The Sick Man is very sick—sick even unto death. What do you propose to do with his inheritance? Surely that question is not now too indiscreet?

When the Emperor Nicholas made a similar inquiry, many years ago, you were shocked beyond expression. Lord Palmerston was positive that this interesting patient would soon be quite well, and “in great force.” Russians, however, turned out to be better diagnosists. You hear the Sick Man’s death-rattle. Who are to be his heirs?

A friend of mine who sits at Stamboul, with his finger on the Sick Man’s pulse, writes that he does not dare to leave the city even for a few days, lest on his return he should find in place of the invalid only a corpse on the Bosphorus. The definite catastrophe is as near as it is unavoidable. The Empire, which received a new lease of life at Berlin—“thirty or forty years at least,” Lord Salisbury said—is already in dissolution. What is to be done with its remains?

That great triumph of English diplomacy—“the resuscitation of the Ottoman Empire”—is hardly so dazzling now as it was last year. The Palace is in want of mutton, the army in want of bread, the treasury in want of funds, the Cabinet in want of statesmen, the whole country in want of security—both moral and material. Everywhere within this sublime Empire nothing but insurrection. The Druses are astir, the Arabs are seething in discontent, Kurds and Armenians, plunderer and plundered, are equally hostile to the Constantinople Pashas—these common foes of human kind. Greek and Albanian are even more hostile to the Sultan than the Slav. The sword of the Turk has been wrenched from his gore-stained hand; and the East, with wicked incredulity, refuses to believe your Ministerial speeches as to the new lease of life granted to the Turkish Power.

The outlook is not less gloomy abroad. In place of friends gathering for his protection, the Sick Man sees vultures impatiently waiting for their repast. Even in Russia we did not know how desperate was the condition of the Sultan until we heard he had sunk so low that Lord Beaconsfield had ventured to insult him, and, without even waiting for ‘the mandate from Heaven’ which was lacking in 1877 for the liberation of Bulgaria, had coerced the Turk with his ironclads to send Baker Pasha on a fool’s errand into Asia Minor.

Surely, then, I may be permitted to quote the words which our Emperor Nicholas addressed to the English Ambassador at St. Petersburg in 1853. We need not alter one word, not even one syllable, to adapt them for the situation in 1879. Spoken in confidence—which you violated—twenty-six years ago, we repeat them to-day without reserve as embodying the wisest counsel that Russians can offer to Englishmen.

“The affairs of Turkey are in a very disorganised condition, the country itself seems to be falling in pieces, and it is very important that England and Russia should come to a perfectly good understanding upon these affairs. We have on our hands a Sick Man, a very Sick Man; it will be, I tell you frankly, a great misfortune if one of these days he should slip away from us, especially before all necessary arrangements were made; and, if the Turkish Empire falls, it falls to rise no more; and I put it to you, therefore, whether it is not better to be provided beforehand for a contingency, than to incur the chaos, confusion, and the certainty of an European war, all of which must attend the catastrophe if it should occur unexpectedly and before some ulterior system has been sketched. I repeat, the Sick Man is dying, and we can never allow such an event to take us by surprise. We must come to some understanding. It is not an engagement, a convention which I ask of them; it is a free interchange of ideas, and, in case of need, the word of a gentleman—that is enough between us.”¹

Time has justified our Emperor. Not even your Ministry would now deny that the Sick Man’s days are numbered; and the letter from Constantinople mentioned above contains, curiously enough, almost exactly the expressions of our Monarch. And then the writer adds: “No efforts to galvanise him permanently can possibly succeed. There will be a great deal of fighting about his inheritance”—which is precisely the probability Russia, in 1853, desired to avert. Who are to be his heirs? Surely sensible people would not defer the settlement of that question until we are all in the midst of a culbute générale. Why is it so difficult to come to an understanding?

Russia has no reserves. Her policy is perfectly frank and straightforward on this question. Our Emperors have repeatedly explained what our views are of the disposition of the Sick Man’s estates.

I have no authority to speak in the name of Russia. I am not, as your papers so kindly declare, an agent of our Government (which sometimes I wish I were, because, then, believe me, I should know how to make my voice, not only heard, but attentively listened to!). But I am familiar with a little of our history, and with the opinions of many of our best Russians upon the subject. Under these circumstances, one is allowed, perhaps, to speak with confidence as to the Russian views on these matters.

Russia seeks no annexations on the Balkan Peninsula. Within the last sixty years we have thrice dictated treaties to the vanquished Turks, but we have not at this moment one foot more territory in Europe than we had in 1815. We have not even taken a Cyprus concession from the Sultan in this continent as the price of all our victories. Turkey in Europe, so far as Russia is concerned, is territorially as she was when the Battle of Waterloo was fought.

This fact at least gives us some claim to your confidence, when we declare that we want nothing for ourselves from the Sick Man’s inheritance.

Our policy was accurately defined by Count Nesselrode, exactly fifty years ago. He wrote:—

“The Emperor will not advance the boundaries of his territory, and only demands from his allies that absence of ambition and of selfish designs of which he will be the first to set the example.”²

Fifteen years later, when the Emperor Nicholas visited England, he repeated this axiom of Russian policy in the Balkan. “I do not claim,” he said, “one inch of Turkish soil,” when he anticipated in his interview with Sir Robert Peel the confidences which he afterwards shared with Sir Hamilton Seymour. I own I admire our Emperor’s foresight at that time. “Turkey,” said he to Lord Aberdeen, “is a dying man. We may endeavour to keep him alive, but we shall not succeed—he will, he must die.³ That will be a critical moment. I foresee that I shall have to put my armies in movement, and Austria must do the same. Must not England be on the spot with the whole of her maritime forces? But a Russian army, an Austrian army, a great English fleet, all congregated together in these parts—so many powder barrels so close to the fire—how shall one prevent the sparks from catching. Why should we not, then, come to a previous understanding, that in case anything unforeseen should happen in Turkey, Russia and England should come to a previous understanding with each other as to what they should have to do in common (que s’il arrivait quelque chose d’imprévu en Turquie, la Russie et l’Angleterre se concerteraient préalablement entr’elles sur ce qu’elles auraient a faire en commun).”⁴

That straightforward and honest understanding, with a view to a future concert préalable, le cas échéant, on which the Emperor Nicholas agreed with the English Ministers in 1844, is exactly what might be established now. No more and no less. It is not to be desired the most in the interests of Russia. If there is to be a general scramble, Russia perhaps is not more unready for doing her part than the Government of Lord Beaconsfield. Kars and Batoum afford better bases of operation than Cyprus; and your difficulties in Zululand lead many to infer that the conquest of Asia Minor may be a task beyond your powers.

The Duke of Wellington, in his Memorandum on the Treaty of Adrianople, foreshadowed the concerted understanding which is now more than ever to be desired. He wrote: “The object of our measures, whatever they are, should be to obtain an engagement, or, at all events, a clear understanding among the Five Powers, that in case of the dissolution of the Turkish Monarchy the disposition of the dominions hitherto under its government should be concerted and determined upon by the Five Powers in Conference.” After urging the importance of concerting what should be done, he points out that by such an arrangement the Powers would be “assured that the crumbling to pieces of the Turkish Government would not create a war, and would not occasion such an accession of dominion and power to any State as would alter the general balance of power, or give reasonable cause of apprehension to others.⁵

The necessity of this “concert préalable” is not Russian, but European. It is urged in the interest of the general peace, and of the unhappy populations of the East.

Without a general understanding on a basis of abstention from conquests, there may arise most fatal emergencies. Let us look at the facts as they are. An émeute in Constantinople, or even an accident in the Seraglio, might to-morrow give the signal for a world-wide war over the inheritance of the Turk.

If there is such a thing as statesmanship in Europe, a contingency so terrible ought not to be left for solution to chance.

It is assumed by some that England and Austria have settled everything, without consulting the other members of the European concert. Such a settlement would only settle one thing, and that is—war.

No Power, and Russia least of all, will permit a question which vitally interests her as much as any, and more than most, to be settled over her head. Her voice must be heard, her legitimate interests respected, and her duties fulfilled. This is claiming for my country no more than we concede to yours. If you exclude us from the Council Chamber, you evidently prefer meeting us in the field. But there is no reason for this morbid dread of Russia’s councils, unless there is some arrière pensée in your minds as to territorial annexations. In that case you are, perhaps, only right in shrouding your designs in impenetrable darkness. We, who have no such reserves, can speak frankly. We seek no annexations for ourselves; but this very disinterestedness justifies us in resolutely denying annexations to others.

The territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire—that watchword of the past generation—reappears in a new form as the embodiment of Russia’s policy in the East. We maintain the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, but we demand, not the independence, but the elimination of the authority of the Sultan.

We extend that principle to those provinces—to Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, from which the Sultan’s authority has been finally eliminated by the Treaty of San Stefano, ratified at Berlin.

Of these States, as well as of all the territory left to the Sultan by the Berlin Treaty, Russia claims nothing and concedes nothing. The Balkan lands belong to the Balkan people. Mr. Aksakoff accurately stated the views of Russia when he wrote: “The East of Europe belongs to Oriental Europeans; the Slav countries belong to the Slavs. It is not a question of territorial conquests for Russia; it is a question of calling to an independent existence (political and social) all these different Slav groups which people the Balkan Peninsula.” We have not freed them from the pashas of Constantinople, to see them handed over to the tax-gatherers of Vienna, or even to the Commissioners of London. Do not imagine that it is only Russians who object to an Austrian appropriation of the inheritance of the sick man. There is no more rancorous Russophobist living than Louis Kossuth, and this is his opinion as to the danger before Austria-Hungary, which, he says, “he sees like a death-prophesying bird, with outstretched wings, fluttering over my country.” “What will be the result of the Vienna Cabinet should it again follow this damnable policy of expediency? In the past, it has put a razor in the hand of Russia. Now, it would put this razor to the throat of Hungary and also of Austria. . . . What the Viennese Cabinet would pilfer from the Turkish Empire would only weaken us, and become eventually our death; because it would eternally multiply and put into further fermentation all the already fermenting and dissolving elements. The Slavonians who would be caught by the Viennese Cabinet would take the latter with them. And what would be the infallible final result? The punishment of talio. If St. Petersburg and Vienna should divide the rags of the Turkish Empire, twenty-five years would not elapse before the Russians, the Prussians, and the Italians would divide Austria and Hungary among themselves, perhaps leaving something of the booty to Wallachia, as the reward of subserviency to Russia. This is as true as that there is a God.”⁶

Emile de Laveleye, I regret to see, thinks that to assure to the Slav populations liberty, autonomy, and well-being, the only practical method is to extend the influence of Austria. M. de Laveleye is a very great authority, I admit; but even M. de Laveleye’s ipse dixit would not reconcile these same Slav populations to Austrian annexation.⁷Servians, Bulgarians, and even Roumanians (though the latter are united to the Balkan Slavs by their religion, not by their nationality) regard the prospect of Austrian absorption with only less dread than the restoration of Turkish authority.

It is curious that admiration for Austria has sprung up in the West. In the East, where Austria is better known, Austria is almost detested.

Even the terrible Russians are more popular amongst the Southern Slavs than the admirable Austrians, as you may have noticed in the contrast between our welcome by the Christians in Bulgaria and the chilling reception in Bosnia. When we say “Austria,” it is, in fact, giving a title of courtesy to the German-Magyar Government of Vienna-Pesth. If a new Austria, essentially Slavonic, were to be formed, a voluntary union of the States of the Danube might, perhaps, be established with advantage. But the Confederation of the Danube must spring from the voluntary alliance of Free States, it must not be the offspring of military conquest, and we doubt whether “Austria” would be the name by which the Slavonic Free States would choose to be known.

General Chrzanowski, a Pole, whose antipathy to Russia was frank and vehement, is reported by Mr. Senior, in his most interesting “Conversations,” as having uttered some remarks concerning Austria which may enable you to understand why the Servians and the Bulgarians regard her as only one degree better than the Turk. “Austria,” he remarked,⁸ “by occupying, in 1855, the Principalities, has succeeded in making even the Russians regretted; nothing has so prepared the Moldavians and Wallachians for incorporation with Russia as their experience of Austrian rule. The pressure of Russia is heavy, but gradual. It is a screw slowly turned. The Austrians are brutal and impatient; they use not a screw, but a mallet; they insult while they rob. Russia consolidates her conquests; the subjects of Austria are always impatient; always on the brink of insurrection.” Austria, no doubt, has improved since then; but impressions produced by centuries are slowly effaced.

Why cannot these Balkan States be allowed, like Italy, to “fare da se”? That is Russia’s policy. Why should it not be England’s? It is, at all events, fortunately, Mr. Gladstone’s policy. The natural alliance of the future is that of Orthodox Russia and Liberal England, to defend the independence and develope the liberties of the populations of the Balkan Peninsula.⁹

M. de Laveleye thinks that Austria will free Macedonia, but Austria, with England’s aid, re-enslaved Macedonia at the Congress. It would be interesting to hear of any unselfish deed done by Austria in the whole course of her history.¹⁰ It would encourage us to hope that Macedonia may yet owe her liberation to the hand of her enslaver. At present the Slavs of the South may be pardoned if they doubt whether their brethren the Czechs have sufficient influence in Austria to prevent the exploitation of the Balkan Peninsula for the benefit of Jews, Germans, and Magyars.

Why should you distrust those rising races of the East? They are not strong as yet, neither are they rich; but they contain the seeds of a prosperous future. Their development may be retarded by diplomacy, but it cannot be prevented. Nationalities that have survived the fiery furnace of Ottoman domination will not perish because of the swaddling clothes of Western diplomacy.

It is of no use pointing to the troubles of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia. These troubles, and even worse difficulties, were expected by Russians as the natural consequence of the policy of the Berlin Congress. Instead of one strong, independent Bulgaria, Europe insisted upon making three, and gave independence only to the least advance.

You cannot say that this is an after-thought. On June 10, 1877, before our army had crossed the Danube, Prince Gortschakoff informed your Government that the separation of Bulgaria into two provinces would be impracticable, as local information proved that Bulgaria must remain a single province, otherwise the most laborious and intelligent of the Bulgarian population would remain excluded from the autonomous institutions.

A failure in Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia would not prove the unfitness of the Bulgarians for self-government. It would merely prove our Chancellor was right in 1877, and that the Congress was wrong in 1878.¹¹

The English observers who speak most disparagingly of the Bulgarians only know those north of the Balkans. Those who—like the late Mr. MacGahan, Mr. Jasper More, Dr. Sandwith, Major Baker, and Sir George Campbell—knew the Bulgarians of the South, always spoke of them in the very highest terms.

Sir George Campbell, indeed, places them high above the Russians, who, he says, “can claim none of the elements of an Imperial race.” I admired my countrymen more than ever after reading this declaration of Sir George Campbell’s. It is wonderful to make bricks without straw; and it is a feat no one else but Russians could have accomplished, to create and govern the largest Empire in the world without possessing any single element of an “Imperial race.”

But on one point I agree with the hon. member for Kirkcaldy. The Bulgarians are really a very superior race. I well remember that General Tchernayeff, who is as patriotic a Russian as he is a devoted friend of the Southern Slavs, declared to me, on his return from a tour in the Balkans, “Believe me, these Bulgarians are a capital people. Give them ten years of good government, they’ll astonish every one by their progress.”

Similar testimony, not less emphatic, has been given by your Consuls. Tell me, if we poor Russians, who, “without any of the elements of an Imperial race,” have contrived to build up the greatest Empire the world ever saw, why can you not believe that these richly gifted Bulgarians, if freed from the intermeddling of the Turks of Constantinople and of the Turks of diplomacy, will at least be able to manage their own affairs?

I shall be told that the rival races of the Balkan Peninsula hate each other almost as much, to judge from English descriptions, as the Neapolitans used to hate the Piedmontese, in the descriptions of those who advocated the maintenance of Austria’s influence in Italy.

There are differences, no doubt.¹²Boundary lines would have to be traced, and many other things would have to be done. But all these are mere trifles. The peril of the Eastern Question does not lie in the antipathies of local populations, but in the rivalries of mighty Empires.

If the Powers honestly forswear individual aggrandisement, a settlement of these topographical details would be easy. The principle of the Treaty of San Stefano, that the frontiers should be settled after local examination on the spot, in accordance with ethnographical facts, would suffice to settle these small questions.¹³

You will object that in some districts the population is too inextricably mixed up for division on ethnographical principles. Well, it may be so. In that case the obvious arrangement would be to adopt the Eastern Roumelian expedient, without the intervention of the Sultan. Eastern Roumelia is Bulgaria.¹⁴ So is a large—possibly the largest—part of Macedonia. This view was supported by Lord Salisbury and his diplomatic colleagues at the Constantinople Conference.¹⁵ But outside the limits of the Bulgaria of the Constantinople Conference there may be a region, stretching from Adrianople to beyond Salonica, including the south of Macedonia and the extreme north of Epirus and Thessaly, not sufficiently Hellenic to be annexed to Greece, or Bulgarian to be annexed to Bulgaria, which might be governed on the plan, which is little better than a vexatious absurdity when applied to the sub-Balkan districts of Bulgaria.

In time the races would amalgamate, or one would acquire sufficient ascendancy to decide the destinies of these narrow strips of border land, through which, of course, both Servia and Bulgaria should have access to the Ægean—Servia by an international railway to Salonica, and Bulgaria by a port at Enos, at the mouth of the Maritza.¹⁶

Albania is tolerably autonomous already; but Greece should receive Epirus, Thessaly, Crete, and the Hellenic Islands, which may, perhaps, include Cyprus, when you get tired of it.

The rightful heirs of the Sick Man are his long oppressed subjects.

There remains the Last Word of the Eastern Question—Who is to have Constantinople?

1. Eastern Papers, Part V., pp. 2-5.
2. Wellington’s Despatches, vol. vii. p. 80.
3. English politicians now speak even more frankly than Russians on this point. Sir W. Harcourt recently told his constituents: “There is no policy which is worth discussing which does not assume for its basis, and make provision for, the inevitable dissolution of the Turkish Empire. That is a thing which must be, which ought to be, and which will be.”
4. Stockmar’s Memoirs vol. ii. pp. 106, 114.
5. Wellington’s Despatches, vol. vi. p. 219.
6. “Russian Aggression,” Contemporary Review, December, 1877, pp. 22, 23.
7. In the same review in which M. de Laveleye expresses this conviction, Mr. W. J. Stillman remarks:—

   “The very constitution, history, and organic habit of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy are such, that it must always be a source of great apprehension to a weaker neighbour. It is what the Americans call a carpet-bagger on an Imperial scale, and has no possible utility for people who are not in need of an esoteric rule. As its existence depends on its rights of conquest, its growth must always be at the expense of its neighbours. It has no raison d’etre, except the incapacity of its subjects to govern themselves. It is purely parasitic, and any subject nationality which retains vitality as such must struggle to throw off the weight of it; nor is there any possibility of its becoming a permanent institution in the face of the development of self-government, except by its identifying itself with some national organism, after the example of the House of Savoy.”—Article “Italy,” Fortnightly Review, December, 1879. p. 838.

8. Senior’s Conversations, vol. ii. p. 69.
9. Addressing an enormous meeting of working men at Edinburgh on November 29, 1879, Mr. Gladstone said:—

   “Who is to have the succession of Turkey? Gentlemen, from the bottom of my heart, and with the fullest conviction of my understanding, I will give you the reply—a reply which I am perfectly certain will awaken a free, generous, and unanimous echo in your bosoms. That succession is not to pass to Russia. It is not to pass to Austria. It is not to pass to England, under whatever name of Anglo-Turkish Convention, or anything else. It is to pass to the people of these countries, to those who have inhabited them for many long centuries, to those who had reared them to a state of civilisation when the great calamity of Ottoman conquest spread like a wild wave over that portion of the earth, and buried that civilisation under its overwhelming force. Gentlemen, I appeal to you to join me in the expression of the hope that under the yoke of no Power whatever will those free provinces be brought. It is not Russia alone whose movements ought to be watched with vigilance. There are schemes abroad of which others are the authors. There is too much reason to suspect that some portion of the statesmen of Austria will endeavour to extend her rule, and to fulfil the evil prophecies that have been uttered, and cause the great change in the Balkan Peninsula to be only the substitution of one kind of supremacy for another. Gentlemen, let us place the sympathies of this country on the side of the free. Rely upon it those people who inhabit those provinces have no desire to trouble their neighbours, no desire to vex you or me. Their desire is peacefully to pass their human existence in the discharge of their duties to God and man; in the care of their families, in the enjoyment of tranquillity and freedom, in making happiness prevail upon the earth which has so long been deformed in that portion of it by misery and by shame. But we say, gentlemen, that this is a fair picture which is now presented to our eyes, and one which should not be spoiled by the hand of man. I demand of the authorities of this country, I demand it of our Government, and I believe that you will echo the demand, that to no Russian scheme, that to no Austrian scheme, to no English scheme—for here we bring the matter home—shall they lend a moment’s countenance; but that we shall with a kindly care cherish and foster the blessed institutions of free government that are beginning to prevail—nay, that are already at work in those now emancipated provinces.”—Political Speeches, p. 92.

   In like manner spoke Sir William Harcourt at Oxford, January 13, 1880:—

   “The arrangements of the Treaty of Berlin have irretrievably broken down. Ministers now pin their faith upon an Austria-German Convention. That is only a new blunder. That is to replace the old blunder by a new one. The conception of constituting Austria the gaoler of the Slav nationalities is a conception which is unworthy of practical statesmen, and altogether repugnant to Liberal principles. Russia has won the hearts of those provinces by making herself the patron of their independence. She leaves to Austria to assume the position of the conqueror of alien races and of a dissatisfied people.”

10. Mr. Gladstone, in March, 1878, referred to the long catalogue of Austria’s misdeeds, “scarcely relieved by a solitary act done on behalf of justice and of freedom.”—“Paths of Honour and of Shame,” Nineteenth Century, p. 603.
11. The following official communication, which I translate from a recent number of the Moscow Gazette, clears up a point on which there has been some misunderstanding:—“The ministerial crisis in Bulgaria has evoked in the press discussions about the Bulgarian Constitution, in which not only foreign but even Russian papers have maintained that the Constitution granted to Bulgaria was the work of the Russian Government. This is quite incorrect. According to the 4th and 5th clauses of the Berlin Treaty the National Assembly convoked at Tirnova had to elaborate the fundamental institutions of the principality. To help and quicken these works the Russian Commissary presented a project of a statute, simply as a foundation for further elaborations. The Russian Commissary declared positively that the final decision belonged exclusively to the National Assembly. During the discussions several points of this draft Constitution have been greatly modified. The Imperial Government carefully avoided every intervention, only advising moderation, especially in regard to the liberty of the press and of the right of public meeting. Therefore the responsibility for the existing institutions rests entirely on the Tirnova Assembly. The modifications which experience advises are not in the least opposed to the views of the Imperial Government, whose chief object is the consolidation and welfare of the Principality.”
12. The difference between the Bulgarian Exarch and the Patriarch of Constantinople is now happily in a way to be healed. The separation of the Bulgarian Church from the Patriarchate was purely administrative, and exclusively temporal. There are no differences as to dogma or purely spiritual matters, and the Bulgarian Church occupies the same position to the Patriarchate as the Churches of Russia, Servia, and Wallachia. The quarrel about the Church of Sveta Petka in Philippopolis would never have arisen but for the differences between the Patriarch and the Exarch. The Church of Sveta Petka was built by the Bulgarian Voulco Théodorovitch, at a cost of 50,713 piastres; 43,013 were subscribed by Bulgarians, and only 1,700 by Greeks. Its title deeds declare it to be communal property, and to be controlled and maintained by the elected representatives of the commune. In that commune 250 out of 305 families are Bulgarians of the Bulgarian Church; fifty are Bulgarians who side with the Patriarch, and only five are Greek. When the independence of the Bulgarian Church was recognised by the Sultan’s decree in 1872, the Bulgarians were allowed to hold all their churches wherever they possessed a majority. Whenever Bulgarian apathy permitted it, the influence of the Patriarch was exerted to prevent the churches passing out of his jurisdiction. In this way the Church of Sveta Petka, and another called Sveta Nédélia remained in the hands of the Greeks. The other day the Bulgarians forcibly possessed themselves of the former church, maintaining that by its origin, by its title deeds, by the majority of the commune, and by the Firman of 1872, it belonged to them, and ought to be under the jurisdiction, not of the Patriarch, but of the Exarch. Disturbances ensued, and Prince Vogarides locked up the church and sent the case for trial. So much has been made of this dispute to the prejudice of the Bulgarians, that it may be useful briefly to state these facts, and to point out that the quarrel arose, not so much out of a rivalry of race, as from an ecclesiastic difference, which shortly will be removed. A full account of the Sveta Petka will be found in the ably conducted organ of the Southern Bulgarians, the Maritza, February 5, 1880.
13. Article VI. of the Treaty of San Stefano runs as follows:—

    “Bulgaria is constituted an autonomous tributary Principality, with a Christian Government and a national militia. The definitive frontiers of the Bulgarian Principality will be laid down by a special Russo-Turkish Commission before the evacuation of Roumelia by the Imperial Russian army. This Commission will take into its consideration, when considering on the spot the modifications to be made in the general map, the principle of the nationality of the majority of the inhabitants of the districts, conformably to the Bases of Peace, and also the topographical necessities and practical interests of traffic of the local population. The extent of the Bulgarian Principality is marked in general terms on the accompanying map, which will serve as a basis for the definitive fixing of the limits.”

14. The overwhelming numerical preponderance of the Bulgarian population in Eastern Roumelia, is proved by the result of the elections for the first Provincial Assembly which were held in autumn 1879, under the provisions of the Organic Statute drawn up by the International Commission. The Bulgarian deputies outnumbered those of all other nationalities by nearly six to one. The Greeks only elected four members, the Turks three, and the Jews and Armenians two each.
15. See Map, p. 120.
16. Opinions differ as to the most suitable port for Bulgaria. The Treaty of San Stefano suggested Kavalla; others have pointed to Salonica, which, however, is more likely to become a free town, a neutral sea-port. The advantages of Enos over both are obvious, as being at the mouth of the Maritza, the chief river of Southern Bulgaria. They were very forcibly pointed out by the late Mr. MacGahan, in one of the last letters which that indefatigable and well-informed correspondent ever wrote.