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234 A LETTER FROM CHARLES I April a confirmation of the ould, this reason I will openly approve of and desire it may be made to mee but not knowen that it comes from Your most asseured reall faithfull constant frend C Rex: The letter is endorsed : His Maties : 5° j August Rec. 25° J 1646 Lord Elgin's Report on Levantine Affairs and Malta, 28 February iSoj In the Public Record Office is a long dispatch of the British ambassador to Constantinople, Lord Elgin, written on 28 February 1803, while in quarantine off Valetta, concerning the threatening state of affairs in the Levant and the menace of a reoccupation of Egypt by the French, as contained in Colonel Sebastiani's report, published in the Moniteur of 30 January 1803. The same volume contains letters of General Stuart from Egypt in the winter of 1802-3 concerning the many complications with the Mamelukes and the Turkish authorities, which had postponed the evacuation of that land by the British troops under his command. Dispatches of Alexander Stratton, the British charge d'affaires at Constantinople, also set forth the anarchy in many parts of Turkey, and the activity of French intrigues in the Morea, Albania, and the Republic of the Seven Isles (Ionian Isles). The assembly of Russian and Austrian forces near the Turkish frontier also caused anxiety, and seemed to presage a partition of that empire. The evidence that reached Arthur Paget at Vienna was of the same tenor. 1 These circumstances had induced the Porte to point out to the British government the desirability of its retaining Malta, from which the British garrison had not been withdrawn, owing to the non-fulfilment by Russia and Prussia of their guarantees of the Maltese article (no. x) of the Treaty of Amiens. Elgin's reference to the exclusive character of French commercial policy was warranted by the refusal of the first consul to conclude a commercial treaty and his setting of many obstacles to British trade in France and her subject lands. J. Holland Rose. Public Record Office, Foreign Office, Turkey, 38. After referring to the continued occupation of Malta by our troops and the fears caused by Bonaparte's conduct, Lord Elgin points out the immense importance of Malta — ' whether in regard to the ambitious views of Bonaparte, the fate of the Turkish Empire, or the general means of exclu- 1 Paget Papers, ii. 42, 72, 79.