The Sun.
London, England, 1837-01-12 00:00:00

to Nicomedia, as well as by the marks of liberality and

kindness he bestowed on the officers and crews of those ves-
sels, and the assurances of protection he was pleased to offer
them. The only grievances the vessels belonging to the
Austrian Company have yet to complain of proceed,
strange to say, from the very quarter they naturally looked
up to for protection and encouragement—the Austrian
Consuls. This appears the more extraordinpy when
it is considered that the Danubian Steam Company has
been founded under the auspices of the Emperor him-
self, and that the first dignitaries of the empire and
the most influential men in Austria and Hungary are
members of it. It would seem, therefore, that the evil
has continued to exist, because it has not hitherto
been pointed out in the quarters from which alone the re-
medy can come. This desirable end may at once be se-
cured by placing these functionaries on their proper level.
Consuls are simply agents appointed for the protection of
commerce in foreign countries. Those of Austria, for the
most part, are men who appear equally ignorant as to the
nature of their real duties, and the importance of commerce
to the Government of which they are the servants. Pro-
fessing the uttermost contempt towards the class of men
engaged in commercial pursuits, they shun their society,
and when placed in contact with any of its members, as-
sume towards him the consequential airs of a Spartan to
an Helot. Their vain but unceasing aspirations to main-
tain the false position in which vanity has placed them,
the arbitrary acts and vexatious measures resorted to
by these petty despots, have contributed to render them
throughout the Levant objects of universal derision and of
dislike in the eyes of those unfortunately placed under their
jurisdiction. It is to the illiberality of these officers that
Austria is chiefly to attribute the languishing state of her
commercial industry in the East. A few facts will enable
you to judge of the degree of arrogance and tendency
to arbitrary sway characteristic of these protectors of
commerce. An English gentleman, on his arrival at
Galatz on board the Pannonia, had taken his passage
for Constantinople in the Ferdinand, which was to start on
the following day, according to the statement made by the
director of the Steam Company to the Austrian Consul in
that port. To the great surprise of the captain, the Con-
sul sent him directions in the evening on no account to
leave Galatz on the following day. The latter having ob-
served to the bearer of this mandate, that being bound by
the regulations of the company he would leave on the day
and at the hour appointed, he was told that his Excellency
the Consul would in that case refuse delivering his pass-
port. " Then," replied the Captain dryly, an Eglishman,
" I must do without it." At 9in the evening the Consul,
apparently having come to his senses, sent the papers on
board. One of the company, curious to ascertain the
cause of so strange a proceeding, was told by the bearer
that all he could say was, that his master happened to be
on that evening very much out of temper.
A few weeks ago Hussein Bey, the Governor of Smyrna,
having been informed that the inhabitants of the town had
resolved on sending a deputation to Constantinople in order
to lodge a complaint against him, sent an officer on board
the Maria Dorothea a few moments before the hour fixed
for its departure, to ascertain whether the persons he sus-
pected were among the passengers, and in that case to
take them into custody. The captain refused to admit
him on board, representing to the officer, that his de-
mand being in direct violation of the laws of na-
tions, he could comply with it only in case the
Austrian Consul authorized him to do so. A few
moments after the Turkish officer returned, accompanied by
the Consul's Cancelliere, and after examining the passengers
on board at full length, returned on shore. In the capital,
in presence of the highest authorities in the empire, the re-
presentatives of England and Austria have successfully op-
posed themselves to the rights of search claimed by the
Turkish Ministry. At Smyrna, a Consul not only tolerates
this abuse of power, and allows a precedent to be established,
but sanctions it ; and when appealed to, to protect the flag
of the Government he represents against an insult offered,
lends his assistance to the offenders of its dignity.
Without entering further into details, 1 shall observe,
that the advantages arising from the popularity enjoyed in
Turkey by the vessels belonging to the Austrian Steam
Navigation Company have incessantly been counterbalanced
by the system of arbitrary interference on the part of the
Imperial Consuls. What tends to aggravate the odium of
their conduct, and ought to call yet more loudly for inter-
ference on the part of the Austrian Government is, that the
English steamers, with which the'Austrian steamers are in
concurrence, are placed on a very different footing with re-
gard to their protecting authorities. The English Consuls
in no sort of way interfere with their administration, aware
that their duty consists alone in affording protection to Bri-
tish vessels, when so required, against the abuse of power on
the part of the local authorities. It seems quite natural
that the Austrian Steam Navigation Company should, as I
understand its intention at present to be, allow the steamers
it has ordered in England to retain, on their arrival in the
Levant, the British flag. It would meet with no difficulties
in carrying this measure into effect, several of its share-
holders being Englishmen of distinction.
The Ilam of the Sheik Islam informed, on Friday night,
the Mussulmans of Stamboul, that the moon of Rhamadan
having appeared, every true believer was to begin the holy
fast. The minds of the Turks are, during the whole period
of this fast, so completely engaged in heavenly considera-
tions, and their time so much taken up in the performance
of the prescribed religious practices, that worldly affairs,
unless of the utmost urgency, are laid aside till after the
Bairam. Everything has, in consequence, been left so com-
pletely that I have this week no political in-
telligence to communicate. The Sultan,
his strOtyfa,laaunnyd the whole Turkish population, spend the
night in feasting, the forenoon in sleeping, and the afternoon
in lounging. The only intelligence to us, at least, of im-
portance, is, that the plague is decidedly on the decline.
Should the winds, which for the last ten days have blown
from the west, continue for some time yet in the 'same di-
rection, the total cessation of this epidemy may safely be
relied upon. Should easterly winds, however, set in, expe-
rience teaches us that the increase of its ravages is inevitable.
M. Boutenieff presented on the 7th inst. to the Sultan
an autograph letter from the Emperor, in answer to the
letter of congratulation Mahmoud had addressed him, on
receiving intelligence of the narrow escape he had met with.
Lord Ponsonby, it is generally reported, will return to
England in January. Mr. Urquhart, who, it is supposed,
will remain here as Charge d'Affaires, has been directed to
fit up a house at Cooroo Chermah, which, in future, will
serve for the accommodation of the British Embassy.
The Virem has not as yet been heard of.

