The Sun.
London, England, 1841-09-16 00:00:00

THE FINANCES OF TURKEY.

The Allgemeine Zeitung of September the Bth Con-
tains the following extract of is letter from Constan-
tinople, dati'd August the 17th :—" The fieances of the
Porte are at presect in a very bad state. Almost all
the chests are- empty, acid the civil officers are, for the
most part, two or three months in arrear Olte Turks
aectibo the great embarrassment entirely end elme to,
t he new system of administration introduced by Redschid
Paella, not considering that the principle of separating
the administrative from the executive po-Ever in the
provinces was in itself good and advantageous for th'
people, and that it has failed only in its practical
application. In this respect three grand mistakes
have been committed. In the first place, by far
too great a number of officers has to en nppointel.
In each province there is a Muhasil (civil governor),
who has his vekil (deputy) in every town. These
depeties again have sub-deputies in all the smaller
towns and villages, so that there is no end to the
subdivision of offices. Each of these officials is sur-
rounded by a horde of seer( tides, bookkeepers, cashiers,
and Livasse; (armed men), all of whom rece:ee monthly
allowances from the Government. Secondly, the sa-
laries of these officials are too high. For instance,
the defterdar (chief accountant) of the province of
Aleppo receives a monthly allowance of 20.000 piastres
besides provisions and rations for his horses, Ike. The
Musahils have generally from 8,000 to 19,000 piastres
monthly. In the third place, these individuals are,
generally speaking, a plundering set, who squeeze all
they can out of the people and betray the Government,
so that, as .the Turks themselves say, there are no:v
some hundreds of tyrants and bloodsuckers in each pro-
vince instead of only one, which there formerly used to
be—namely, the Pacha. That dignitary, instead of
drawing a salary from the Government, sent annually
large sums to Constantinople, re!aining for himself
merely a per centage on the taxes. I shall give an ex-
ample of the effect of all this. Tile supreme direction
of Topehana (artillery) draw the sums requisite for their
use from the Pachelic of Kutahia. Not having re-
ceived any supplies from the civil governor of that pro-
vince for six months, and finding themselves ingrreai.
great
,want of funds, they wrote to Mustapha Pacha, the n
litery governor of the Pachalic. After some delay an
answer was receive I from that officer, stating that on a
eireul examination of the books of the Muhasil and of
his vekil, be had found that the taxes collected for the
previous six months bad not been sufficient t i pay the
s,d tries of the officers of the Pacha'ic, to several of
whom twe or three months' pay was due, notwithstand-
ing the murmurs of the people against the 111411 taxes
arid their forcible collection. They are now beginning
to think of the means of remedying there abuser, but
those means will bc very difficult to find, since the grand
evil lies in the bavnese of the greater number of the
officials. In the mean tune, the administration of some
of the provinces has again been provisionally placed in
the hands of the Paci,a.”

LErrif.—The reduction of duty upon wheat,
from 6s. Bd. to 2s. Bd., on Saturday last, produced, as
might have been expected, great excitement and specu-
lation here. Merchants whose stacks were low, and
those who prefer availing themselves of the present. rate
or duty to waiting the chance of it falling to one
on Saturday next, were; busy clearing percels from
bond the whole of Saturday. The great bulk, however
(nearly one hundred thousand quarters), remains, upon
the expectation of being relieved at the minimum rate.
Seven entire cargoes changed hands on Friday, and
every tide is adding to the quantity already in bond.