Bishop of Gibraltar, writes as follows to the Spectator in reference to the Concert of Europe 'S1m,—It is to be hoped that the bombardment by British warships of the Cretans, who, whatever their faults, are fighting againat an intolerable tyranny, may stir our Burope" is a0 essential to the cause of peace ople to reflect whether the "Concert of that we should sacrifice to it our traditional character as the champions of liberty, the refuge and stay of the oppressed, and the and thus forfeit the sympathy and good implacable foes of unrighteous government, wishes of all our real friends, True to our traditional character, we are at the present time waging war in Egypt against a barbara ous and merciless despotism. Is there not a danger that in Eastern Europe we may be drawn against our will into an opposite course, and play false to our character,
hold in its territorial integrity an Empire peal determination to up-ion with Powers who
as barbarous and merciless as that which we are endeavouring to annihilate in Africa? What real fellowship can there be between a country like our own, which, free desires others to be free, and countries which are under the rule of great military despots? Hitherto it has been our policy to abstain from special alliances with foreign Powers, however closely united to us in aims and sympathies, from reluctance to part with our liberty of action, and from a wise dread of entanglements. 'But now we find ourselves tied to Powers whose aims and sympathies are in many vital questions antagonistic to our own, and employing our ships in the humiliating' task of coercing the one people which, headed by a chivalrous King, has played the man. It would be difficult to name one positive good which this new weapon of diplomacy, called the "Concert of Europe," has effected. It certainly has done not a little harm, We owe to it that our country was pre. vented from succouring or avenging our Armenian fellow-Christians. We owe to it that nothing as yet has been devised for their protection against further massacres, or for the: good government of other oppressed subjects of the Sultan, beyond paper constitutions, which they who devised them must have felt would prove failures, We owe to it that the legitimate aspirations of both Cretans and Hellenes have been thwarted. If in past years statesmen had waited for the approval of all the Great Powers or "the Concert of Europe," Italy would never have been free, and Greece and Bulgaria would still be lying prostrate under the hoof of Turkey. If, as many affirm, this Concert be necessary for the peace of Europe, we must_no doubt be content to make great sacrifices to maintain it; but after present dangers are over the sooner we are set free from its trammels the better will it be for our own honour and for the cause of liberty and righteous government.
On the other hand, Lord Stanmore, who as Arthur Hamilton Gordon was private Secretary to Lord Aberdeen. during the Crimean War, writes to the Times defending the Concert, and pointing out that had it existed in' 1853 the Crimean War might have been averted. He has no illusions, however, about the Turks, as the conclusion of his letter show:
I am not insensible to the iniquities of Turkish misrule; far from it. Many years ago, in Syria, I received object lessons not to be forgotten of the use of murder.as a means of government. I believe the rule of the Sultan—not of the present Sultan specially, Lord Aberdebn styled it in 1853, "radically the ler of jis century—to be, as but of the Ottoman Porte throughout of last vicious and abominable." There is no part of the Ottoman dominions, whether in Europe or in'Asia, where. the extinction of Turkish
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.