The Sun.
London, England, 1867-07-22 00:00:00

Address to the Sultan.

Address to the Sultan from the Foreign Affairs'
Committees Deputation—presented at Buckingham
Palace, July 20,:h

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY,

We the subscribers to this address desire to ex-
press to your Majesty the satisfaction with which
your presence is welcomed on the soil of Britain.
The relations which have so long existed between
the Ottoman and the British Empires, founded, in
the first instance, on the interests of trade, have
been confirmed by community of political interest.
We never can forget those times of danger to Eng-
land, when the Continent was sealed against our
commerce, and when Turkey, faithful and high-
minded, amidst threats and alarms, threw wide her
ports to our merchants, and by her single resolution
rendered nugatory the conspiracy against us.
This lofty, honourable, and independent spirit we
have again witnessed when powerful States have
endeavoured to threaten your Empire into an
abandonment of its maxims regarding the sanctity
of asylum. These effOrts to extend political per-
secution within your frontiers have ignominiously
failed; the character of your Majesty's Government
and people has been maintained ; and the exile, so
long as he has ab,tained from unlawful acts, has
never ceased to be secure under the shadow of your
throne.

We also rejoice. to remember the character which,
according to universal testimony, is so deeply rooted
in the race to which your Majesty belongs. The
British merchant has ever found reason to proclaim
the special integrity and even the sensitive honour
of the Turk. No elements of civilisation can
compete in importance with such qualities as these,
and where they exist not true civilization is either
impossible or on the wane.

This national virtue is reflected, as might be an-
ticipated, in the Government of which your Majesty
is the supreme head. Observance of treaties and
fidelity to obligations are prevalent characteristics
of your annals. There is no record amongst them
of guarantees undertaken one day in order to be
explained away the next.

In like manner the whole world knows the public
credit of Turkey to be unimpeachable. She has de-
frauded none, and is known to be morally as incap-
able of wilful default as she is financially above the
risk of it. Her public debt, the recent and unhappy
result of external action, is still utterly insignifi-
cant in proportion to the revenue ; and that revenue
is far within the limits to which, by a complete
return to her ancient system, it can easily be ex-
tended. Her character is unaLzailable, and her re-
sources almost unlimited.

Not less universally acknowledged is it that your
Majesty's Government is one utterly without design
against the life and independence of any other
State. If laborious treacheries have ever to be
spoken of, in connexion with the name of Turkey,
they are, as a matter of course, directed against her,
never for or by her. We, therefore, see in your
Alajesty the representative of things rare in his-
tory, and rare in our own day, an honest
people and an honest Government. Ilow shall a
fair measure of respect, and sympathy, and confi-
dence be withheld from such a State ?
There is another remarkable feature of Ottoman
rule which, as a commercial people, ought to strike
and instruct us. Wherever your Majesty and your
Majesty's predecessors have been free to act accord-
ing to the traditions and maxims which you regard
as obligatory, commerce, too, has been free to an
extent not yet obtained for it by all the efforts of
our political economists and legislators. Custom-
house fetters, so far as they have existed,
have been of unwilling adoption, and the
direct fruit of foreign action ; and they have,
after a time, in a great measure succumbed not only
to your sense of interest, but of conscience and
self-respect. The wonderful position of your capital
is a security, not a danger, to other nations, so long
as the commercial system which you profess is to
any considerable degree realised. May no event--
indeed untoward—reverse these conditions, and
transfer such a maritime throne to hands skilled in
the use of the Custom-house for ends other than

those of revenue and trade. England would quickly
kuow the significancJ of the new combination of an
omnipotent commercial position, and a lawless poli-
tical code.

We therefore more especially rejoice to note the
striking expansion of the cotnwerce between Turkey
and England. Notwithstanding the profoundest
efforts to thwart this development, it continues
rapiWy to advance. It becomes to hide
by any dexterity the truth that Turkish law main-
tained means c anmercial freAom and prosperity,
and that Ta ki.sh law interfered with, and Turkish
rule distut bed or withdrawn, means pro tauto the
reverse.

