European surveillance is in any case an absolute necessity for securing the introduction of reforms, but there are no other conditions more favourable to its successful working than those above indicated. To reinforce the government of the Osmanlì would of all solutions be the most deplorable. It would be to give a new lease of life to all that is worst in the present state of Bosnia. It would be a gage of future anarchy and a perpetuation of corruption. I have far too much confidence in the shrewdness of the Oriental mind to suppose for a moment that the desired reforms would not be temporarily introduced under the eyes of Europe. But the instant that supervision was removed, the instant that the forces necessary for the enforcements of the reforms were withdrawn, the Osmanlì government in Bosnia would relapse into what it is at present,—a foreign bureaucracy, which, powerless to support the Sultan’s authority against the Conservative opposition of native Mussulmans, is reduced to pander to it. The old game of playing with the antagonisms of castes and creeds would be revived, the reforms would disappear one by one, and the smouldering elements of Christian discontent would once more burst forth in a conflagration, which might eventually light up the ends of Europe. The great difficulty that statesmen have to contend with at the present moment is how to obtain certain elementary securities for the honour and property of an oppressed class of ignorant peasants, in the teeth of a haughty and oppressive ruling caste. To reverse the positions of serf and lord would be impossible. To bolster up a Christian government in the country, and after depriving the dominant caste of what it considers its hereditary dues, and stripping it of part of its possessions, to place it forcibly beneath the yoke of those whom it despises as slaves and abominates as idolaters, would need more supervision than Europe would be willing to accord; nor is it likely that anything short of perpetual armed occupation would succeed in enforcing such reforms, or in preventing the prolongation of an exterminating civil war.