In the year '39, Fakredeen being then fifteen years of age, the country
entirely tranquil, even if discontented, occupied by a disciplined
army of 80,000 men, commanded by captains equal it was supposed to any
conjuncture, the Egyptians openly encouraged by the greatest military
nation of Europe, the Turks powerless, and only secretly sustained by
the countenance of the ambassador of the weakest government that ever
tottered in England, a government that had publicly acknowledged that
it had forfeited the confidence of the Parliament which yet it did
not dissolve; everything being thus in a state of flush and affluent
prosperity, and both the house of Shehaab and the house of Besso
feeling, each day more strongly, how discreet and how lucky they had
been in the course which they had adopted, came the great Syrian crash!
Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the policy pursued by
the foreign minister of England, with respect to the settlement of the
Turkish Empire in 1840-41, none can be permitted, by those, at least,
competent to decide upon such questions, as to the ability with which
that policy was accomplished. When we consider the position of the
minister at home, not only deserted by Parliament, but abandoned by his
party and even forsaken by his colleagues; the military occupation
of Syria by the Egyptians; the rabid demonstration of France; that an
accident of time or space, the delay of a month or the gathering of a
storm, might alone have baffled all his combinations, it is difficult to
fix upon a page in the history of this country which records a superior
instance of moral intrepidity.
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