governor over some Turkish subject in the Consular employment — a right he was disposed to assert until the Consular Agent carried the matter through with a high hand, struck his flag, and forced the Governor to extremity, extorting from him all he wanted. A difficulty once set up in modern Turkey, when not intended to. be tided over or quietly settled, invariably acquires an accretion of persecuted Christians about it; and the more these are brought to the surface the more probable that mischief of some sort is intended by some European power — a power to be specified according to the special denomination of the native Christian material employed. It is certain that these persecuted Christians must, in the present instance, be taken in connection with agitation else where as the premonitory symptoms of international disturbance. But one is tempted to enquire, why beat about the bush in Turkey ? No one wants to keep it up otherwise than provisionally ; toe should certainly taVke no active measures to prevent its partition ; our sickly AEastern policy is too far gone to reinvigorate, and those who would willingly have advocated it in its vigor would surely now prefer actual partition by Europe to a chaotic scramble of semi-barbarians.