The Press.
London, England, 1853-08-06 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

edly in abeyance) that any person defacing
any of the Queen's current coin shall be held
to be guilty of a misdemeanour, and shall be
liable to tine or imprisonment, or tine and
imprisonmont, at the discretion of the court.
This is reasonable ; and, considering that every
offender must necessarily proclaim his or his
employer's Millie and address to the world,
we should have thought quite sufficient to
check the practices referred to. But the penal
clause in the bill, which declares that any
person uttering or tendering coin so stamped
shall, on summary conviction before two jus-
tices, incur a penalty of 405., renders valueless
(except as old metal) the entire amount. of
defaced coin at present in circulation—a loss
which will be felt the most severely by the
poorer classes, this method of advertising
being in great part confined to the copper
coinage.
It will, indeed, behove us all t 4 be watchful.
Copper screwed up in paper for delicate hands
must especially be viewed with suspicion.
" Examine your change" will be an admoni-
tion not to be disregarded, for otherwise the
receiver who, in a dark night, unconsciously
tenders a defaced coin, may find himself
some fine morning at the" nearest police office "
ris-a-ris to his cabman, the question at issue
for him being a penalty of forty shillings, and
for others the vindication of the sage vigilance
of Mr. GLADSTONE.

OTTOMAN SQUADRON OF THE
BOSPHORUS.

WE have just received the following 'wilt'''.
lurs, important at this moment, respecting the
present state of the Turkish fleet, which is
described to us as being, generally speaking,
in capital order, and animated with the best
spirit. We can vouch for the authenticity of
the information we give, in all its details, ex
eepting as to the names of sonic of the Turkish
vessels, which we are doubtful whether we
have rendered quite correctly :

IN BuYI•B SEUVAN :
Navik i bakri 54 guns.. 500 men
Mirate safer
Fartli flak
Messed Ferak
IN BrYuxDERE BAY :
Faizi Marbout
Mahmondieh 124 " ..1220 "
Mookbiri sourour (s.) 20 " " ..550 h.p.
Mezhoudiek llB " —ll4O "
Nesimi safer
Peiki Messerit
Shee all i bakri 54 " 500 "
Nuzretiek

Kaidi safer 4O " .. 450 "
AT ANADOLU K.tvAtc:
Avni ilak 'lO " 350 "
Sheaf numar
CRUISING IN THE OFFING :
sefiL 2O " .. 150 "
INSIDE THE BANKS:
Gni refls 22 " INO
I)jai ferah

OFF SEIXE 13OUROITS
Nizamieh
Nedjat i fer
Netball feshan

AT BESRIK TANI :
Sttragh a bakri 22 " 150 "
Fetid Latent

STEAMERE (PADDLE):
Metbitlieh

Ja'eef
Faizi bakri
Saiki rhatle
Esseri Dgedit
lireghli
Tair bakri
Messeri bakri
Several small steamers, from 40 h.p. to 100 h.p.
FITTING OUT AT THE ARSENAL :
Meneilouieh
Sourieh

With the exception of the guns on some of the
upper decks, the line-of-battle ships and frigates'
armaments are chiefly composed of guns of 2-
pounder calibre and above. Excepting the " Falai
marbout," the corvettes and brigs are feebly armed
in respect of calibre and quality of guiw.

315

We have not received such precise details
respecting the state of the Turkish land forces,
but the following. we are informed, are sub-
stantially to be relied on :—Sixty thousand
men, regulars and Redif (Landwehrl, are as-
sembling in the fortresses on the line of the
Danube. and at Saturnia and Varna and ten
thousand irregular Albanians are marching to
occupy the ►asses of the Balkan. All these
are under the (!onnuantl of OMEn l'AgnA,
Croatian by birth, a renegade, who ran away
from the Austrian army twenty-five years ago.
He is the only general in Turkey. He has
been successful in civil war with the Kurds
and the Albanians, but has never had regular
troops opposed to him. Ho has the merit. of
looking well after his men, by whom he is
much beloved. In Asia forty thousand men
are being assembled, in the direction of Kars.
The weak points of the Turkish army are
want of good officers and the absence of a
commissariat. In the capital there are about
twenty-five thousand men.

THE DISSOLUTION OF "A SOLUTION OF
THE TURKISH. QUESTION."
Fiona a letter in reply to our correspondent Damien,
which we are unable to insert, at length, the writer,
whose views are more in unison with Our own, after
deprecating the proposal " to carve up the Sultan's
territory like a rook-pie," observes as follows on
the proposed surrender of Constantinople to tho
Grand Duke Constantine :
" Let Constantinople he but once in the powerful
clutch of the great Alai° Bear, and where, W wee
ask, is the power or powers that shall wrest it out of
that iron grapple? Constantinople in the grasp of
Russia, the Sea of Azov and the Euxine would im-
mediately be rendered unassailable enormous Rua-
sian harbours, where an immense navy might, and
no doubt would, be collected, which beti►re many
years should have elapsed would not only command
the whole Mediterranean, but defy the collective
fleets of the world. The resources of Russia would
then become inexhaustible; the way to the East
would be ready paved for her; India would soon be
hers; nor could any single power, or any two powers,
successfully cope with her. Round the whole globe
no position for the occupation of a naval empire is
presented at all comparable to that of Constanti-
nople, with the possession of the Sea of Azov and
the Euxine. And who can question that the mind
of the Czar is prompt to perceive, as well as capable to
make due avail of, such advantages? And let me
ask, not Lime*xus, but the British public, if the
Ministers of these realms who should connive at such
a seizure, nay, who should not oppose such a seizure,
on the part of Russia, with all their milted energies,
and with the whole force which Britain might be
willing to place at their disposal, would not be guilty
of the deepest treachery and the highest treason
against their country ?
" I remain, sir, your obedient servant,
" Aug. 1, 1553. " ANTI-LIDANIUS."

THE OSINIBII4 INTEREsT" AND THE HAckNET
CARRIAtiE At:T.—The metropolitan ointlibuti proprie
tors have petitioned for an amendment of tile new
Hackney Carriages Act. They ask tor a right of
appeal against the decisions of police magistrates, and
they put birth the case of Phillips, the cabman con-
demned by Mr. Henry, as a just►fication of their de-
mand. But the very notoriety of that ease argues
for its having been exceptional : and an individual
case of hardship scarcely afibrds ground for th•
abrogation of a general law. The petitioners also
urge that whereas the six thousand persons em-
ployed by them, and "the many thousand persons in
the London cab trade," are left without an appeal, the
Dublin Carriages Act grants such appeal ; and, in a
placard emanating from the same source, the out
goings of the London omnibus proprietors are assessed
at something like a million a year in wages and keep
of horses, while the Dublin ditto are set down as
nit. Not only is the last assumption untrue, Dublin
being provided with certain regular lines of omni-
buses, but we can intbrm the London malcontents
that the service in Dublin is distinguished by the
superior accommodation tbr the public and the exem-
plary civility of the employed persons. It may not
he strictly logical that an appeal should lie in the
one case and not in the other; but sense
says that where an "interest" is on its own showing
so powerful, and where experience recall such re-
cords of successful evasion or defiance of the law,
what the public require is a summary and effectual
cheek on abuses that had become intolerable, from
the uselessness of individual struggles against organ-
ised impunity. The more the petitioners have dis-
played their strength, in numbers and wealth, by
comparison with their Dublin compeers, the less is the
weight of a plea in support of which weakness would
be the best argument.

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