ously to Turkey, obliging her to seek the protection of Russia, the most feared of all her Christian enemies, originated in a quarrel between Abdallah Pasha of Acre and the Egyptian government.

Though nominally professing allegiance to Sultan Mahmoud, the head of the Ottoman empire and the Mussulman faith, both these pashas had been for many years nearly independent of his authority. Mehemet-Ali of Egypt, though by far the more powerful of the two (and probably it was the consciousness of this power that produced his moderation) was moderate, circumspect, and even under circumstances of strong temptation, persevered in a show of reverence and obedience to the Sublime Porte. Not so Abdallah of Acre, a man of hardy presumption and violent passions. In 1822, to go no further back in his history, he boldly threw aside his mask of submission, and at the head of an army composed of Arabs, Druses from Mount Lebanon, and mercenaries from all parts of the Turkish empire, he endeavoured to seize on the pashalic of Damascus, as a conqueror. He was foiled, however, in his attempt, and speedily obliged to retreat. He shut himself up in his strong fortress of Acre, where, by command of the Porte, he was besieged by five neighbouring pashas, foremost among whom was the adopted son of the viceroy of Egypt, Ibrahim Pasha, who afterwards distinguished himself by his campaigns in Greece, and who has lately gained much more fame as commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army against the sultan*.

Ibrahim, and the four pashas his colleagues, with an army of 9000 men, could make no impression on Acre, and, after a ten months' siege, Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, having become mediator with the Porte, the daring Abdallah, who could not be beaten, was pardoned by the sultan, and restored to his former honours, on condition of paying a heavy sum of money as a fine; which was not punishing Abdallah but the unfortunate people over whom he ruled; for in true pasha fashion he wrung all the money that was paid, from the poor Syrians.

Mehemet Ali had the whole of the merit (such as it was) of effecting this reconciliation, and of removing the scandal of seeing the emperor of the Ottomans defied by a contumacious vassal in a corner of his dominions; and in this transaction he conceived he had laid both Sultan Mahmoud and Abdallah Pasha under obligations to himself. From the latter, it is certain, he thenceforward exacted more deference than that proud chieftain was inclined to pay. To the sultan, he continued the same line of respectful submission, in which he had so long persisted. It is stated by those who had good opportunities of judging of the pasha of Egypt's conduct and motives, that he withheld himself from the fatal war in Greece as long as he could consistently with the allegiance he professed to the sultan, and that he never entered upon that war with national zeal.

In 1824, however, when he was known to have a regular army of 24,000 men, well disciplined in the European manner, besides his irregular forces, he complied with the demands of the Porte, which he could no longer resist without incurring the suspicions of his liege, and embarked for the Morea four regiments of infantry, making 16,000 men, four companies of sappers and miners, and about 700 horse (the flower of his army) the whole under the command of his adopted son Ibrahim Pasha. Escorted by the then very respectable Egyptian fleet, 100 transports with this army on board sailed from Alexandria in the month of July, 1824. It was confidently anticipated by the mass of the Mussulman population of the empire, that this force would vindicate the cause of Mahomet, preserve the dominions of the sultan from dismemberment, and reduce the Greeks, as a former army of the pasha of Egypt's had reduced the rebellious Wahhabees. It might, indeed, have done all this but for the intervention of England, France, and Russia, in favour of the unfortunate Greeks.

It may be agreeable to know something of the character and appearance of this man, who certainly deserves the epithet of extraordinary. He is thus described by a French officer, who knew him well.

"Ibrahim's character is hasty and violent, but he easily recovers from his excesses of rage; his bravery and obstinacy are well known. His perseverance in danger increases in proportion to the obstacles he meets; he only sees his object, and bounds forward to attain it. His person is far from agreeable, being that of a rude and robust warrior."-Planat. De la Régénération de l'Egypte. Paris, 1830.

It may be well to notice at this point the circumstances of the revolt and suppression of the Wahhabees, as showing some of the more valuable services performed in favour of Sultan Mahmoud by Mehemet Ali.

