I thought it advisable to acknowledge this communication, and as I was entitled to expect some additional assurances from the Sultan at the public audience which I had demanded of His Majesty according to my instructions, I avoided embarrassing the French Minister by proposing to him to take part in a step which related exclusively to my position. A copy of this acknowledgment is inclosed herewith; and in order to give your Lordship a complete view of the transaction in its full extent, I add the very terms, as translated to me, in which the Sultan was pleased to confirm and to enlarge the engagement of his Government. I may venture to add that His Majesty's assurances were given in the most gracious form, accompanied with an expression of thanks for the liberal manner in which the millions of Mahomedan subjects in India are treated by the British authorities, and followed by a message, after I had left his presence, to the effect that the sentiments which he had declared to me were not only those of the Monarch but of the individual. In short, my Lord, I am sanguine enough to hope that Her Majesty's Government have laid the foundation of a more real improvement in the temper and policy of this State than was to have been previously expected; and it is a subject of just congratulation that the counsels of two great nations have united successfully for the attainment of so beneficent an object. The invitation to Baron de Bourqueney to wait upon the Sultan the day after my audience, and to receive, for the information of his Court, a repetition of the assurances addressed to me, affords another proof of His Majesty's sincerity. I have, &c., (Signed) STRATFORD CANNING. P.S.--I request that a copy of this despatch and its inclosures may be forwarded immediately to Her Majesty's Government. S. C. Inclosure 2 in No. 38. _Official Declaration of the Sublime Porte, relinquishing the practice of Executions for Apostacy from Islamism_. [See Inclosure l in No. 36.] Inclosure 3 in No. 38. _Acknowledgment of the Sublime Porte's Official Declaration respecting Executions for Apostacy_. [See Inclosure 2 in No. 36.] Inclosure 4 in No. 38. _Declaration of His Highness the Sultan to Sir Stratford Canning at his Audience on the 23rd of March_, 1844. "Henceforward neither shall Christianity be insulted in my dominions, nor shall Christians be in any way persecuted for their religion." No. 39. _The Earl of Aberdeen to Sir Stratford Canning_. (Extract.) _Foreign Office, April_ 19, 1844.