exception, as weak and unconclusive. "With the Greek minister's principle of free locomotion," said the Constitutionnel, "his promises to respect treaties, etc., are absurd and nil. From the moment that a nation does not consider itself bound to establish an internal police in such a way as to prevent its subjects from invading a neighbor's territory, and that, on the contrary, it proclaims as a constitutional right armed incursions, and the giving of material encouragement to insurrection in a state with which it keeps up diplomatic relations-to discuss rights and treaties seems idle. Greek interpretation of international law would sanction piracy at sea and filibustering on land."

The maritime capabilities of the Greek people are out of all proportion to their present political importance. Left to themselves, they might clear the Levant of the Turkish merchant flag, cover the Archipelago with swarms of privateers, and make every island an arsenal of insurrection. The little kingdom of Greece is but a very badly organized expression of the genius and faculty of a reckless and expanding race, which has in its classical traditions some basis for its dreams, and with a world-wide sympathy, some reason for its faith in an imperial future. It is hardly better than Turkey, so far as agriculture, roads, and the safety of travellers are concerned. "But education in Greece," says the report of the British secretary of legation for 1867, "is within the reach of all classes. The University of Athens had 1182 students, nearly equal in number to that of the University of Edinburgh." The kingdom had a population of 752,000 in 1838, and in 1861 of 1,096,000 without the Ionian islands, and to-day the total is not far from 1,500,000 souls, of which some fifty per cent. are engaged in agriculture, and twenty per cent. in commerce. Athens has 45,000 inhabitants. The army is raised by conscription, to which all males of eighteen years of age are liable, and the term of service is six years. In 1867 it amounted to 14,300 men, costing annually £1,500,000 sterling. The fleet consists of ten steamers and ten sailing-vessels, carrying, together, 182 guns, with two iron-clads on the stocks; but there are countless merchantmen, and the Greek seamen are considered inferior to none in the world. The revenue in 1865 approx

imated to £1,000,000 sterling, and the expenditure £1,064,000. The internal debt is £800,000, while the foreign debts foot up £7,250,000, an aggregate, say, of £8,000,000 sterling, the interest upon which the government does not pay.

Turkey, financially, is in no splendid condition, however. She has borrowed during eleven years some £74,000,000 sterling, of Europe, and lately consolidated all her indebtedness into a foreign debt of £36,000,000 sterling, held mostly in England and France, upon which she just manages to pay the interest. Her revenue estimates for 1867-8 were £14,400,000, against an expenditure of £15,300,000 sterling, and according to the report for 1867 of Mr. H. P. T. Barron, the British secretary of legation, a continuance of her condition, let alone the expenses of a war, must result in bankruptcy. The sinews of war if not at hand for Turkey, for Greece, considering her financial dishonesty with her bankruptcy, are less than

zero.

On the other hand again, the Turkish empire is a vast territory, covering the finest part of Asia, as well as a great region in Europe, and capable of furnishing levies for armies for years to come. Throughout all the Mussulman countries, the authority of the Sultan is supreme, and even Egypt would send him troops in case of necessity. If the deadly struggle takes place, the fact that the Mussulmans are less than a third part of the inhabitants of European Turkey, of course, will have its importance. But if out of a population of 15,500,000 there are but 2,000,000 pure Ottomans, among the Christians of Turkey dissensions are rife, and that, with such difficulties as attended the assertion of its independence from the Orthodox Greek creed, by the Bulgarian Church, might prevent any effective sympathy or united action with the Christians of Greece. Turkey has an army of 180,000 regular troops, of which 40,000, are retained at Constantinople, and 40,000, more or less, were employed in Crete. The remaining 70,000 and the 40,000, now that they are not required in Crete -together about 110,000 men-constitute the land force that the Turkish war minister could direct upon Greece.

In the Ottoman navy, English ideas and English practice are followed as closely as possible. The Turkish vice-admiral,

Hobart Pasha, who was a captain in the British navy, is an experienced officer of accorded merit and energetic character. During the Crimean war, the Turkish fleet, of nearly seventy vessels, was almost entirely destroyed by battles and storms, and in 1855 it was next to nothing. But in 1858 more than twenty screw-steamers had been built or purchased, numbering 820 guns, as foundation of a marine force, and latterly eight Glasgow-built iron-clads have been added thereto, some of them, like the Osman Ghazy, being equal to any in the world. At present, the Sultan's navy consists of about forty ships and

3000 men.