INTRIGUES OF RUSSIA.
(From another letter of the same date.)
A traveller lately arrived from Trebisond informs me that
a few days previous to his departure, a firman was read in
the mosques and other places of public worship in the town,
informing the inhabitants and all whom it might concern
that the Emperor of all the Russias, ever solicitous for the
welfare of his subjects, had had his paternal feelings repeatedly
most cruelly hurt, upon hearing that since the period Circas-
sia has had the honour of being called one of his provinces,
mindless of the sanitary cordons and cruisers sent I o blockade
their country, and protect its natives from the inroads of the
plague, they persisted in their fatal obstinacy to keep up an
intercourse with that nursery of pestilence, Turkey, and
thereby seriously compromised their own healths, as well as
that of their more dutiful brethren the Muscovites ; seeing
his august mind plunged in deep affliction and melancholy,
his Ministers had suggested the propriety of representing to
his good friend, Sultan Mahmoud, how very distressing his
case was, and invite him, for the sake of the favourable
stipulations of the treaty of Hunkiar Skelessi, to concur
with him in curbing the insubordinate spirit of his Circas-
sian subjects. This desirable object might materially be faci-
litated by his forbidding all commercial relations between
them and the Mussulman populations living along the
southern coasts of the Black Sea. Unable to resist the
warm entreaties of his afflicted friend, the Padishah, in
whose heart mercy holds her seat, had agreed to comply
with his solicitations, and in consequence had manifested the
will that his subjects shall hold no intercourse with Cir-
cassia, until the sentence of excommunication which the
waywardness and insolence of its inhabitants has obliged
the Emperor to pronounce against them, shall have been
revoked. Aware that, besides other articles, necessaries
of life, salt is nowhere to be found in Circassia, and that
unless drawn from Turkey its inhabitants must endure the
most cruel privations, the Emperor, anxious that measures
adopted for the sake of keeping them in good health should
not cause them to be starved, has graciously been pleased to
allow two ports to remain open to foreign vessels, for the
exchange of commodities, after submittinc, them to a ra-
tional purgation during forty days. One of these ports, Anapa,
presents to the natives, b esides the attraction of 8,000 Rus-
sian bayonets, the remarkable advantage of being only three
hundred miles distant from the centre of the country,
and the other, Redout Kaleh, that of being still further
off. To both of these unfrequented ports, Russia has
most liberally granted free access to foreign vessels. Not-
withstanding the respect paid to Imperial firmans the
Imaum was while reading it more than once interrupted
by peals of laughter from the congregation, who looked
upon it in the light of a good hoax. Whatever Russia's
anticipations from it may be, it appears certain that this
Imperial mandate will remain, like the generality of its
predecessors, a dead letter. It is not with similar means
that men engaged in a traffic where salt, gunpowder,
arms, and clothing on the one side, and lovely women
on the other, are the articles of exchange, can be pre-
vailed upon to abandon their avocations. The intelli-
gence of an English vessel's departure for one of the in-
terdicted ports of Circassia, which arrived at Tresibond
at the same time as this firman, proved a coincidence
which powerfully aroused the feelings of the people,
and converted into enthusiasm the popularity which Eng-
land, as rival of Russia, enjoys in that portion of the Sul-
tan's dominions contiguous to the Muscovite borders

