to the Sultan, but it was finally completed, and a solemn deputation of gray-headed captains of villages brought to each of the consuls a copy, and consigned the original to the governor for transmission to Constantinople.  He, in accepting it, ordered the assembly to disperse and wait at home for the answer.  He had on a previous occasion tried the same device, and when the assembly had dispersed he had arrested the chiefs, called a counter assemblage of his partisans, and got up a counter petition, which he sent to the Sultan.  They, therefore, refused this time to separate.  The reverence of the Cretans for their traditional procedure was such that when the assembly had dissolved, its authority, and that of the persons composing it, lapsed, and the deputies had no right to hope for obedience if they called on the population to rise.  The assembly would have to be again convened, elected, and organized in order to exercise any authority.

As the plan of the pasha was to provoke a conflict, he ordered the troops out, and called a meeting of the consuls, to whom he communicated his intention of dispersing the assembly by force.  As this meant fighting, the consuls opposed it, with the exception of Derché, the French consul, who took the lead in approving the pasha’s proposals.  The English consul, Dickson, an extremely honest and humane man, but tied by his instructions to act with his French colleague, could only say that the assembly thus far had acted in strict accordance with its firman rights, and he hoped that they would be respected, but he did not join in the opposition with the rest of us.  Colucci, the Italian, the youngest of the consular body, said that he had information that the committee of the assembly had expressed their willingness to disperse on receiving assurance that they would not, as in the former case, be molested for the action they had taken; and as they had committed no illegal act, he considered this their due.  His excellency dodged the suggestion, and, rising, was about to dismiss the meeting, when, seeing that nothing had been done to avert the collision, I arose and formally protested against the attempt to disperse the assembly by force, and against any implied consent of the consular body to the programme he had announced.  The Italian, the Russian, and one or two of the other consuls followed, supporting my protest, and the pasha, disconcerted by the unexpected demonstration against him, sat down again, and we renewed the discussion, when Dickson said that what he had said was implied in the position, and that as the assembly had done nothing to deserve persecution, it could not be supposed that they would be subjected to it, and he regarded the assurance of immunity as uncalled for.  And so the conference broke up, leaving me in the position of the defender of Cretan liberties, but the troops were not sent out, and the report spread through the island that the pasha and the consuls were at loggerheads.