The club includes many nationalities--English, French, American, German, Russian, Italian, Greek, Spanish, Swiss, and others,--in its membership, and a visit to its rooms gives one an idea of the cosmopolitan character of the population of the Queen City of the Orient. Turks are not excluded, a Turkish gentleman being just as eligible to membership as any other. Diplomates, merchants, bankers, government officials, gentlemen of fortune with nothing to do, and the other miscellaneous characters that make up a club in a large city, were pointed out to me among the members that dined and lounged in the club-house.
French was the prevailing language, but you would hear enough of other tongues in the course of an evening to make you dream all night of the Tower of Babel, and the unhappy gentlemen that found it a losing speculation.
On the morning of our departure the weather cleared up, and we had the satisfaction of bidding farewell to Constantinople under a bright sky and in the glow of a warm sunshine. Our baggage was piled on the backs of some able-bodied porters, and we followed it and them down the hill of Pera, in the same solemn procession as we first mounted it.
The Custom House was lenient in consequence of a “backsheesh” of two francs, and the odds and ends that we had bought in the city were not disturbed.
Two of our party had laid in a liberal supply of Broussa silks and other specialties of Constantinople, and consequently they did not want the officials to be inquisitive. They thought they got off cheap at two francs, and I think they did.
And here is a good place to say something about the export duty on Turkish manufactures. { 180}The English, as we all know, are very earnest in advancing free trade; they have it, and want everybody else to enjoy its blessings. Whether their theories are right or wrong I do not propose to discuss, as I am not writing a book on political economy. England believes emphatically in free trade--free export and free import--and every Englishman would tell you that a tax on manufactured exports would be the very thing to cripple home industries.
I have been informed, whether with absolute truth I cannot say, but I believe my authority was good, that the Turkish export tax was imposed in consequence of the advice of the then British Minister at Constantinople. The Turkish cabinet sought his advice as to the best means of encouraging manufacture in the Ottoman empire and making them a source of revenue.