The Wahhabees, or sectarian followers of the schismatic Abdool Wahhab, were spiritual and political puritans-fanatic reformers of the Mahometan church and Ottoman state, who sprang up in the deserts of Arabia, and, aiming at an entire change in the existing state of things, from the beginning of the last century defied the arms of the Turks and a succession of eight sultans. They had advanced from the remote Arabian district of Ared, had beaten or foiled the troops of the most powerful pashas sent against them by the Porte, had taken Mecca, the holy city, and had despoiled and desecrated the tomb of the prophet Mahomet; for such things were as odious in the sight of those reformers, as monasteries, and cathedrals, masses and votive offerings, were in the eyes of the followers of John Knox. Matters were in this condition, and the enthusiastic Wahhabees not only threatened a radical change in many of the dogmas, and in all the practices of the Mahometan faith, in the very spots where that faith first arose, but gave most serious grounds for alarm as to the integrity of the Asiatic dominions of the Turks; when Mehemet Ali, who had consolidated his power in Egypt, took up arms against them. After an arduous struggle, of which the reader may form a competent idea by referring to the curious memoirs of "Giovanni Finati," an Italian adventurer who served with the Egyptians, the arms of Mehemet Ali, aided by his profound and astutious policy, prevailed; the Wahhabees were driven back to the deserts, to scenes more suiting the austerity and simplicity of their doctrines; the prophet's tomb at Mecca was again open to orthodox Mussulmans, and the Porte was relieved from a long dreaded enemy. This was done in 1818, and as all was done in the name of the sultan, he had the glory of it, and the advantage of being, for a time, considered by the orthodox Mahometans in the light of a defender of the insulted faith.

Though thus defeated and expelled from Djedda, Mecca, Medina and the whole neighbourhood of those important places, the Wahhabees several times reassumed the offensive, and in the commencement of the year 1824, they occupied the gorges of the chain of mountains that defends their country, and kept the holy cities in a state of alarm. In the month of February, only five months before he embarked Ibrahim Pasha and his army for the Morea, Mehemet Ali was obliged to despatch a considerable force by Cosseir, the Desert, and the Red Sea, to make head against those Arabs. This force checked the Wahhabees and saved the holy cities.

To return to Mehemet Ali's efforts to recover Greece for the sultan, in October 1825 he sent 8000 more disciplined troops of the line to Ibrahim Pasha, together with a good supply of field and battering artillery, and ammunition.

With these reinforcements Ibrahim carried on a successful, but a barbarous warfare; he retook nearly all the places lost by the Turks, and the remnant of the Greek people was doomed to transportation into Egypt, and their place was to have been supplied by submissive colonies from the banks of the Nile, when the treaty of the 6th of July, followed up by the battle of Navarino, arrested his destructive triumph, and secured to Greece an existence as an independent state. Before that crisis, overtures were made to Mehemet Ali in the name of the allied powers, to withdraw his troops and fleet from the Morea, and to detach himself from the sultan, at least inasmuch as related to the Greek war, which those powers had determined should cease. How far beyond this the proposals made went to affect his allegiance to the sultan, is known to Colonel Cradock and others who were in the diplomatic secrets. About the time of Colonel Cradock's arrival (August, 1827) in Egypt, the pasha was smarting under the bad news, that the Wahhabees had again issued from their mountain gorges and even taken Mecca once more; he was in immediate want of troops, to defend the countries under his own government; he knew the weakness of the sultan, that a war with Russia was imminent, that the fleets, not only of Russia, but of England and France were in the Mediterranean; but he still persisted in fidelity to his liege, and though, it is said, guarantees were offered to him for his future security, he would give no other answer to the representations made to him on the part of the allies, than that he was a subject of the Porte, and could enter into negociations only on the express order

of the sultan, and in the sense he (the sultan) should de- | no enormity, no other attack on the prejudices of the Mustermine. This fidelity cost him his valuable fleet.

It will be remembered also, that even after the catastrophe of Navarino, Mehemet Ali was slow in withdrawing his troops from Greece, and that he affected to act in everything as the

sultan's most submissive servant.

The clearly foreseen war with Russia then took place ;it exhausted the sultan, and the second campaign saw a Russian army almost at the walls of Constantinople. Mehemet Ali might have declared his independence and laid his hands on Syria, in those moments of misfortune and weakness; yet he remained quiet and respectful, though backward in paying all the demands made on him for money by the Porte.

