TURKISH EXTRAVAGANCE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1934, 16 March 1875, Page 4

TURKISH EXTRAVAGANCE.

Mr Thomas Brassey, M.P. for Hastings, has been on a cruise to the Bosphorus, and has sent Home for "publication a series of letters relating to his voyage. Dating from Constantinoble, he writes, relative to the Government of Turkey:— " The authorised civil list of the Sultan is about £1,200,000 a year. All along the shores of the Bosphorus vast palaces and elaborate kiosks occur in succession at a distance of a little more than a mile apart. Some of these buildings are furnished in the most costly style. The daily dinner of the Sultan—he always dines alone— consists of 94 dishea, and ten other meals are prepared in cape it should be his fancy to partake of them. He has 800 horses, 700 wives, attended and guarded by 350 eunuchs.' For this enormous household 40,000 oxen are yearly slaughtered, and, according to Murray, the purveyors are required to furnish daily 200 sheep, 100 lambs or goats, 10 calves, 200 hens, 200 pairs of pullets, 1000 pairs of pigeons, and 50 green geese. Between the profligate luxury of the establishment of the Sovereign and the miserable poverty of too many of his subject, the contrast is truly melancholy. The incomes of the principal Ministers of State are such as would grievously shock the radical reformers of our own country. The salary of the Grand Vizier is £30,000; of the Minister of Public Works, £11,000; and so on in proportion for the other principal Ministers." Referring to the relative position of the Christian and Mohammedan population, Mr Brassey remarks that if the same justice were done to the former as to the latter, the regeneration of the empire might be accomplished so effectually that the prospect of disintegration would become indefinitely remote.