Your Excellency will therefore press upon the Turkish Government that, if the Porte has any regard for the friendship of England,—if it has any hope that, in the hour of peril or of adversity, that protection which has more than once saved it from destruction, will be extended to it again, it must renounce absolutely, and without equivocation, the barbarous practice which has called forth the remonstrance now addressed to it. Your Excellency will require an early answer; and you will let the Turkish Ministers understand that if that answer does not fully correspond with the expectations which Her Majesty's Government entertain, your Excellency is instructed to seek an audience of the Sultan, and to explain to His Highness, in the most forcible terms, the feelings of the British Government, and the consequences, so injurious to Turkey, which a disregard for those feelings will involve. Her Majesty's Government are so anxious for the continuance of a good understanding with Turkey, and that the Porte should entitle itself to their good offices in the hour of need, that they wish to leave no expedient untried before they shall be compelled to admit the conviction that all their interest and friendship is misplaced, and that nothing remains for them but to look forward to, if not promote the arrival of, the day when the force of circumstances shall bring about a change which they will have vainly hoped to procure from the prudence and humanity of the Porte itself.
Your Excellency will seek an interview with the Reis Effendi, and, having read to him this despatch, leave a copy of it, with an accurate translation in his hands.
I am, &c.,
(Signed) ABERDEEN.
No. 16.
The Earl of Aberdeen to Sir Stratford Canning.
Sir, Foreign Office, January 16, 1844.
With reference to my other despatch of this day upon the subject of the execution of the Greek near Brussa as an apostate from Islamism, I inclose, for your Excellency's information, an extract of so much of a despatch from M. Guizot to Count Ste. Aulaire as relates to this matter, which Count Ste. Aulaire communicated to me a few days ago.
Your Excellency will perceive from this paper that M. Guizot anticipates that Her Majesty's Government will be disposed to invite the co-operation of the other Great Powers with the view of making a simultaneous appeal to the Porte on that subject. But although Her Majesty's Government would certainly be glad to see the other Powers of Europe declaring their abhorrence of so revolting a system as that against which your Excellency and your French colleague will be instructed to protest, they consider it, nevertheless, unnecessary formally to solicit their co-operation in a matter in which they all may be supposed to take a common interest, and to be prepared to act without previous concert with each other.
I have however directed Her Majesty's Ambassador at Paris to communicate to M. Guizot a copy of my other despatch of this day; and I should wish your Excellency to concert with M. de Bourqueney as to the manner in which the instructions which I have addressed to your Excellency and those which M. de Bourqueney will receive from his Court on this matter, and which I conclude will closely correspond with those addressed to yourself, shall be carried into execution so as to produce a salutary impression on the Porte.