(Signed) COWLEY.
Inclosure 1 in No. 38.
_Sir Stratford Canning to Lord Cowley_.
My Lord, _Constantinople, March_ 27, 1844.
As the question relating to the execution of apostates from Islamism
is now successfully terminated, it will be satisfactory for your
Lordship to learn that the entire approbation expressed by M. Guizot
of the instructions addressed to me on the 16th of January by the
Earl of Aberdeen, procured me the active support of Baron de
Bourqueney throughout the late negotiations with the Porte, and that
by acting separately, according to M. Guizot's suggestion, I was
enabled to give the fullest effect to my instructions, marked and
decisive as they were, without losing any part of the advantage
derived from the French Minister's concurrence.
Together we rejected the unsatisfactory answer at first and more
than once proposed by the Porte; together we accepted what appeared
to offer a sufficient guarantee for the accomplishment of our common
object.
The terms in which the final declaration of the Porte was conveyed
to us on the 21st instant, are recorded in the accompanying paper
translated exactly from the Turkish original.
I thought it advisable to acknowledge this communication, and as I
was entitled to expect some additional assurances from the Sultan at
the public audience which I had demanded of His Majesty according to
my instructions, I avoided embarrassing the French Minister by
proposing to him to take part in a step which related exclusively to
my position. A copy of this acknowledgment is inclosed herewith; and
in order to give your Lordship a complete view of the transaction in
its full extent, I add the very terms, as translated to me, in which
the Sultan was pleased to confirm and to enlarge the engagement of
his Government.
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.