We see in your Majesty the head of an empire
in which reigns unenfeebled the idea of law as bear-
ing on the questiGns of peace and war. No dis-
tinction can be greater tom that between a people
which holds war to depend on a judicial process;
and one which unconscious of, or indifferent to, the
possible misuse of its collective power, and forgetful
of the religious sanction which distinguished blood-
shed from murder, allows war to be initiated by
merely political persons and on merely political
grounds. To virtuous men and intelligent students
of history it is no less consolatory than extraordi-
nary that there should exist, in modern times, au
llipire in which war is an event which can only
occur after deliberations to ascertain its justice, ac-
companied by formalities intended to secure the

conscience of the humblest as well as the highest iu

the State.

We are therefore able to rejoice, without misgiv-
ing, that your Majesty's army, is pronounced by
competent authorities to be one of the best in ex-
istence. We know that, only a few years ago, it
never acted but to succeed, and that all its opera-
tions were as much characterised by a perfect dis-
cipline as by courage. Your army possesses and
enjoys the advantage of a physical condition which

keeps disease at bay, which makes your muster-roll
on the field equivalent to that in your archives,

which renders the mind of the soldier cool, cheerful,
and alert, and his body almost unconscious of
fatigue. The high rate of his pay and allowances,
and the character of the population from which the
great majority are drawn, no doubt con tribut to this
admirable spirit. But the temperance which he neces-
sarily practises, and the habits of personal cleanli-
ness which with him are a primary duty, and which
are facilitated by methods adopted by your race from
the days of Roman dominion, have a share in the
result which must not be ignored. Thus the Otto-
man army is no undisciplined crowd of men, mind-
lees, ignoble, dissolute, intemperate, or diseased. It
contains all the elements which make the military
state honourable, consistent with a high sense of
duty, safe and useful to the State, and formidable
to the foe.

But this temperance characterises not your Ma-
jesty's army alone, but your subjects. Your
Majesty cannot appreciate the feelings with which
a patriotic Briton acknowledges this truth. We are
many of us labouring to elevate our fellow-citizens
from the degradation of an habitual intemperance
which annually consumes millions of our wealth,
propagates hereditary disease, fills our gaols, and
reduces many millions of our labourers to the con-
dition of squalid pauperism.
This cancer devours our State, and will further
infect our offspring. All misfortunes may be faced
and redressed where mind and character have not
rotted under debasing vice ; but what shall con-
quer difficulties, when mind itself is thus debased ?
We rejoice that this second Fall of Man has not yet
occurred among the many millions subject to your
sceptre.

There are various other subjects on which we
might venture to felicitate your Majesty, and ex-
press our good wishes. That of the municipal liber-
ty so widely spread and so deeply rooted in your
empire, deserves for itself alone the exposition of
volumes; so likewise the principles of finance and
taxation properly characterising the Turkish State.
Shortcomings and faults belong to all human insti-
tutions ; but some of the evils connected with these
matters in other partS of the world, and which have
too often become organised mischiefs destroying
society, your fundamental laws have rendered im-
possible. The self-allocation of fiscal burdens is in
itself a principle of indestructible vitality.
White we daily contemplate with dismay a:great
people in Central Europe undergoing the last ex-
tremities of political and religious persecution, their
very language warred against, and the essentials
of their ancestral faith subjected to daily outrage,
not through popular outbreaks of hostile sects, but
by the deliberately applied energies of a powerful
Government betraying its first trust, it is a con-
solation to regard the opposite spectacle presented
in your Majesty's Empire. Your sceptre represses
local pbrenzies, and is, often amid singularly difficult
circumstances, the ultimate refuge of all. Each of
the various Christian communities is free to
maintain its own organic life, to carry on its
own affairs, to administer its own pro-
perty, maintain or extend its own hierarchy,
diffuse its charities, and educate its people. When
such free action has been impeded, it has been by
the hand of conspiracy, sometimes even glaringly
guided from abroad; never by the impulse, and
infinitely less by the plans and intentions, of your
Government. What unheard-of happiness would
it not be for Poland and Lithuania to know an
hour of breathing time under your Majesty's rule ;
nay, what would not the many unoppressed but
over-administered religious communities of various
European States give for similar rights of self-
management ?
Systematic misrepresentations and laboured in-
trigue have been methods ofttimes used against
your Majesty's Empire. These frequently, and
arms but rarely, have succeeded. Provinces have
even been torn away by a combination of foreign
States. In one case a race had begun after many
misfortunes to flourish under the Ottoman rule.

