§ MR. MONSELLasked the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, What system of Government was to be established in the Lebanon upon the withdrawal thence of the French troops? It seemed to him that the interests of humanity were deeply involved in this question. The noble Lord in stating in June or July last the reasons which led to the armed intervention of the great Powers in Syria, observed that "the object of the intervention was to secure such measures being adopted as would prevent a repetition of those outrages to which the Christian population had been exposed." On Monday last the noble Lord informed the House that arrangements had been come to by the Five Powers, according to which the armed occupation of Syria was to cease on the 5th June next. He (Mr. Monsell) thought it a mistake that any one Power should have been allowed alone to hoist 251 her flag in that country; the intervention ought to have been jointly prosecuted, and in that event the indisposition which naturally existed to allow any one foreign nation to get a footing in Syria would not have clashed with the interests of the Syrian Christians as was now, unfortunately, the case. He wanted to know what would be their position on the 5th of June when the French troops were withdrawn? Were these poor people to be handed over to Turkish protection? For the last twenty years—since the period when a change was unfortunately made by the influence of this country in the system under which the Lebanon had been governed—the Christians in Syria had been entrusted to Turkish protection, which had proved to be nothing but Turkish oppression of the worst kind. Hon. Members who had looked into the blue books which from time to time had been laid upon the table, must be aware that in 1841 Lord Aberdeen complained that the Turks were the cause of the sufferings of the Maronites by arming one portion of the population against the other. Colonel Rose made a similar statement in 1845. The late Admiral Sir Charles Napier declared that, notwithstanding all the glory he had won at Acre, one of his bitterest thoughts was that he had any part in establishing the Turkish domination in that country. Could Turkish protection, he ventured to ask the House, be more trusted now than at any of these periods? The Turks made the fairest promises, but they always broke them in the most shameless manner. Besides, Mahomedan fanaticism was now deeper and more extended than ever. It had shown itself at Jeddo, at Mosul, at Aleppo; and only the other day the preliminaries of a massacre were discovered at Damascus. The noble Lord the Foreign Secretary had endeavoured, rather unfairly, to prejudice the House and the country against the Christian population of the Lebanon. The fact was that the Maronites were as industrious and as well-conducted a people as any to be found in Europe. The noble Lord had stated that great atrocities had been perpetrated upon the Druses by the Maronites. It was a fact, however, that during the time of the French occupation not more than 200 Druses were put to death by the Maronites, while no fewer than 400 Maronites were assassinated by the Druses. In one small village, during the residence there of a gentleman of the name of Scheffer for one week in the last winter, 252 nine Maronites were murdered. He called upon the noble Lord to recollect that we occupied a very peculiar position with respect to the Syrian question. If through our influence all protection was taken away from the Christians of the Lebanon, and if afterwards a massacre such as took place last year occurred, it would be impossible to prevent the other Powers of Europe from taking far stronger measures than they had yet done. The people of the Lebanon were once a happy and contented race; but the Government under which they lived was destroyed by our influence, and that fact imposed upon us a heavy weight of responsibility. He entreated the noble Lord to take care that before European protection was removed such a form of government should be established as should enable the Druses and Maronites, who, if they were left alone by the Turks, would live together as peaceably as they had done in former times, to protect themselves against Turkish intrigues. No long time could be necessary for arriving at such a state of things, and his own impression was that if a fitting person were placed at the head of affairs in the Lebanon he would find little difficulty, without European aid, in reuniting the Druses and the Maronites, and in reinstating them in that position of happiness from which they had so long been displaced. He would conclude by asking the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, what system of Government is to be established in the Lebanon upon the withdrawal from thence of the French troops?