The Ottoman Minister for Foreign Affairs read, in my presence, the whole of your Lordship's instruction translated into Turkish. Having finished it, he rose from his seat rather abruptly, without saying a word, and left the room for a few minutes. On his return, he told me that the subject was too important for him to give me an answer without referring to the Council; but, if I were inclined to listen, he would at once impart to me such observations as occurred to his mind. I assured him that I was willing to receive with becoming consideration whatever he thought proper to state; and he then proceeded to draw a strong line of distinction between custom and divine law, intimating that a practice derived from the former source might be abandoned to meet the wishes of Europe, or even of Great Britain alone, but that a law, prescribed by God himself, was not to be set aside by any human power; and that the Sultan in attempting it might be exposed to a heavy, perhaps even to a dangerous, responsibility. He sought to learn from me whether your Lordship had been fully aware of this view of the case in writing the instruction communicated to him; and it seemed to be his object both to prepare me for an unsatisfactory answer, and to obtain from me some admission which might give him an advantage in shaping the decision of the Council. I had already, in presenting the instruction, endeavoured to make it clearly understood, that Her Majesty's Government had no object in view but the one so distinctly and powerfully stated therein; and also to show how imperiously the welfare of the Porte itself requires that a practice and principle which operate as moral barriers between Turkey and Christendom, should now be once for all renounced and utterly abandoned. I had every reason to believe that your Lordship had instructed me with a full knowledge of the question in all its bearings and eventual consequences; that the course deliberately adopted by Her Majesty's Government, and announced to the principal Courts of Europe previously united in reprobation of the late impolitic and atrocious executions, was not to be receded from; and that any opening to a compromise on so vital a point could only encourage resistance and endanger the most important interests. I, therefore, rested entirely on the terms of your Lordship's instruction, to which, in truth, there was nothing for me to add. Although I replied to some of Rifaat Pasha's remarks in a considerate and conciliatory manner, I referred him steadily to your Lordship's instructions, and left no reason to hope that any evasive or temporizing assurance would be accepted as satisfactory by Her Majesty's Government. No. 25. _Sir Stratford Canning to the Earl of Aberdeen_.--(_Received March_ 8.) My Lord, _Constantinople, February_ 12, 1844.