The Sun.
London, England, 1839-06-29 00:00:00

EGYPT AND TURKEY.

• (FROM 'A CORRESPONDENT.
The Morning Chronicle has taken a strange view of
Ori-:ntal affairs. Its yesterday's Leader exhibits a violent
passion against Mehemet Ali, and an incomprehensible igno•
ranee of the true state of things. To call Ibrahim Paella
the aggressor is to be obstinately blind. Who invades
Syria? Who but liatiz Pemba ? Has any part of Tur-
key been attacked by Ibrahim? Nobody pretends that
it The Treaty of Kutayah binds the Sultan to
nominate Ibrahim Paella to the Government of Syria.
The advance of Ilafiz is a violent rupture of the engagement
between them ; and so, according to our Contemporary,
because the Sultan is prepared to violate his engagements,
and because Ibrahim is disposed to respect them, Syria is
to be wrested from Mehemet Ali, and the Sultan to be
supported in his want of faith ! And why is this abomina-
ble injustice to be done ? Because, if it be not done,
Russia will come forward and aid the Sultan, and, rather
than allow Russia to do this, Mehemet Ali shall be
sacrificed.

Of all delusive dreams, that of reconstituting the Otto-
man Empire upon its Lid basis is the wildest. You allowed
Russia to tear away province after province—you esta-
blished her pit-amount influence in Wallachia and Mol-
davia—you made Milosch the hereditary Prince of Servia.
—you set up Otho, an independent despot in Greece—you
consented that France should possess herself of Algeria—
fragment after fragonent of the Ottoman dominions has
fallen down—the rotten lath and plaster of a ruined edifice
_and still men talk of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire!
In only one part of the East is there really a government
—with regular order—with systematic administration, and
it is now the policy of Russia to aid Turkey to destroy this
work. It ought to be our policy to cement it. The attempt
to overthrow Egypt is the perdition of Turkey—it is the
delivery of Turkey, fettered hand and foot, to the Czar. At
no expense to hureif, Russia will urge the Sultan to exer-
tions reckless and ruinous, and her end is attained,—the
exhaustion of bot.b the belligerents. She has no other pur-
pose, and unfortunately our policy has too much forwarded
that purpose.
No one acquainted with the state of the East can sup-
pose that Turkey i. able to keep permanent possession of
Syria. The Syrian race is not Turkish—they hate the
Turks. Not a word of Turkish is spoken south of
Aleppo. Syria may no doubt be easily wrested from Me-
hemet Ali by the European Powers, but Turkey would
he less able to hold it now than she was twenty years nf7,
when a singe petty Pasha (of Acre) trampled her authority
in the dust. Her unaided attempts to re-conquer Syria
will end just like her attempts to govern Tripoli. They
Kill plunge her only deeper and deeper into distress. -
The Sultan alleges to the Ambassadors, as a justification
of the war. that he must re-establish the dignity of the
Caliphate, which lie has lost from not being the Sovereign
of the Holy Cities. But he was the possester of the Holy
Cities, and was so feeble, so helpless, that a horde of
Bedouin Arabs was able to conquer them. Who
restored the Holy Cities to the Sultan ? Who
has made the pilgrimage to the Holy Cities both safe
and easy ? Who but Mehemet Ali and his son Ibrahim,
on whom the Sultan conferred the Pachalic of Arabia, and
conferred it with expressions of boundless gratitude to the
saviour of Islamism ?

We agree that the oriental question must be settled, but
on condition, to be looked for in the realities of the East--
not on conditions built upon chimeras. We cannot make
Turkey a great nation—we can no more re create the
political influence of the Sultan in the East than we can
re-establish that of the Pope in the West. They both re-
present epochs that have passed away, and which will never
return. But to establish peace—to combine such elements
of strength as the Levant offers—to aid the development
of good government and commercial liberty—this we may
effect, and out of the confusion and ruin which have now
the sovereignty, some hope for the future may be ex-
tracted,