Their trade, their ships, their numbers, their
general well-being had been increasing under your
Majesty's more immediate predecessors by strides
almost unparalleled. It was needful for the pur-
poses of some that this should cease. Foreign
conspiracy, and foreign conspiracy alone, changed
this picture into one of insurrection ; then fed and
sustained that insurrection ; then matured an
intervention ; and finally hurried on an armed
_ _

assault of the greatest navies in the world dur-

ing profound peace against your Majesty's forus.
The ruin of the people who had been stirred up
to revolt, and whose ruin then formed a pretext
for succour, was a matter of no account with the
projectors of the scheme. To prosper under the
Turkish flag was a crime. The prosperity was there-
fore to be used as a weapon against the Govern-
ment which permitted it, and the victims had to be
reduced to a condition in which they should be
taught to look to its enemy for support. They were
indeed ruined, and the combined expenditure and
ceaseless exertions of Europe have failed to restore
prosperity to that portion of the race which had
been withdrawn from your dominion.
We refer to this tragedy in hopes of contributing
to avert another. The insolence of conspiracy has
not even for a moment been concealed in the case
of the Candian revolt. It is avowedly kept up by
extraneous agencies alone. The ostentation and
utter indecency of the daily and hourly breaches of
all law on the part of some of the conspirators,
forbid any hesitation in thus referring to them. We
know that it is the duty, and the easy duty, of Eng-
land to arrest these lawless proceedings on the part
of a State which she has created and nurtured, and
which is in her debt. But, at all events, we trust
that your Majesty knows the duty of chastising
public crime.
It will be argued that the Government which,
in pursuance of long meditated designs, has brought
about this present evil, would, in such a case as the
chastisement of her instrument, precipitate events
and bring down calamities still more serious. But
let your Majesty be assured that the Government
in question always strains her means of action to the
utmost, and that what it can do it will do without
incentive. Your Majesty wields a power in various
branches far more than equal to any emergency
which may be created by the aggressions of any
Power. For our own sake we desire that the
needed example be given, for wo too, in our
turn, begin to know something of how domestic
treason may be fomented from abroad, and even
elevated into a vital danger. There is no safety
but in vindication of law, and the State which vin-
dicates the law iu its own case strengthens all
others iu their hour of need.
Iu this as in all the many other fields where lust
of dominion and the spirit of cunning are openly or
.
secretly at work throughout the world against up
' right rule awl honest possession, may courage be
taken by the aggrieved, and may God defend the
right !

believe that not only the i.l.!a of adapting the
court of the I ulizt-01i.,e to di) purpos:,s of a ball-room,
but the crodi t of almost all the arrangements,which excited
such universal admiration on Friday are due to Sir ilskille
Perry. lie bad a most and woe task in c_mvorting a still
unfinished public office, at vet y short notice, to such a pur-
pose; and the success with which it was achieved is the
best evidence of the good taste and unsparing labour ap-
plied iu achieving it.

ANOTHER INVENTION BY THE EARL OF CAITH-
NEss.—We understand that a compass on a now and im-
portant principle has been made and is being patented by
the Earl of Caithness. The details of the invention are
distinguished by great simplicity, and are such as will be
of the utmost importance to seafaring meu. The compass
was tested on board the new steamer Russia, Dll the Clyde,
the other day, and the result was in the highest degree to
show its great superiority to that now iu use. One of its
chief recommendations is of course its simplicity, but there
are other futures, such as its not being affected by those
influences that produce motion on other compasses, the
absence of the pendulum, &e.—Northern Ensign.