The Sun.
London, England, 1858-03-18 00:00:00

EASTERN DIPLOMACY.

(Front the Moriziny Post.)
Something more notable even than the close of an
important epoch in the history of Turkey is marked
by the withdrawal of Viscount Stratford de Red-
cliffe from the British Embassy at Constantinople.
The completion of that eminent diplomatic career
signalises in a remarkable manner the advance
made by British interests in the East during the
last half century, and by necessity, therefore, as
the inevitable consequence of the advance of
those grand principles of modern civilisation of
which they are at once the most powerful
champions and the most conspicuous represen-
tatives. It is now upwards of fifty years since
Lord Stratford de Redeliffe began, in connection
with that very same legation of ours at the Otto-
man Porte, that distinguished and protracted career
in diplomacy
.which has just been brought to its
mature and singularly successful consummation.
The retrospect—looking back for a moment down
that long perspective of years, years crowded by so
many startling and renowned occurrences—is en-
titled, we cannot but think, at this moment to our
grateful and earnest consideration. It is a retro-
spect, moreover, which may be designated, without
exaggeration, as in many particulars really extra-
ordinary. Sufficient will have been remarked upon
this point in the way of elucidation, when we have
recalled to mind, in a few words, the circumstances
under which Mr. Stratford Canning first made his
appearance in a diplomatic capacity at Constantino-
ple. It occurred almost immediately after the me-
morable expedition of the squadron conducted, in
1807, by Admiral Sir John Duckworth across the
mare clausum of the Sea of Marmora and the for-
bidden channel of the Dardanelles—an expedition
thwarted solely
by the magnificent defence organ-
ised with heroic courage and with little less than
miraculous rapidity by the military genius of Gen.
(afterwards Marshal) Sebastiani, then at the Court
of Sultan Selim in the capacity of French Ambas-
sador. It was in the midst of the still unabated
excitement naturally enough resulting from that
historical incident, that our diplomatist, then in
the flower of his youth, first penetrated to •th e
waters of the Golden Horn. Napoleon the Great
was at that time the lord paramount of Continental
Europe, and as such, a few months later On, agreed,
upon the occasion of the Treaty of Tilsit, to divide
the Turkish dominions with his Imperial Ally the
Russian Emperor Alexander, the Czar contenting
himself with Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria,
while France absorbed within the limits of her vast

empire, Macedonia, Albania, Greece, and the islands
of the classic Archipelago.
It was then, simultaneously with the birth of
those gigantic day-dreams of spoliation, that there
arrived at Constantinople, more than fifty years
ago, the Engli.h diplomatist, under the guidance
of whose sagacity the interests of Great Britain
were so strenuously maintained that they at length
became in a manner dominant, and under the iegia
of whose protecting influence the integrity of the
Turkish Empire, after being successively sustained
at the poiut of the pen and with the edge of the
sword, has been at length (however gradually)
securely and consistently consolidated.
If nothing more than a simple coincidence of

