No progress is seen just now in the long-promised settlement
of the " Eastern question." The latest accounts from Constantinople left the Porte still debating the terms of an arrangement, which could hardly have been evaded or even deferred if the European Powers who " advise " the Sultan were perfectly sincere and una- nimous in their advice. And in Egypt we still see the energetic MEHEMET Am making active preparation to dictate the terms of his submission. Though the Egyptian ruler will negotiate at proper times, he will not wait upon negotiations : he is aware that a man can always be ready to listen, if others speak as he wishes ; but that he may not always be ready to listen from a vantage-ground if be for a moment relaxes his efforts to maintain it. Under cover of the impracticable conditions with which the Porte has embarrassed its own cause, and by sufferance of the real arbiters of the quarrel, to whom he presents himself as an ill-used penitent ungenerously oppressed, the old Pasha is preparing for the next turn in his fortunes, and recruiting his Syrian losses. He is not a time-server, but a time-user.
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