guarded city Constantiniyeh."

At the request of Sir Stratford Canning, thirteen of the leading
Protestants called upon him, on the occasion of his procuring this
charter of rights; and for nearly an hour he addressed them on their
duties and responsibilities, in their present position in the
empire. He told them that they ought to thank God that they were the
first to be relieved from the shackles of superstition, and made
acquainted with the pure Gospel of Christ. He told them that many
eyes were upon them, and that they ought to excel all others in the
land in faithful obedience to the government, in a brotherly
deportment to those of other religious opinions, and an example of
uprightness in every relation. Again and again did he exhort them to
act, in all things, according to the principles and doctrines of the
Gospel.

Three years after this, on the 6th of December, 1853, on his return
to Constantinople as Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the same noble
friend of religious freedom, wrote to the Earl of Clarendon, that he
had endeavored in vain to obtain the official transmission of the
firman to the Pashas throughout the empire. This was strikingly
characteristic of Turkish procrastination. But he was then able to
state, that the Porte, "out of consideration for his repeated
representations," had officially transmitted the firman to all
Pashas where a Protestant society was known to exist.

In 1854, his lordship obtained the concession from the Turkish
government, that Christian evidence, in matters of criminal
jurisdiction, should stand on the same footing everywhere in Turkey
as the testimony of Mohammedans; thus removing a great wrong, under
which the rayahs of the empire had labored for centuries.

While gratefully acknowledging our obligations to the
representatives of other nations, I should also record, that our
brethren, both in the Armenian and Syria missions, were under
continued obligation to Mr. Carr, our Minister at the Porte, for
personal protection as American citizens. He acted with decision
whenever their rights were invaded. In the repeated efforts made to
remove them from the country, his reply to the formal demands of the
Porte was, that he had power to protect the missionaries as American
citizens, but not to remove them; and furthermore, that while papal
missionaries from France and Italy were permitted to reside in
Turkey, Protestant missionaries from America must also have the same
privi