Will our Administration be capable of turning this di
position in our favour to England's account ?

SPORTING INTELLIGENCE.

STEEPLE CHASE.

A steeple chase was run yesterday, near Hayes, about two
o'clock, for a Gold Cup, by a subscription of 10 sous. each
(8 subs. ), by the following horses :
Mr. Bryan's The Flyer ( Captain Becher) 1
Mr. Weston's Jerry (Owner) 2
Mr. J. Mason's The Mite (Owner) .
Captain Willan's Redman (Mr. Powell)
Mr. Anderson's Edwin (Mr. Rice)
Mr. Bryan's Red Deer ( Owner)
Mr. Hall's Conrad (Owner)
Mr. Elmore's Lottery (Mr. Seifert) 8
The line of country was admirably selected for the specta-
tors, the first mile and a half being on a descent, and the con-
cluding mile over a gently rising ground. The distance,
barely three miles, commenced in a field at King's End, about
a mile from Ickenham, traversed nearly all grass land, with
light flying fences, and finished in Mr. Shackel's, Pole-hill
field, about a mile from Hayes. The line was intersected by
a lane about three part of a mile from the start, and midway
by a brook, and a " feeder" to the canal, over both of which
we believe there were bridges at convenient spots. At start-
ing, Conrad, The Mite, and Edwin, laid in front, the other
five keeping in reserve to the lane, where divers mishaps oc-
curred. The Mite blundered at the fence out of it, and Con-
rad, who had been running immediately in his track, not having
time to extricate himself, jumped against him, and lodged
Mason in a bramble, which kept him in a very close and un-
comfortable embrace for some seconds. The fall of these two
forced Jerry and Redman more to the right, the former's bridle
becoming entangled in a stake in the same fence, and consi-
derably retarding him. Redman was checked at die same
spot, Mr. Powell getting into action again with the loss of his
cap. The stopping of this " moiety" of the field enabled The
Flyer to take a decided lead, which he maintained to the end,
and won very easy by several lengths. Several changes oc-
curred amongst the others. Red Deer and Lottery laid next
The Flyer from the lane, Redman, The Mite, and Jerry gain-
ing on them so rapidly that they were in the last field but one
at the same time. Lottery took the last fence next to The
Flyer, but fell, his place being immediately taken by Jerry,
who proved himself a game and speedy horse by the manner in
which he made up his lost ground. The same may be said of
' The Mite and Redman, who were well up with him. We
have stated above how the horses came in, but it should be
' added that, after the last jump, most of the riders stopt them
' on finding their chances gone.