capability and integrity, and handed over the most important offices of the State to ignorant fanatics and to cosmopolitan upstarts, whose one claim to notice was their dishonourable behaviour. One of the results of the present rule has been that foreign residents in Turkey have naturally clung more firmly to their extra-territorial privileges, and the old capitulation privileges have given rise to new privileges which are by no means based upon the stipulations of the ancient treaties. So one can now see in Constantinople the most amazing anomaly of many centres of Government, all distinct from one another, and all of them utterly unaffected by the sovereignty of the Porte. Thus the independence of Turkey is quite fictitious nowadays, and Abd-ul-Hamid can only satisfy his lust of tyranny by oppressing the section of his subjects who can expect no outside protection or sympathy. Throughout these pages I have consistently condemned the misrule of the present Sultan. My feeling against his ways is the stronger because I am sure that, in spite of the ascendancy gained by foreigners in Turkey, she might yet assert and maintain an honest and sound administration, in place of the miserable tyranny which oppresses her now. But as it is, the Foreign Powers, taking advantage of the existing misrule, not only fetter the hands of Turkish statesmen by persistently demanding fresh extra-territorial privileges for their subjects, but also take up, some of them, the cause of those Eastern Christians who are under Ottoman rule, alleging that they are acting in the name of 'humanity.'