The Sun. — 1869-07-20 (London, England)

TRUE CONSULAR STORY BY W. J. STILLM AN.— That gentleman, at ono time Gansu' at Rome, was transferred to Canea by Mr. Seward to silence his complaints against au iniquity the Secretary did not choose tc correct. His income was $l,OOO per annum, which sufficed for the modest wants of his family during the first year, one of peace and low prices, but after the war broke out a material change occurred in the price of living in Crete. The Viceroy of Egypt offered him any compensation to get up a petition from the Cretans for the transfer of the island to Egypt. This ho exposed to Mr. Morris, and he to the English Ambassador at Constantinople, who quashed the proj pct. Ms denunciations of the unjust measures to drive the Cretans into insurrection and remonstrances with the local authorities excited their hostility, and hewas accused of being an instigator of the insurrection. Mr. Stillman says, " I was menaced with the withdrawal of my exequatur ; I was denounced in the Philo-Ottoman journals, the despatches of the French Consul (the most corrupt and mendacious Levantine I ever met); bullied and insulted by the '. ;;1 authorities, openly menaced with assassination by the. ~,,ulman mob; a picquet of Zapties at my front door, an. "I‘.4ther at the back, to examine everybody who left my ho ;and though the surveillance of months had found no farz.",;-i.:,which to accuse me, the charges were no leis viruleu .;:-.4iiritated wore the Mussulman population against t I received frequent private warnings not to be outs Say house after sunset, and not to move without a gutacr- For "two weeks we were ready for barricading and defe;r4ing the consulate at any moment, and scarcely crossed its threshold ; and when, weary of this prison-life, I hired -a house which had a garden attached, where we and our children might breathe without danger from the rifle-balls that more than once had whistled by me, the Governor, on learning that I had taken it, compelled the owner to withdraw the lease, though my chattels were partly in the house. My employes were insulted, beaten, denied recognition, and, in some cases, compelled to abandon my employ. In vain I represented this state of things at Washington; no notice was deigned to me. Two or three times men-of-war came to Crete, whose officers mostly sympathised openly with the Turkish authorities as against the Cretans, and impliedly against me, and in one case carried their hostility to me so far that none of them except the captain and assistant-surgeon paid me a visit. Add to this, our worthy and time-honoured Secretary of Legation and dragoman at Constantinople joined in the hue-and-cry against me, attacked me and his chief, from whom alone I had ever received support and protection, in the American and European journals, entered into the conspiracy to drive me from the island, and gave the local authorities, with whom he was in correspondence, tc understand that I was not, and would not be, sustained by the Government." The position being unendurable he asked for leave of absence, which was denied. His wife refused to go to Greece with the children, and as a last resource he hired a little yacht to get out of the polluted air of Crete for ten days. Famine prices supervened, and meat became awfully dear, though the other Consuls were aided by the Government butcher. Nothing but the meetings of the friends of Crete on the other side of the Atlantic induced him to hold on, his expenses being double his income. " Congress will help you," wrote one ; "we will support you in your difficulties," wrote another, so he continued till a physician's peremptory orders sent him and his family to Athens sick. "Even from this asylum," he says, "our worthy representative at the court of the Bing of the nellenes endeavoured to drive me, and, failing that, to diminish ray favour there by representing (as I know officially) to the Greek Government that my conduct in Crete had not been approved by my own Government." We may here observe that Mr. Stillman ought to account for the very general condemnation his conduct received from Americans, according to his own showing, for it is just possible that they may be in the right and he in the wrong. 'However, we aro only telling his own story, and a very sad one it undoubtedly is. Eventually, the family arr:viug in America invalids, and his unfortunate wife so broken down, so unnerved by three years of unquiet, of excited sympathy, of harassed days and nights, that her reason yielded, and in an attack of inseniffshe committed suicide, her last troubles being for the miseries she. had witnessed• and could no longer alleviate. With Lis own nervous system shattered, his working power gone, his home destroyed, and his debts, amounting to $2,000 gold), he returns to private life, being dismissed the Consular seevice, his greatest regret being that he everentered it, while he has never heard from any of his sympathizing friends on the oilier side of the Atlantic sinoe the decline of the insurrection. The moral of Mr. Stillman's story evidently is -do not go into the Consular Service of the United States ; but if you do, our advice is, do not identify yourself with an insurrection, nor cJmuienca your career by fighting the Secretary of State, and continue it by fighting every superior with whom you come in contact. EXCLUSIVE, VERY IMPORTANT, 1411 E, AND VALUABLE are the properties of Lamplougu's Pyretic Saline, curing the worst headaches, sickness, skin, or bilisni affections. Pleasant palatable, and invigorating. told by all Chemists:--[Advt.)