Gentlemen, I had many things yet to say.  The condition, change, and prospects of Europe are not spoken of so easily, as you have seen, when only the condition of my own country is touched.  I don’t know that I shall succeed, but I will try to say something about TURKEY.

Turkey! which deserves your sympathy because it is the country of municipal institutions, the country of religious toleration.  Turkey, when she extended her sway over Transylvania and half of Hungary, never interfered with the way in which the inhabitants chose to govern themselves; she even allowed those who lived within her dominions to collect there the taxes voted by independent Hungary, with the aim to make war against the Porte.  Whilst in the other parts of Hungary, Protestantism was oppressed by the Austrian policy, and the Protestants several times compelled to take up arms for the defence of religious liberty in Transylvania, under the sovereignty of the Porte the Unitarians got political rights, and Protestantism grew up under the protecting wings of the Ottoman power.

The respect for municipal institutions is so deeply rooted in the minds of the Turks, that at the time when they became masters of the Danubian provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, they voluntarily excluded themselves from all political rights in the newly acquired provinces; and up to the present day, they do not allow that a mosque should be built, or that a Turk should dwell and own landed property across the Danube.  They do not interfere with the taxation or with the internal administration of these provinces; and the last organic law of the Empire, the Tanzimat, is nothing but the re-declaration of the rights of municipalities, guaranteeing them against the centralizing encroachment of the Pashas.  Whilst Czar Nicholas is about to convert the Protestant population of Livonia and Estland to the Greek church by force and by alluring promises, the liberal Sultan Abdul Medjid grants full religious liberty to all sects of Protestantism.  But we are accustomed to look upon Turkey as upon a third-rate power, only because in 1828 it was defeated by Russia.  Let us now see how the balance stood at that time, and how it stands now.

In 1828 the Turkish population was full of hatred on account of the extermination of the Janissaries.  The Christian population were ready to rise against the government, on account of the events of the Greek war.  Albania was in revolt, because it was opposed to the system of conscriptions for regular military service.  Anatolia was discontented on the same ground.  Mehemet Ali possessed Egypt, and paralyzed the action of the government in Arabia and Syria.  Servia had just laid down arms, but had not yet concluded peace.  The Danubian principalities, though unfavourable to Russia, were not hearty in support of the Porte, and remained apathetic under the occupation of Russia.  The revenue did not exceed 400,000,000 piastres (20,000,000 dollars), and was insufficient for a second campaign.  The new army was not yet organized, and amounted only to 32,000 men, without tried generals.  The fleet had been destroyed at Navarino.  The foreign diplomatists had left the empire, and the capital was exposed to an attack of the enemy.  In such a position no European government could have risked a war.