The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-28 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMEs.—The public will learn with the deepest
sorrow and anxiety that news has been received of
the dangerous illness of Lord Elgin, and that there
are but slight hopes of his being still alive. The
last accounts were up to the 14th, and he was then
daily becoming weaker. We will hope for the best,
but we must prepare for the loss of one of the most
able public servants that the country possesses.
Lord Elgin, who, left us but the other day to re-
lieve the dying Lord Canning, as the latter relieved
the dying Lord Dalhousie, will in all probability
never again see the land of his birth or enjoy the
rest and honours which should be the recompense
of his great services. It is, indeed, a dreadful price
that we pay for the possession of an Asiatic empire.
Whether the constitution of men in these days or
their previous habits of life are less fitted to a
tropical climate, or whether it be that the work
and the responsibility are more oppressive than of
yore, there has been certainly a mortality among
the chiefs of the Indian Administration which is
enough to deter men of eminence from attempting
it. Every mail brings us the tidings of some one
breaking down; of some one retiring for a.time or
resigning altogether on the ground of ill-health ;
and besides the two former Governors-General
whom we have mentioned, there is also Lord Elphin-
stone, who, in scarcely lower posts at Madras and
Bombay, showed great administrative abilities, and
was snatched away in the full vigour of his age.
Should it unhappily be the case that Lord Elgin has
succumbed, the country will have lost the third of a
remarkable list of men, who, after having governed
India with transcendent brilliancy and success, have
been removed without having an interval granted
them to repose in the greatness they have
achieved. Lords Dalhousie, Canning, and
Elgin were almost of an age; they were all
at Christ Church together, and entered public
life about the same time. Lord Dalhousie
at an unusually early age was placed at the head of
the Indian Empire, and governed with an ability
and spirit which must be acknowledged even by
those who look upon some of his measures as unjust
and in their result calamitous. He returned home
to linger and die, and was succeeded by Lord Can-
ning, who, going to India with the hope of passing
his term of service in the furtherance of peaceful
prosperity, found himself engaged during the greater
part of his reign in suppressing the most formidable
insurrection in modern annals. Lord Elgin suc-
ceeded him with the general approbation of the
country, founded on his able services in other de-
partments. In 1842 he was made Governor of
Jamaica, and was promoted in 1846 to the Governor-
Generalship of British North America, where he
carried through the well known reciprocity treaty
with the United States, which has been the source
of such benefits to Canada. Lord Elgin's services
during his missions to China are so recent and so
well known that we need hardly recall them to the
memory of our readers. In the spring of 1857 he
was sent to the East, and though the Indian mutiny
delayed operations for a time, he did not leave
China until he had not only signed a treaty with
the Imperial Commissioners at Tien-tsin, but had
also broken the spell of Japanese isolation, and, en-
tering the harbour of Jeddo, surprised the Govern-
ment into consenting to intercourse with the Euro-
pean world. His second embassy to China was as
successful as the first : the capture of Pekin was
followed by the treaty of October 14, 1860, and the
way opened to that extended commerce which pro-
mises to bring the Chinese Empire under the
influence of European civilisation. These emi-
nent services pointed out Lord Elgin for the
most splendid viceroyalty under the Crown, and
he proceeded to the East, for the third time,
to relieve Lord Canning as Governor-General of
India. We believe he had suffered from heart
complaint ; and though he took great care of
his health, particularly avoiding the heat of the sun,
it was this malady which, assuming an acute form,
prostrated him with the illness which it is feared
has ended fatally. The Governor-General was in
the North-West Provinces ; he had passed the hot
season at Simla, had lately been traversing some
elevated tracts in the Himalayas, and had, it is said,
a few days before his illness ascended to a point
13,000 feet high. It may be that this exertion was
too much for a constitution which, though appa-
rently good, had suffered somewhat from repeated
resider ce in hot climates. Lord Elgin, who was to
meet Sir Hugh Rose at Lahore, was taken, it ap-
pears, suddenly and dangerously ill. and by the last
accounts there were scarcely any hopes of his rally-
ing. So probably falls another of the able and pa-
triotic men by whom the empire of England has
been founded and maintained. It may be some con-
solation to a man to know that be dies serving his
country ; but, on the other hand, it is bitter for him
to feel that be is cut off when only in middle age,
with his work half undone and the happy prospects
of public prosperity and private honour clouded for
ever. Lord Elgin, we fear, is not destined to see
the full consequences of his courage and ability in
China, nor the development of Indian prosperity
under his peaceful rule. To successors he must
leave the carrying out of the changes which he
began, and there can be no greater disappointment
to an active and ambitious spirit. Unless the news
which reaches us be grievously exaggerated, he has
already passed away like the rest of his predeces-
sors in the government of the great Asiatic Empire.
It is strange to reflect that not a single Governor-
General remains alive, except Lord Ellenborongh,
who was out two-and-twenty years ago. Lord
Auckland has been long dead, Lord Hardinge is
dead, the Marquis of Dalhousie and Lord Canning
have both been carried to early graves. Lord Elgin,
we fear, follows them at the ege of 52, leaving the
great but fatal prize of the official world once more
in the gift of the Premier, who has seen so many
recipients of it pass away.
POST.—The Turkish financial report of the Grand
Vizier and the Minister of Finance, which arrived
from Constantinople yesterday, is now before us.
This document is very remarkable, both for the
clearness of its statement and for the honesty and
absence of exaggeration which characterise it
throughout. It informs us at length what has been
effected for Turkish finance during the last two
years of energetic reforms, and it tells us what
remains to be done. We have, moreover, an explicit
statement of the application of the loans which
have been contracted during the present reign for

