I may venture to add that His Majesty's assurances were given in the most gracious form, accompanied with an expression of thanks for the liberal manner in which the millions of Mahomedan subjects in India are treated by the British authorities, and followed by a message, after I had left his presence, to the effect that the sentiments which he had declared to me were not only those of the Monarch but of the individual.
In short, my Lord, I am sanguine enough to hope that Her Majesty's Government have laid the foundation of a more real improvement in the temper and policy of this State than was to have been previously expected; and it is a subject of just congratulation that the counsels of two great nations have united successfully for the attainment of so beneficent an object.
The invitation to Baron de Bourqueney to wait upon the Sultan the day after my audience, and to receive, for the information of his Court, a repetition of the assurances addressed to me, affords another proof of His Majesty's sincerity.
I have, &c.,
(Signed) STRATFORD CANNING.
P.S.—I request that a copy of this despatch and its inclosures may be forwarded immediately to Her Majesty's Government.
S. C.
Inclosure 2 in No. 38.
Official Declaration of the Sublime Porte, relinquishing the practice of Executions for Apostacy from Islamism.
[See Inclosure l in No. 36.]