ympathies of the world in her behalf, while identity of
religion and race have procured for her the more tangible advantages of
Russian protection.

That the last-named power is disinterested in pursuing this policy is
not for a moment to be supposed. The price she has ever demanded for her
protection has been one too willingly paid by these lawless
mountaineers, an unremitting hostility to Turks and Turkey. For
centuries this was open and undisguised on the part both of the people
and the Vladika, by whom, despite his religious calling, the destruction
of Turks was rewarded as a distinguished national service. Such,
however, is no longer the case; although their hatred is not one whit
diminished, or their depredations less frequent than of old, they mask
them under the garb of a feigned neutrality and an unreal friendship.
Thus they protest, in the face of the most damning proofs to the
contrary, their innocence of all connivance with the Herzegovinian
rebels. Corpses of those who have been recognised as accredited leaders
they declare to be Uskoks, proscribed brigands, whom it behoves every
lover of order to hunt down and destroy. But none are deceived by these
shallow excuses, which ill corroborate the assertion which, in an
unguarded moment, escaped from the young Prince, that he would
undertake, upon the fulfillment of certain conditions, to pacify the
frontier within fourteen days.

This tacit admission of collusion with the rebels is quite sufficient to
justify the Porte in endeavouring to overrun the province, and thus
trample out rebellion in its principal stronghold. Presupposing its
ability to effect this, we then arrive at the real debatable point,
whether such a course would be allowed by the other powers. In the case
of England the answer can hardly be doubtful; for it would ill behove a
country, in whose Parliament all religions are tolerated, to interfere
in the matter, abandoning that policy of non-intervention which she has
so openly confessed and so successfully pursued, upon the narrow grounds
of the inexpediency of permitting a Mussulman power to overrun a
Christian province, and a province, be it remembered, which legally
composes an integral portion of the Turkish empire.

The candid announcement made by the Porte of its intention to abandon
the policy of forbearance towards Montenegro, which it has as yet
pursued, betokens the existence of a small spark of its ancient spirit,
and augurs well f