I think every impartial man who has read the correspondence must allow that Mehemet Ali was not the aggressor. It is quite true he was anxious to be independent, and no wonder that a man who had acquired such extensive possessions by the sword should be desirous of emancipating himself from a weak master. I am not going to justify Mehemet Ali’s first invasion of Syria: that would have been the time for the Allies to have discouraged him, and a naval force sent off Acre would have been quite sufficient to have put an end to his ambitious designs; but nothing of the sort was done. Mehemet Ali was allowed to follow up one victory after another, till his road to Constantinople was open, and the Turks, having been refused assistance by their friends, called in the Russians to protect them; and the Treaty of Kutayah settled for that time the Eastern question. The Allied Powers, on learning that preparations were making for war at Constantinople, instructed their Ambassadors to urge the Porte to preserve peace. At the same time Russia took the initiative, and instructed her Consul to desire Mehemet Ali to recall Ibrahim, and to withdraw the Egyptian army to Damascus. What right had Russia, after consenting to the Treaty of Kutayah, to make such a proposal? Would it not have been safer and wiser, had the Allied Powers preserved the _status quo_, or even persuaded the Porte to acknowledge Mehemet Ali at once, and confer on him the government of the countries he had conquered, stipulating at the same time that he should establish a milder government in his extensive possessions? It had been proved that Turkey, weak as she was, was entirely incapable of governing her distant provinces; and would it not have been better to have given her a powerful ally who would have been interested in protecting her against her natural enemy, Russia, than curtailing his power, by restoring provinces which she had not been able to govern, and at best giving her a discontented vassal? It may be argued that such a proceeding would have been dismembering the Turkish empire: I answer, that was already done by the Treaty of Kutayah, and it would have been much safer to have let things alone. Candia, which was entirely separate both from Egypt and Syria, might have been restored to the Porte; this would have given her more real strength than she is ever likely to receive from her very imperfect possession of Syria.