The Russian war was soon followed by the dangerous revolt of the Albanians, which cost the impoverished sultan much money and many men. So deranged, indeed, was the state of things produced by this struggle, that when Mr. D. Urquhart, who has just published an interesting work on Turkey and Greece *, travelled through Albania and European Turkey in 1830, during the sanguinary contest, he entertained" very little hope of seeing the country tranquillized, or the Turkish rule prolonged." This, too, one would have thought a favourable moment for Mehemet Ali to develope the ambitious plans he has since acted upon, yet still he remained quiet; and it is curious to observe, (a fact mentioned by Mr. Urquhart) that out of those very Albanians, who would then have assisted his attempt, by diverting the arms of the Turks in Europe, the sultan, after reducing them to order, mustered 6000 brave soldiers, who were the nucleus and strength of the grand vizier's army in Asia Minor, and by far the most formidable foes with whom the Egyptians have had to contend in their advance on Kutaiah. At last, in November 1831, the quarrel between Mehemet Ali and Abdallah Pasha of Acre, broke out.

sulman people could have done so much to dethrone him in their hearts, as this last fatal proceeding. The orthodox Mussulmans had, indeed, long considered parts of his conduct as contrary to the laws of the prophet; but on learning that he had summoned the Muscovites to his aid, they held him as a downright ghiaour or infidel. This feeling was more particularly declared in Asia Minor, where Ibrahim was then encamped as a conqueror, for the Turks there are much more bigoted than the Turks in Europe.

Nor does it appear that the sultan has gained anything by thus debasing himself, and offending the prejudices of his people. Even after the arrival of a Russian fleet and army at his capital, he has had to make peace with Ibrahim through the medium of a French diplomatist, and to grant to the pasha of Egypt the very terms the pasha would have accepted at the beginning of the campaign, and neither less nor more than he demanded before the arrival of the sultan's Muscovite allies*. Unless the troops and population of the place had risen against him, Mahmoud was safe in Constantinople without the Russian aid. Ibrahim Pasha could not have crossed even the narrow Bosphorus without something like a fleet, and the introduction of a fleet into those seas by the Dardanelles, though once effected by the English, was far too bold a project for the Egyptian marine. The fact was, Mehemet Ali not only never thought of attacking Constantinople, but he never thought his army would go so far as it did into Asia Minor.

The causes that facilitated the extraordinary progress of Ibrahim Pasha merit attention. One of the greatest difficulties in the opinion of Europeans who had travelled in that country, was the obtaining of provisions for his army. These gentlemen had seen the arrival of only six or eight individuals occasion an apparent dearth in a village; but they had travelled with an escort of armed Turks, from whom the timid inhabitants carefully concealed all signs of wealth and abundance. On Ibrahim's approach, as it was found he made no military extortions, and paid for all that was furnished for his army, the cultivators flocked to him with their hidden stores of grain, and he thus found comparative abundance, where a Turkish army probably would not have been able to detect a bushel of corn. We have this information from persons who were in the country at Abdallah had been any thing, rather than a submissive the time. Moreover, ever since the year 1829, whole disor faithful vassal to the sultan; the sultan, however, natu-tricts in the interior of Asia Minor had been in almost a rally averse to see pashas carrying on war on their own account, (though such things have not been rare in the Turkish empire,) reprobated the conduct of Mehemet Ali, and espoused the cause of Abdallah.

Proceeding now without waiting for orders from the Porte, an Egyptian army with proper artillery and European engineer officers (in all, very superior in quality to the force that ineffectually besieged the same place in 1822) laid siege to Acre, and took it on the 27th May, 1832, after a bold resistance of six months. The fierce Abdallah was carried as prisoner of war to Mehemet Ali, who treated him with great respect.

We cannot determine how far the angry, uncompromising tone assumed by the Porte may have influenced the conduct of Mehemet Ali; but it is natural to suppose he would never have given up Acre, which had belonged to Egypt at no very remote period, and had long been an object of desire in his eyes. And then Acre, as Bonaparte felt when he besieged it, was the key to Syria, and having taken it, having taken the first step, which is the one that costs most,-Mehemet Ali may not have been able to resist the temptation of so easy a conquest as lay before him, and the prospect of uniting under his rule, the dominions of the Fatimite caliphs of Egypt, viz., Egypt, large tracts of Syria, and the whole of Palestine.

continual state of revolt. They longed for a change of masters, and welcomed an army of the same faith as themselves, led on by the guardian of the holy sepulchre of the prophet, as friends and deliverers. And then, that army itself was infinitely superior in quality to that which the sultan had to oppose to it. Mehemet Ali, who had long before annihilated the power of the turbulent Mamelouks, began his military reforms in 1815. Mahmoud did not dispose of his turbulent janissaries, and commence the formation of a disciplined army à Européenne, until 1825. The pasha had thus the incalculable advantage of ten years over the sultan. He had also a set of instructors; a staff of fifty French and Italian officers, all men of experience, and some of them men of distinguished talents in their profession, and conversant with all that enters into the organization and disposing of an army. The sultan had scarcely six European officers of any merit, and Calosso, the best of these, was merely a good cavalry officer. Excepting the 6000 Albanians we have mentioned, and who were excellent troops, the grand vizier, when he met Ibrahim in the field, had nothing but undisciplined hordes, an ill-armed rabble. The sultan could not spare his tacticoes from Europe. Add to all this, the Egyptians had a retrospect of victory. They

