The Grand Vizier at once wrote to demand from the Bey the assistance guaranteed in the firman of 1871. A Council of State was immediately convoked in which the Sheikh-el-Islam called on the members to support Muhamed es Sadek in performing his duty towards the Sultan. A lengthy debate ensued, and the possibility of a descent on Tunis by the Russian fleet was pointedly alluded to. It was at last decided to confine the action of Tunis for the present to a voluntary money contribution. The circular of the Sultan explaining the motives for the Holy War was read in all the mosques throughout the Regency on the 2d June, and owing to the enthusiasm excited by it, nearly two millions of piastres were collected and sent to Stamboul. M. Roustan now in vain pressed on the Bey the necessity of proclaiming his neutrality, but his endeavours were rendered fruitless by the reasoning of Mr. Wood, whose valuable services in Tunis were rewarded with the Knight Commandership of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. Napoleon III. is said in a weak moment to have once offered Tunis to Italy, and one or two of the Bey’s advisers would have preferred an Italian Protectorate to the Turkish suzerainty of 1871, but ever since the fall of the Empire it is clear that no French diplomatist ever seriously entertained the idea of an Italian partnership in Tunisian affairs. Some indefinite _pourparlers_ as to an ultimate division of the spoils, seem to have been quite sufficient to prevent Italy from giving her cordial support to that consolidation of the relations between Tunis and Turkey which was so eminently calculated to ward off the final catastrophe. In the Italian Green Book of 1877 Mazzini thus puts forward the pretensions of Italy as regards Tunis with praiseworthy frankness:—“One of our principal paths to progress will be a mission of civilisation, to be carried out at the first possible opportunity on the shores of Tunis. Just as Morocco belongs to Spain and Algeria to France, _so does Tunis, the key of the centre of the Mediterranean_, belong to Italy. The Roman flag floated on Mount Atlas after the fall of Carthage, and up to the fifth century we were masters of the country. The French have now cast their eyes upon it, and they will have it too in a short time, if we are not up and doing.” Italy was wrong in not joining England in 1870 to link the fate of Tunis indissolubly with that of Turkey, and she was doubly wrong when she adopted a policy of militant provocation towards France, unless indeed she was prepared to resist by force the invasion of the country. If the words of Mazzini represent in any way the opinion of Italian statesmen in 1877, concerning Tunis the action of Italy in the Regency seems almost inexplicable. At all events there can be little doubt that from about this time the ancient rivalry of England and France in Tunis gave place to the more animated and acrimonious competition between France and Italy. The history of the