The commerce of Constantinople is closely allied with that of Smyrna; and many branches of trade, such as silk and opium, being required to pay duties at the customhouse of the capital, the merchants buy them at Constantinople merely in order to pass them over to Smyrna, where they find a more advantageous market for them. In consequence, these goods are twice borne upon the registers of the Turkish customhouses, which, be it observed, are exceedingly badly kept. Wool forms the principal branch of trade at the Porte, which is abundantly furnished with that article from her nearest provinces, Roumelia, Thessaly, and Bulgaria, which, containing about five million inhabitants, feed about eight million sheep, the value of which may be estimated at about two hundred million piastres, (the Turkish piastre, is worth about 2-1/4d.) It would have been impossible for such an important object to have failed exciting the cupidity of a government constituted like that of the Ottoman empire; in consequence, in 1829, they attempted to make a monopoly of the wool-trade. Fortunately, the clamorous despair of the owners of the flocks, and some good advice, caused the Divan to recall the measure, which would in all probability not only have given a fatal blow to the wool-trade, but have entirely put an end to the feeding of flocks throughout Turkey. Instead, therefore, of monopolising this branch of commerce, the government saddled it with such an exorbitant duty, that the provinces definitively gained little by the change. The price of wool was more than quadrupled, and in 1833 there was sold for above 170 piastres the hundredweight what in 1816 cost but forty piastres. The abolition of the monopolies and the modification of the duties have given, since the last six or seven years, some facilities to this trade, without, however, entirely restoring it to its former state of prosperity. Partly destroyed by the severe blow it had received, and shackled by the avarice of the Pashas, it languishes, as indeed does every other branch of trade and industry in the empire.