AFFAIRS IN TURKEY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VI, Issue 269, 27 March 1873, Page 8

AFFAIRS IN TURKEY.

The " Times " cannot avoid the impression that the general aspect of things in Turkey is unfavourable. There is at presnet great disquietude at the conduct of public affairs. Turks and Christians, natives and foreigners, are waiting in uncertainty and amazement, not knowing what is to come next, and fearing that the future has some serious calamnity in store for them. Unless the general conviction be unjust, the tendencies which have led to this state of affairs have their origin in the self-will of the Sultan and the terror he inspires among those who serve him. The Sultan not only governs, but governs after such a fashion that his subjects cannot trace the clue to his designs. Ministers rise and fall and rise again ; governors are appointed and recalled in obedience to impulse which no one can follow. The counsel of his legitimate advisers is a nullity, for he dismisses these advisers as easily as he would discharge one of his household. It is remarked at Constantinople that •this unhappy condition of the Government has been contemporaneous with a supposed intimacy and confidence between St. Petersburg and Stamboul. It is, of course, difficult to believe that Russia or auy other country can have an interest in promoting wild and senseless changes among Ministers aud governors ; but wo cannot but be struck with the coincidence that the Sultan's excessive use of his authority coincides in lime with the supremacy of a particular Embassy. This leads us to ask (the " Times " adds) whether all British influence is extinct at Constnatinople, and whether amidst these excesses of power the voice of the representative of England is ever heard. We do not advocate any undue interference in saying that when a country for which England has fought and bled, and become surety to fight and bleed agaiu, is a prey to such caprices as have beon exemplified in the late Government of Turkey, there is a fit occasion for temperate remonstrations. Let the embassy remember the enormous pecuniary and political interests of England in the East, and also call to mind that so costly an establishment was not designated as a sinecure.