the discharge of pre-existing Obligations and,
what is not less important, and more novel, is the
assurance which is given that the foreign and do-
mestic loans thus contracted are final, and there will
be no need, for the future, to apply to the money
markets either on Constantinople or the West of
Europe. Indeed, there is a peculiarly strong sense
conveyed in the present report of the impolicy of
borrowing within the Turkish territories, consider-
ing the high rates at which it had been customary
to effect loans with the Greek and Armenian
bankers. A policy of economy has apparently been
adopted in earnest by the Sultan and the Divan,
and they are resolved to maintain the establish-
ments and liabilities of the State strictly within its
current resources. It is not the least valuable re-
sult of this document to show how the loans of the
present reign have been applied to the improvement
of the public credit. It appears that not a shilling
of their produce has been consumed in current ex-
penditure. The Grand Vizier and the Minister
of Finance show how the Government was bur-
dened, on the present Sultan's accession, first
with a vast amount of depreciated paper money,
known as the Caimes, and, secondly, with an im-
mense floating debt. In order to restore the credit
of the country it was found absolutely necessary to
put an end to this state of things. The amounts
required for each of these two objects was not far
..
short of ten millions sterling, or near twenty 1
mduto
lions in all. For this purpose recourse was,
The two
the foreign and home money markets.
ed, in
and
foreign loans of 1862 and 1863 have furnrht
round terms, about one moiety of
the
amount,s
the four issues of internal stock, known
has been
With these
paper
ethe
Conso-
lides, have yielded the other moietoyn.eya
means the whole of the
money
part of the
bought in and cancelled; and.
the
debt has beenl off, it having been
countries; and it is probable
floating debt in other f
already reduced to less than the usual proportion of
the remaining instalments
Turkish Treasury the rest of this floating
of Finance
dthuaetto withthe t e
debt will be extinguished,. or as nearly so as is
- tile. Meanwhile, the Minister
payment o
practic
states that he has succeeded, after effecting these
two cardinal reforms, in saving from the proceeds
of these several loans a sum of two millions sterling,
which it is his intention to apply to the calling in
of the base coinage, from which
exempt than the German StateS_Tuwriktehy is
the no in
import-
ant distinction, indeed, that this base coinage is
much less frequent in Turkey
The Minister further show
s that
thesei
meansG n era n
they .
credit of the country has been established, while but
a slight increase of interest on the public debt is in-
volved by them,
the usurious local credits having
now been thereby paid off. The adjustment of the
debt, and the cancelment of the paper and base coin

being thus recorded, the Grand Vizier and the
Minister of Finance proceed with their scheme of
taxation for the future. The latter speaks with
the greater detail. It has not escaped him that Tur-
key is a country very lightly, and also very un-
equally, taxed. He proposes accordingly fresh classes
of burdens, which may be accompanied by the remis-
sion of others that press more on a development of
the national resources. Among these the proposed
tax on immovable property at Constantinople is to
be adopted; and its incidence is to be so arranged
as to exclude the poorer classes from its operation,
and to begin with such a class as we should call the
class of ten-pounders. Again, the taxation of the
Mosque property, if not also its secularisation—
which would in itself bring it within the reach of
existing territorial taxation, the Mosque property,
as such, being at present exempt from taxation by
law—is estimated to add a very large revenue.
The Mosque property, indeed, extends over fully a
third of the soil. Thirdly, the Minister announces
the introduction of an entire change in the system,
of interior custom houses, which—like those of
Germany before the institution of the Zollverein—
are operating as a check upon internal trade; and,
under the same heading, he proposes also to revise
indirect taxation. Fourthly, the cadastral works,
begun with so much advantage in some parts, are
to be extended at once to the whole empire. This
report is accompanied by the publication of the new
budget in an official shape, and with results more
favourable to the Turkish treasury than were in-
dicated in the hasty and inaccurate telegraphic
version which we published a few weeks ago. It
will be remembered that the details, as given in
that version, did not tally with their totals ; arid
that, instead of a surplus, there bore the appeae-
ance, on a close scrutiny, of a deficit. 'We observe,
however, that this enormous conclusion was due
wholly to the inaccuracy almost inevitably inci-
dental to the telegraphic communication of a great
variety of figures in detail, and that the surplus
is larger than there was reason to anticipate. In
this official statement almost every source of
revenue has its annotations as to the changes
which have been effected with regard to it, and
we shall hope to communicate some of these details
to the public in an early impression. It is im-
possible to deny that the present Sultan, (luring
the two years and some months of his reign, has
effected a vast change in the government of his
empire, and especially in matters of finance. Ia
this short period he has restored public credit by
cancelling the whole paper currency without per-
sonal loss to a single holder; he has nearly extin-
guished the floating debt; he has provided for the'
suppression of the baser coinage; he has paid off
local and anomalous debts at Galata, that had been
contracted at very high rates ; he has consolidated
the whole national debt of Turkey ; and he ham
established regularity in the payment both of the
public interest, and of the pay of the army, navy,
and civil service. Besides this, the Sultan has now
subjected the public accounts to the same scrutiny,
and afforded them the same publicity, as our own ;
and even in greater detail. He has also brought
the expenditure considerably within the revenue;
. and we sincerely believe that a few years of this
, policy will establish the Government of Turkey on
, as sound a basis as that of any other State of the
Continent.

COUNTRY MARKETS•

WAKEFIELD-FRIDAY.

The show of wheat to-day was good. Last Friday's rates
were fully maintained, and in some instances is more money
was taken. Barley was very dull, and is cheaper. Oats,
beans, and shelling unchanged.