Whatever were his motives, the fact was, he sent forward Ibrahim with an Egyptian army, which overran and occupied Syria almost without resistance. He would willingly have stayed his career of conquest on the Syrian frontier, and here, had the sultan properly attended to his own weakness, he would have treated with his emancipated and powerful vassal, permitting him to retain what he could not hope, at present, to wrench from him. But Mahmoud * Mehemet Ali's condition, that Adana should be ceded to him, was obstinate, and the successful Ibrahim penetrated into caused some delay in the negociations. The prize, however, was Asia Minor, and advanced towards the capital of the Turk-worth contending for. The district of Adana, situated in a corner, ish empire. The sultan, too late, conscious of his want of between Syria and Karamania, though not extensive, is fertile, strength, then called in the aid of the Russians--his enesalubrious and beautiful. The Pasha of Egypt pretended to covet mies of but the other day-the power that by prophecy and possession of it on account of its fine wood and materials for shiplong belief, the Turks look upon as the sure destroyer of their whence he might avail himself of the advantages presented by the building; but it is more than probable he looked tit as a place empire. Nothing that the sultan has done, or left undone, contiguous coast of Karamania. What those natural advantages are, and what is the present impoverished, distracted state of that country, with many other matters of great interest, the reader may learn from Captain Beaufort's admirable volume on Karamania.

Turkey and its Resources," &c. &c. London. 1833. + At the same time, in European Turkey, the Servians had asserted and secured their independence, and the Bosnians, who had formerly furnished brave troops, scorned all intercourse with the

Porte.

This title was bestowed by the sultan on Ibrahim, after he had recovered Mecca and its treasures from the Wahhabees.

The regular troops of the Sultan are so called by the Franks.

the law is to be consistent with itself, and not to fight by one of its provisions against the object which it affects to promote by another, all its arrangements ought to be brought into accordance with the spirit of this its leading regulation. But, for the reasons alluded to above, juries, entrusted with the power granted to them by Mr. Fox's act, will not, in judging of the criminality of a libel, overlook the circumstances of its truth or falsehood. If they are not allowed to obtain a knowledge of that circumstance from the direct evidence brought forward on the trial, they will still found their verdict upon what they may merely believe or suspect regarding it. Nothing therefore is gained by preventing the point in question from being made the subject of evidence. The law, in laying down this prohibition, merely attempts what it cannot compass. It may exclude the evidence from the court, but it cannot exclude the consideration of the matter from the minds of the jury. The only effect is to leave them to come to their determination on a vague, and it may be erroneous guess, instead of on correct and clear information as to the fact.

Nor does there appear to be any sufficient reason for laying it down as a general principle, that the truth or falsehood of the libel is really unimportant in reference to its criminal character. It is commonly said that an injurious imputation directed by one person against another, even although true, has still a tendency to interrupt the peace and order of society; and, on that account, ought to be punished. But if every act were to be prohibited to which that tendency might be ascribed, the business of the world could not be carried Profligacy and insolence would have it all their own | way. It would be to surrender the rule of human affairs, without resistance or question, to mere might and wrong. But this notion is really, we believe, nothing more than a popular misconception arising from the charge in an indictment for libel, as in all other indictments, that the act of the defendant was done against the peace of our lord the king -which means, simply, that it was done in violation of the law.

on.

The true ground on which the present law of libel stands, would rather seem to be that, if an individual has committed an act deserving of blame, it is not fair to call him to account for it in any court, except upon the trial of a charge regularly made against him. On a trial, for example, with regard to the criminal character of a particular publication, it is not fair that the person, whose conduct the publication attacks, should be called upon to defend or explain that conduct. This, it is said, would be in fact to try two distinct questions, affecting two different parties, at one and the same time.

cases in which the truth of an injurious imputation ought certainly not to be received as a justification of its utterance. Some particular passage in a man's history, in which he has deserved blame, is not to be allowed to be constantly held up to his annoyance, by any one who chooses, out of pure malignity, or from some other base or private motive to do so. Proof of something more than the truth of the statement ought surely to be required in such a case to justify the libeller. He ought to be called upon to show, in addition, that his object was a good one.

