The Express.
London, England, 1858-07-30 00:00:00

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

A SPECIAL EDMON of the "EXPRESS,"
containing the results of the day's ROOM, is pub-
lished every evening during the Sporting Season, at
six o'clock.

IN the last official Returns of Trade it is set
down that England, in the first six months of 1838,
exported to Turkey cotton goods worth 1,183,666!. de-
clared value, and daring the same period to the United
Stated, generally considered our best customers,
1,031,729!. worth. Tee Turkey which thus receives
the largest amount of our chief article of export is
distinct from Syria and Egypt, which, as well as
Greece, have their import. and exports marked
apart. This mass of merchandise is sent, in feet,
almost all to Constantinople, from whence a portion
goes to the interior, another portion to Trebizond,
and another to the Provinces on the Danube. We
mast not suppose, because these exports are consigned
to Turkey, that Turks are either the merchants or the
consumer,. The industrious Christian population fur-
nishes a much larger class of purchasers than the
Mumulnian, and the merchants are Greek or Arme-
nian, few Turks condescending to trade.
The above figures are sufficient to show the im-
portance of those regions to us, commercially as
well as politically, and the interest we have in their
peace, their development, and their independence of
the great despotic and prohibitive empires which
border upon them and desire to absorb them. It
was for this that we engaged in war, and it is foe
this that in the arrangements of peace we should
not consider the Provinces on the Danube a mere
trifle or plaything, to be thrown off or disposed of
in any wire, but, on the contrary, u States upon
whose fit and stable settlement depend the peace
and prosperity, the political and commercial inde-
pendence of these countries.
We cannot but See* with Mr. GLADSTONS, that
the only way of making the settlement of these regions
satisfactory or permanent is to consult the people them-
selves. There are agents at this moment going through
the provinces, and representing that England hu be-
trayed her promise, and has sacrificed the Principe,
lities to Austria and to Turkey. France, they say,
showed better inclinations, but was too weak and
too fickle to enforce them. The only consistent
friend and powerful protector was to be found in
Russia, which never deserted the Christians; and so
on. The patriots of Wallachia and of other provinces
are too well aware of the false and insidious nature
of these arguments not to combat them; and the
way in which they coal/ have best desired to com-
bat them was to give proof that England, its Par-
liament, and public, had a conscience in this matter,
felt a desire to do justice, and at the same time fol-
lowed a rational and well-weighed policy.
We are sorry to say that the philo-Russisms have
now and then the best of the argument. For instance,
one of the oldest rights of the Danubian Principalities
was the election of their own rulers. Well, England
proposed in the Conference of Paris that this right
should be withheld from them, and that the Ports
should name Hospodars. Russia and France opposed
this, and the result was that the proposal of England
was overruled, and the choice of rulers or ruler given,
as of old, to the lioldo-Wallachs or to some chosen
body of them.

It seems that the electoral franchise proposed by
Eogland was more narrow and illiberal than that
previously established by RuPsia. Some of our
contemporaries have spoken of this electoral franchise
and:its restrictions. It is a subject, however, little
worth expatiating on, for the powers and attributes
assigned to the representative Assembly, when it did
meet, were so insignificant, that it would have been
quite as well to do without one altogether. The
Assembly, as proposed by England, was to have no
initiative, but was empowered merely to accept the
budget and vote the taxes. The scheme, indeed, seems
borrowed from the existing Imperial constitution of
France. And yet this hu been proposed in the
Principalities, not by France but by England. The
result of enforcing this in Moldo'Wallachia, in lieu
of their old triditioual electoral privileges, would be,
that no living peal would take the trouble to vote,
except a few functionaries ; and the country would
assume the attitude of passive and sullen revolt
against both the form and the persons of the govern-
ment imposed upon them.

The Conference of Paris has, however, not
sanctioned this abortive scheme of tyranny, to
which the name of England is so discreditably
attached. Its members perceive that to offer
such a flagrant pretext for disaffection, and
worse than disaffection, to the Rl:rumens, at a
time when the Bosnian. are in arms as well as the
Candiotes, and when the Consuls of Christian Powers
are no more respected at Belgrade than at Jeddah.
would not be prudent, and would only add to the
manifold embarrasetnests of the SULTAN and his
advisers. The feeling, therefore, seems to be to paw
some provisional resolutions; to point to 18.19 as the
epoch for inaugurating a constitution ; and to leave
Moldavia and Wallachia under their present Go-
vernment and Governor for another year. We need
not say that this merely prolongs agitation, and
only proves, what Russia is for ever asserting, that
the Western Powers are unequal to the task of or-
ganising or tranquillising these Levantine States.
If motives of political justice and of commercial
interest, powerful as we have shown them to be,
do not influence the English Government in this
question, it ought at least to pay attention to the
great military object of the war, which was to inter-
pose a barrier between Russia and Turkey on the
Danube. The only barrier, then, to be relied on
was, as Mr. GLAnarona said, the breasts of a free
people. But having given the Romans such flagrant
cause of aversion to Turkey and of hopelessness
in either English sympathy or justice; having cur-
tailtd the old freedom and privileges of the Princi-
palities, what right have we to reckon on their grad-
.
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