Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived at 'Larnaca, in Cyprus, in the
Himalaya,' on Monday, and immediately assumed the govern- ment, and our troops have been arriving ever since. A procla- mation was put forth, in English, Turkish, and Greek, setting forth the great interest of the Queen in the island and its prosperity, and promising measures to promote commerce and agriculture, and the blessings of freedom and justice. In the meantime, the Ministers here cannot make up their minds as to our legal position in Cyprus. It is stilt maintained that the Cypriotes are not British subjects, and that if they were to go out of Cyprus they would rank as Turkish subjects. Lord Cairns says that the Queen will exercise juris- diction in Cyprus under the Foreign Jurisdiction Act, but that seems only to apply to her jurisdiction over British subjects, and nobody seems to know in what capacity the new laws and institutions of Cyprus are to be inaugurated by Great Britain. The truth is, that it is very difficult at one and the same time to govern, and yet keep up the fiction that you are not governing, but only administering on behalf of another Power. It is not even clear as yet whether slavery is abolished in Cyprus.
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