time, it is interesting at any rate to remember tha,
it was precisely in the same year, 18U9, in which
Viscount Palmerston first took office as Secretary-
at-War, that Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe was
fir,it formally appointed Secretary of Legation at
the great scene of bis future Embassy, viz , Con-
stantinople. Since then a parallel course has been
in some measure run by diplomatist and adminis-
trator—by the latter as incomparably foremost
among all our living statesman—by the former as
assuredly one of the most laborious, and also, it
must be allowed, one of the most successful, of our
Ambassadors. It is particularly worthy of remem-
brance, as illustrative,of the consistency of his whole
policy in regard to Turkey, that while Mr. Stratford
Canning conceived it advisable in 1812 to persuade
the Porte to cede the provinces of Bessarabia to the
Czar, at the very crisis when the sword of the then
all-conquering Napoleon was in a manner at the
throat of the Russian autocracy--he simultaneously
both Moldavia and Wallachia, taking the
finorsoisetseodf upon the yielding up by the Muscovite
channel of the river Pruth as the inexorable
boundary line of demarcation between the Russian
and the Turkish territories. From the maintenance
of that position—a position affording a key to his
entire policy—his future Excellency never once
g years stbsequently.
Andswerve i t d
shoulddur in
gbeallrerntheemtuered, in regard to the
lengthened continuance of his diplomatic responsi-
bilities at Constantinople, that while he took his
departure from the Turkish capital shortly after the
treaty of Bucharest—stbsequently proceeding, in
1814, as Minister to Switzerland ; and again, in
conducting, be-
post at Constantinople, only
nabis;usirogn—ohf peculiar
e returned
sdl
iBedi2siOia
etayhs ft
iihnoei scroBruurt ot,
oaNfVssapts
.eh iopinseglt tesmr
originalprem e capacity as his Britannic
it nh
slBt2i6nitso
ihni s a
sn
Majesty's representative. Then it was that Sir
Stratford Canning inaugurated his labours as Am-
bassador to the Ottoman Porte by his famous inter-
view with Mavrocordato, soon after the disastrous
but heroic fall of the Greek patriots at Missolonghi.
Afterwards, it cannot speedily be lost to recollec-
tion in European history, how far his Excellency
not merely witnessed, but directly participated in,
the glorious task of moulding the events consequent
upon the Greek Revolution. Prominent, of course,
among the episodes of the Turkish annals coming
immediately within the scope of the noble via-
ount's personal remembrance is, doubtless, that
sanguinary destruction of the four thousand Janis-
rdaatantomparable in some Mahmoud, which may
r ea
osieosu
abbyl
yohr
oeregarded
u l
de-
gree. to the butchery of the gtrelitzes by Peter the
Great, as well as to Mahomet Ali's wholesale mas-
sacre of the Mamelukes. It is not, however, in
simply picturesque and bloody incidents like these
that lie the interest of Lord Stratford de Redeliffe's
diplomatic recollections in connection with Con-
stantinople. It is rather in incidents directly asso-
ciated with the maintenance of the wise and humane
policy of which he himself dexins all those years
has been the energetic and conscientious agent and
advocate in the East, and of which, under the
watchful observation of all Europe, Lord Palmer-
ston has so long here in England been the arch-
exponent. With the exception of the compara-
tively brief interval during which Sir Stratford
Canning occupied a seat in the House of Commons
—while Sir Robert Gordon assumed the cares
of the vacates Embassy to the Ottoman Porte—
the policy inaugurated in 1826 has been, with the
exception, we repeat, of that one short hiatus, sus-
tained per fas out ne/as by this one strong arm, by
this one bold will, in
bewil-
dering labyrinths of intrigue woven again and
again around him at Constantinople. Under the
auspices
this
o n e
persevering the Sultans,
ofAmbassador
present
Ambassador
Majesty
etshtye
twolaiof
last
reforming
Abdul Medjid, and his illustrious father and pre-
decessor, Mahmoud, have been enabled to carry
out, in defiance of every imaginable obstacle, the
grand scheme of the new system popularly known
in Turkey as that of the Tanzimat. Under the same
vigilant supervision the balance of power in Europe,
in spite of occasional shocks—shocks the most dire
and 'seemingly the must disastrous—has
in exquisite and almost uninterrupted equilibrium.
S anetitnee, without question, he must have found
his indomitdsle perseverance ted to the • very
uttermost, when possibly at the moment of some
accomplished
apparent success but just adroitly been kept
the qualm of doubt as to its sufficiency may have
forced itself upon him wish the old disheartening
supposition---incedimus per ignes suppositos cineri
doloso. However this may be, the ulterior results
won by this resolute career yield of themselves, for
all past anxieties, abundant recompense.
Those re-
sults history has already enumerated. They com-
prise among their number a barbarism virtually
abolished and an empire saved. The reward secured