§ MR. SUMMERSasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 16 Whether he can give the House any information with regard to the origin and nature of the conflicts that have recently taken place between the Albanians and the Turks?
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKESir, ever since the murder of Mehemet Ali, which was allowed to remain unpunished, the inhabitants of North-East Albania, who had already shown their discontent with Turkish rule, have assumed a very independent attitude towards the Ottoman officials. The Albanian movement, which was fostered by the Porte in order to resist the surrender of Dulcigno to Montenegro, could not be suddenly suppressed when the Porte were ultimately compelled to carry out that arrangement. This agitation increased in November, at the moment of a successful resistance offered to the conscription in the northeastern districts of the Vilayet of Kossovo. The head-quarters of the Albanian League were first at Prisrend; but it gradually extended its influence southward, till it embraced nearly the whole of the Vilayet of Kossovo. About the month of February, emissaries were sent to Middle Albania and Scutari to agitate for autonomous Albania; but they did not meet with much success. As it was stated the League were ready to furnish a corps of 20,000 men for hostilities against Greece, the Porte found it advisable to temporize with them; but the authority of the Porte was practically in abeyance till troops began to move up to Uscup, at the end of February; and in April the League was defeated by Dervish Pasha.