He must be a very sanguine Greek indeed who can believe that, if the European powers stood aside, the Turkish army and navy could not overpower the most heroic resistance of his plucky but reckless state. Even if he reckoned on the sluggishness or forbearance of Turkey-basing himself upon countless precedents, and more recently its line of conduct in meekly recognizing the union of the Danubian principalities, or its prompt withdrawal of its garrison from Servia; or if he presumes upon a religious dislike of the Mohammedan throughout Christendom-he should bear in mind, that the Ottoman is keenly aware that he owes his present safety to the exertions of England and France, in 1854, and that, as a like danger may occur again, policy, if not gratitude, impels the Sultan to act as far as he can according to the wishes of the western Christian powers. And a simple fact, like the one that the Turkish minister at Athens, who presented the ultimatum, is a Greek and a believer in Christ, is one of those instances which, upon examination, will satisfy European minds, that, if the wall of separation between the Mussulman and the Christian is not broken down in the Levant, it is not always owing to Turkish bigotry and intoler

ance.

The Mussulman, theologically, is no further from the Christian than is the Jew. The two great barriers between him and us are polygamy and slavery. In the Turkish empire slavery is passing away, no more white slaves are to be had, and the viceroy of Egypt has declared his intention to put an end to the trade in Nubian blacks. Polygamy will not long

survive. It is too much at variance with western notions, with which the higher classes in Turkey are becoming more and more imbued. These two reforms accomplished, and nothing remains to obstruct perfect unity in Turkey, under one sovereign and one code of laws. Religious differences have almost everywhere lost their influence in affairs of state. Two centuries ago, they governed European politics, now they have scarcely any effect. Who that knows what Turkey was forty years back and what it is now, can deny that an immense social advance has been made? The superstition of ages has been broken down; the pride, intolerance, and cruelty ingrained in the race have been effaced or repressed, and no one can truthfully assert, at the present time, that the Turkish government is a tyrannical one. Indeed, in the matter of sterling progress, the Turkish empire has not only surpassed Greece, relatively to their starting-points, but other and more important states of Europe and America. "Since the establishment of Greek independence," says a late number of the grave Saturday Review, "Turkey has advanced far more rapidly than Greece, in the process of civilization. The antiTurkish party in England virtually propose a crusade, for the promotion of the orthodox Eastern faith, and for the aggrandizement of the Greek nation."

If any power would be disposed seriously to protect the Hellenic government in its present unjustifiable course, as before mentioned, Russia is the only one of which such a programme could be suspected. But Russia has no ships in the Mediterranean that could contend with the navies of England and France; the Black Sea is neutralized; the Russian soldiers have not yet any arms of precision. Poland is not Russified, Sebastopol is still in ruins, and the mouths of the Danube are not in the Czar's possession. Muscovite policy and bias may have been and yet be with the Greek, but the Emperor is too wise to cling to Greece, once England and France should flatly declare for Turkey and her manifest rights.

The Greeks, to be sure, may all concur with Mr. Stefanos Xenos, who wrote to the Manchester (Eng.) Guardian newspaper in the most eloquent and confident terms, that "this

savage Colossus the poor Osmanli has at last exposed to the world in all his impotence." Mr. Xenos finds 20,000 regulars and 40,000 national guards as the army of Greece, enthusiastic, patriotic, and commanded by officers trained in the best military schools of Europe. He counts 60,000 sailors, the first in the Mediterranean, reports iron-clads in the Greek navy fit to cope with Hobart Pasha's best, and points to the extensive coasts of Turkey as so very vulnerable. The Porte, he thinks, in case of war could borrow no more money of Western Europe, and although he admits that the Greeks could not obtain much, "still they will not be dragged to the battle-field like serfs!" which battle-field, according to Mr. Xenos, must be Turkish territory. He adds in conclusion, that his spirited and generous countrymen having in the last two years lent £700,000 to King George, and sent £2,000,000 to aid the Cretan insurrection, he feels sure in case of hostilities declared they would yet find something handsome to carry on the righteous fight. But without contesting his considerable figures, Mr. Xenos's assertions touching the Greeks and their means and advantages, judging by lights familiar to all Europe, are, excusably enough, decidedly rose-colored. He underrates the Turk, which is not his sole or least mistake, and with all our admiration for the more elevated Greek character, his loud praises and faith in the immaculate purposes of the modern Hellenes bring to mind some awkward stories and proverbs of their buccaneering patriotism and light-fingered friendship where neighbors or allies possessed what they chanced to covet.

The urgent representations of the different diplomatists at Athens having produced no material effect upon the cabinet of King George, the Turkish minister to Greece was recalled. by the Sultan, and the Greek envoy to Constantinople received his passports, and the suspected Hellenic subjects in Turkey notice to quit.

Before leaving Constantinople, M. Delyanni, the Greek minister to Turkey, (a brother, we believe, of the Greek foreign minister of the same name,) levelled at the grand vizier and the Turkish cabinet a Parthian shot in the shape of a parting note, dated Pera, 23d December, wherein he says: