THE CASE OF MR LENNOX.

Southland Times, Issue 641, 8 March 1867, Page 3

THE CASE OF MR LENNOX.

« The case of Mr Lennox is one of those which make Englishmen chafe at the impossibility of making a clean sweep of all Turkish officials into the swiftest and deepest part of the Bosphorus, once for all. It will inflict a ruinous and a richly deserved blow upon Turkish credit for good faith and observance ofthe promised word. A distinguished man of science is invited to Turkey to conduct a geological survey on a thorough and large scale, having a direct specific contract with the Turkish Government. After his arrival at Constantinople, he is bandied about from office to office, and compelled to lead a dog's life, trudging to and fro, such as no European reader, who has not visited that city, and seen the hill of Galata during Black Sea weather, can possibly conceive, for the mere physical hardship and misery of it ; and he is coolly told after several months' " antechambering ," as the "Levant Herald" well calls it, that the Porte is really, too hard up to have anything to do with geology, to give him pom pengation, or eyent to pay bsm his

travelling expenses out and home. The story has its comic as well as its serious side. Mr Lennox was promised the help of a Turk said to be educated at the Royal School of Mines in London. But he found at Constantinople that there, was no such a person in existence. They offered, him, however, the services of a smart youth who had been to Europe and learnt French, which, if not geology, was at all events equally a branch of Frank learning, and might be expected to do as well. The Turks who made the contract must have known their inability to fulfil this one at least of its terms ; and, we think, M. Musurus should have been in a position to know it too. English men of science are not loan-jobbers and contractors for bogus railroads that they are to be treated in this way. When Sir Roderick next sees M. Musurus, he has a right to lay an angry hand on the hilt of his geological hammer. Over and above supreme diplomatic tutelage, there was one good thing in the sort of protectorate exercised by England in Turkey up to the Crimean peace, which is identified with the name of Stratford Canning. A case of this kind would have enlisted the whole force of the embassy influence in its behalf, and would have been carried through by the strong hand. Such influence is no longer thought desirable on political grounds, and it has long passed away. But in giving it up we have given up the main support of private British interests in Turkey, without as yet obtaining any substitute.