TURKISH EXTRAVAGANCE.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVI, Issue 1495, 8 February 1861, Page 4

TURKISH EXTRAVAGANCE.

Commencing with the.. Court. The ", khazine-khasse," or private purse of

'■- the sovereign, is put down at £250,000 ; to this have to be added the annual allowances for the Sultan's mother and stepmothers, his Majesty's brother, his sons, his sisters, married daughteYs, and sons-in-law, which amount in all to about £200,000 more, making up the sum of £450,000. This sum does not include the expenditure of the special royal harem, nor the. building, furnishing, and maintenance of the numerous roya! palaces, nor the salaries of Court functionaries and servants Those who have been in Constantinople, and have had an opportunity of seeing something of the luxury and extravagance displayed in those palaces, will coincide with us in believing that the above items, are not included in the £450,000, would go far to wards doubling that sum. But this is not all ; for a whim pr caprioe either of the Sovereign or any member of her Majesty's family may at any time produce an extra itom of expenditure over which no minister can exercise the slightest control. \Ve ; give one instance-^-*.*. pio disce omnes : — A yßar or two ago, one pfthe Waledah Sultanahas, or, as we should oall thera, "Queen Mothers," made a pilgrimage to Mecca* a proceeding against which, as being a meritorious, if not an obligatory one in the Moslem faith, we have no objections lo offer. Everyone knows that, with the means of ' communication now existing, the devout lady, attended by a becoming suite of twenty or thirty persons, might have embarked at Constantinople for Alexandria, where the Vioeroy would have passed them on with all comfort and honour to _?uez, whence another steamer would have conveyed them to Djeddah ; from thence an easy ride of two daya would have brought them to Mecca. If, after the pilgrimage, they had returned by the same route, the whoje voyage, if performed in the most leisurely manner, would not have occupied two months. And sup. posing the great lady to have paid for everything, and made customary presents with royal generosity, the amount spent on her pilgrimage could not hava exceeded £5000. But so unpretending a jour ney and so modest an expenditure were not consonant with Turkish ideas or precedents. The royal lady must go the whole way by land, a journey of 1600 or 1800 miles, three-fourths of it over sandy deserts, where every oomfort and luxury to whioh she was aocijsiomed in the seraglio, was tp be convoyed on the backs of camels aooompanied by a suite of two. hundred, inoluding women, enuchs, pipebearers, cools, carpet spreaders, land heaven knowa what besides. This royal viotira of bigoted ostentation performed her weary journey over these desolate wastes, bringing back witb her probably aome baskets pf holy earth from Mecca, a few bottles of bitter water from the fountain qf Zem-Zem, and a small bill for the Turkish treasury to pay, amounting to £55,000. Probably our readers will coincide with us in believing tbat if this pious lady had enjoyed, like European Princesses, a fixed revenue or appanage, out of whioh all her expeuses were to be defrayed, she would have preferred the unre direct, easy, and eoonomioal route to Mecca via Egypt. Tbis example, one of hundred's that might be adduced, brings us back to our theme — viz., that thero neve? will or can be even a commencement of reform in the administration, until tho expenditure of the Sultan's C _urt is limited to a . certain definite amount. Descending from the Sovereig 1 to his Mhrsters, we come first to the Grand Vizer, whose salary from the treasury is £12,000 a year; after hira come the Scheikh-el-Islam, President of tbe Council, Commander of the Foroes, Master of the Ordinance, Capudan Pacha (Admiral ofthe Fleet), and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, each of whom has £800 amPUthvor £9600 a year. Here we have already nearly £70,000 a year, paid as salary to the seven chief Ministers ; after them we come to the second clais, who have the rank of paohas, and and are oalled mushirs or councillors, who receive each a salary of one hundred purses a month, or £6000 a year. We are not able to state exactly the number of these mushirs, because it is limited only by the pleasure of the Sultan ; but in the Almanac dt Golha of the current year we find twei ty of them, of whom fifteen are called Ministres sans Portefeuil'e. This list is certainly defective, as we kuow several mushirs who are not inoluded in it ; but even taking it as it is, the united i salaries of these Ministers of the second j class amount to £120,000 a year.

It is very difljoult to make a correct computation of' the number of the Uleraa, | or of the salaries which thoy reoeive. In Roumelia there are twelve of the higher olass, who receive each about £3000 a year ; in Constantinople, there are up* wards of twenty at salaries of £ 1500 eaoh ; and in Anatolia, where their salaries ate £2500, there oannot be less tban forty, the whole of Asia Minor, Syria, and Bagdad being comprehended under that head We leave untouched the salaries ot oadis, diplomatic employes, officers in the army and navy, beoause they are necessary to the Turkish as to every other government and are extravagant neither as to number ; nor as to amount of pay.

As England is supposed to he the richest Country in the world, and its publio servants the highest paid, we need only compare the preoeding figures with the salaries paid in our oountry, in order to satisfy ourselves of the wasteful prodigality of Turkish Administration. The revenue of Great Britain is about £70,000,000; that of Turkey about £10,000,000. The salaries of the Engf • ■ •■ ■ _> . . . ■ . __,

glish Cabinet, consisting of fifteen members at an average of £5000- eaoh, amount to £75,006 a y^ar j while those of the Turkish Ministry * (Mushirs included) amount, as above stated, to about £100,000; or, to put it iri a homely phrase, a gentieman with' ah income of £700 a-year, spends nearly three times as much on agenoy as his neighbour who has £?00O" Ifwe compare the actual expenditure of the Courts of the two Sovereigns, the proportion will be nearly the same as between the two Adminis trations. — Frazen- Magazine.