The unhappy empire for which England and France had shed so much blood and made so many sacrifices continued to give anxiety and trouble to Europe. Turkey had gained much by the war in the way of security from invasion and extension of the central authority to provinces which previously had been partly independent. The Western Powers, and particularly England, waited anxiously for the reforms and progress which were promised by the sanguine friends of the Turkish cause. But Turkey did nothing. Her finances were in confusion. The schemes which English enterprise had kept going were delayed. While the Porte was borrowing at enormous interest the money required for current expenditure, it could hardly be expected to guarantee dividends on many millions sterling, and it would have inspired little confidence if it had done so. This, then, was the time for statesmen to study the question and to elaborate their plans. Of all the evils with which the Turkish State was afflicted, corruption――in the sense of the denial of justice――seems to have been the worst. Each of the non-Mohammedan nations was permitted to appear before tribunals of its own bishops in matters of litigation in which only its members were concerned. The civil law was administered in the Greek courts; the Armenians were subject to many regulations brought from the interior of Asia. The Turkish courts were presided over by functionaries who had much of the character of priests, and the law founded on the Koran was what might have been expected from a text-book interpreted by such commentators. The literal sense meant one thing, the metaphorical sense another, and the best chance of getting justice was when the judge could find nothing to fit the case and decided according to his own common sense. Both his Scriptural authorities and his private opinions were, however, continually influenced by arguments more persuasive than any pleadings. The corruption of this sort of court was notorious, and the Christian bishops were not considered much better than the believers. As for the _Frank_¹ jurisdiction, it was chaos, being void of all system. Each man came under the representative of his own nation; through this official or his deputy he had to be sued, and by him he had to be tried for any offence. If a French officer and a German shoemaker had differences concerning a pair of boots, one had to make his application through the Austrian Internunciate, the other had to respond through the French Embassy. The matter was in the first instance referred to the Consuls, who knew little of law, and the appeal came before the Ambassadors, who knew less. Commercial courts existed in some of the chief cities, and exercised a good influence; but as the country was opened more and more to commercial enterprise, and this increased with the progress of the non-Mohammedan populations, these courts became inadequate. ¹ European.