Parents often kept their children, or children their parents, in prison, to satisfy any pique of the moment, or persistent desire to wrong one another. At Silivri, ancient Silymbria, a town of Roumelia, on the Sea of Marmora, containing about 8000 inhabitants, I turned out of prison upwards of sixty persons, who had been kept in durance vile by the governor on the daily payment of so much per head, according to the rank of the incarcerated, for no crime whatever, but simply to satisfy the grudge of persons with whom they were at enmity. A Nicolai Bogdan, a wealthy tradesman of the town, had imprisoned his own mother to gratify the spite of his wife for some supposed family wrongs; and as the poor old woman left the prison, where she had been confined for the last four years, squalid in her filth and rags, Ahmed Bey, the governor, asked me if such a dog of a Christian, as Bogdan was, deserved the attention of Lord Stratford. In this observation lay the gist of all the evil of the time. The Whig Government, more or less subservient to the Manchester school of politics, wanted, like the governor of Silivri, to prosper in a worldly point of view, but did not wish to assume any moral obligation. So long as goods were sold they did not care anything about the buyer personally, or as to where his money came from, provided he did not become bankrupt. They were equally indifferent as to whom fell the task of paying twelve per cent interest on the loans they so freely offered to the Turk, forcing him to greater and more relentless exactions on the poor Christian taxpayer for the repayment. Such policy is as selfish as that of a French Communard, whose motto is, “After us the Deluge;” and the deluge _did_ come, sweeping away the prosperity and comfort of thousands and thousands of English families who had trusted to the positive indebtedness of the British Government to supervise and direct those to whom they otherwise would not have trusted their hard-earned savings. It is useless to speak of _hatti-humayoums, rades_, or any other devices of ambassadors, signed by a time-serving Sultan for the regeneration of his subjects. Local laws such as these, if applied to the people themselves, may fulfil all their requirements; but foreign suggestions and foreign pressure require foreign subjects, which native subjects who are worthy the name will never become. Neither can you regenerate a nation by the mere force of will, nor by force of arms. The people must have an innate feeling of willing participation to render reforms desirable.