The bill before us contains a variety of other new regulations; but these we do not at present notice, as they can hardly be said to involve any important principle, and may also be, some of them, altered before the proposition shall pass into a law. The point to which we have confined our attention forms the essential enactment of the bill.

CORPORATION REFORM.

WE refer our readers to an article in the first number of the Companion for a general view of the origin and present state of our municipal corporations, and of the principal points in their constitution, or at least in the condition into which they have fallen, that require alteration and reform. The Report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to inquire into the state of these bodies in England and Ireland, has now been printed, along with the Evidence taken by the Committee in twenty-seven sittings, from the 25th of February to the 3d of May in the present year inclusive. The whole forms a volume of nearly 400 pages.

The Report itself, however, is very short and general. The Committee, conceiving, as they state, that they would best discharge their duty by inquiring how far Corporations, as at present constituted, were useful and efficient, rather than by seeking to detect past abuses with a view to their exposure or punishment, confined their examinations principally to corporate officers, from whom, of course, they could expect to ascertain little more than what they might have derived from an inspection of the charters of the several boroughs. Yet even upon the information thus collected, they have come to a conclusion strongly unfavourable to the existing order of things in almost all our corporations. The following passage in the Report enumerates and explains the principal points which they conceive to call for attention in the contemplated revision of the system :

"The jurisdiction of corporations is defective in some cases in consequence of the town having been extended beyond the limits of the ancient borough; and, in other cases, it is objectionable, from extending to places that are distant, and more properly falling within the jurisdiction of county ma

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The principle which prevails of a small portion of corporators choosing those who are to be associated with them in power, and generally for life, is felt to be a great grievance. The tendency of this principle is to maintain an exclusive system, to uphold local, political, and religious party feelings, and is destructive of that confidence which ought always to be reposed in those who are entrusted with control, judicial or otherwise, over their fellow-citizens.

But there is not much, after all, in this plausible reasoning. In many other cases, as well as in that under consideration, the same legal investigation may be regarded as having for its object the examination and decision of two several ques-gistrates. tions at the same time. Whenever the fact of one party being in the right depends upon and involves the fact of the opposite party being in the wrong, there are two questions examined and decided by the same trial. Now this is precisely what would happen on a trial for libel under the proposed new law. Whenever evidence of the truth of the libel was accepted by the jury as its justification, their verdict, acquitting the defendant, would indeed in so far condemn the plaintiff. But, on the other hand, it would not condemn him to any punishment, even if the charge made against him in the libel should have been a penal one. It would only assert that he was not placed in circumstances entitling him to demand the punishment of the defendant.

But the shortest, and at the same time the best, answer to these and all other objections which may be urged against the proposed amendment of the law, is found in the fact already noticed, that in an action for damages on account of a libel, evidence that the libel is true has long been allowed to be brought forward on the side of the defence. It cannot therefore be pretended that any actual inconvenience would follow from the introduction of the same rule into the trial of indictments. The innovation might, indeed, injure a little the technical symmetry of our legal system; but that, we believe, would be the whole amount of its injurious effect. We have said nothing in illustration of the desirableness of having the publication of the truth, in general, secured from punishment; that being, we conceive, too obvious to be disputed. At the same time we hold that the present bill takes the proper line, when it proposes to admit evidence of the truth of the libel, not as its absolute justification, but only as matter for the consideration of the jury. There are

"One of the consequences of this system of close election has been, that publicity has been rarely given to the amount and application of the funds belonging to the different corporations. It is probable that, if in this respect the corporations had acted under the influence and control of public opinion, their debts would have been less in amount, and more benefit would have been conferred on the community. It is desirable, therefore, that the management and expenditure of corporate funds should be subjected to a systematic and efficient control.

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The powers vested in corporations for the administration of justice, both criminal and civil, are various and extensive, and are among the most important objects of inquiry. In some cases, the choice of recorders has been, both in practice and in principle, highly creditable to the corporations; in other cases, recorders have been chosen of unexceptionable character, but selected rather on account of their rank and station, than from a regard to their fitness to discharge the duties of the office. The way in which the juries are summoned seems to be left too much to the discretion of the parties whose duty it is to summon them. There are no regular lists of those liable to serve on juries, and there is no control over the discretion of the officer, who selects, from