THE TROUBLES OF THE SUBLIME PORTE.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 387, 12 February 1880, Page 5

THE TROUBLES OF THE SUBLIME PORTE.

The Pall Mall Gazette September 19 says" From a private and trust-worthy source we learn that a oatastrpphe has just been escaped in Turkey—if, indeed it has been more tlian postponed. AH wellinformed persons known that the pay of the troops is several months in arrear, and that in consequence of the misery in which, they are thus left the soldiers are ..deserting in multitudes, carrying off, to turn into money „their arms and accoutrements. At last the discontent engendered reached almost to the point of mutiny, and the military authorities were obliged to represent urgently to the Porte that if some of the arrears was not forthcoming in three days they .cpuld not answer for what might happen. Ministers met, but there was hot a penny in the Treasury. After several failures they obtained a loan for £IOO,OOO from the Ottoman Bank; but the bank refused to advance another shilling, and it stipulated'that even this amount should be expended in sending home 60,000 men. There still remained 200,000 men threaten to disband if they did not pay the arrears; and to satisfy these £150,000 was raised elsewhere. The crisis was tided over; but what is to happen when this driblet is spent 1 The story we have been narrating proves the Porte to be very nearly at the end of its resources. One after the other it has been pledging the resources of the revenue thatremained to' it; and difficulty it encountered iii getting a paltry quarter of a million chiefly on its own depreciated securities shows how. few these now are. But when its credit in Constantinople itself is utterly at an end what is to become of it? The question is an urgent one for statesmen and traders"