d they had the courage and the means to send a similar and unanimous
message to the Emperor of Russia, they would have had the strength and
unanimity required themselves to strike the blow, and make all
intervention useless. The fact of their having not risen as a man in their
own cause, is a sufficient explanation for their want of boldness in
soliciting their deliverance at the hands of a foreign state. But laying
aside the question of the _subjects_ of the Ottoman empire professing the
Greek faith, to speak of the much more vital interest of the faith itself,
professed as it is by ourselves, let it be permitted to me to submit to
your candid decision, if the work of defending that faith does not belong
pre-eminently to us, and neither to the English nor the French. We
tolerate in the whole extent of our empire both the Roman Catholic and the
Lutheran communions of faith; we have millions of subjects professing both
creeds; we build churches for them. Long before the Roman Catholics were
emancipated in England, the posts of the highest honour, of the greatest
confidence, and of the largest perquisites in the army, the senate, and
the supreme council of the empire, were opened indiscriminately by us to
men professing the Greek, Roman, or Lutheran creeds. Is it because of our
tolerance with respect to sects not our own, that we are condemned to be
indifferent to the hardships of those of our own faith? Are we not only to
allow your church to stand unmolested within our own realm, but also to
allow our own church to fall in ruins within the limits of a neighbouring
state? If so, you condemn our toleration, you call it indifference and
disbelief."--(P. 9, _et seq._)

It is perfectly true that there are in Russia several millions of
Protestants and Roman Catholics, and that many of the highest offices,
civil as well as military, are occupied by them; for it is well known that
the most efficient servants of the Russian government are chiefly
foreigners, either by birth or extraction. This tolerance, however, is
always getting more and more restricted; and I have alluded above, on pp.
161-163, to the persecution of the Greeks united with Rome, as well as the
systematical proselytism by force and fraud amongst the Protestants of the
Baltic provinces. The author says that a Mahometan who becomes a convert
to Christianity must lose his head by the laws of Turkey, but he does not
tell us what fate awaits a follower of the Greek Ch