Skip to main content

Question

Volume 217: debated on Monday 4 August 1873

The text on this page has been created from Hansard archive content, it may contain typographical errors.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, to state if there is any, and if any, what objection to explain the grounds on which the Foreign Office has refused to interfere in the matter of the complaint made by Mr. Paul Tomagian, a British subject resident at Constantinople, against Sir Philip Francis, Her Majesty's Consul General and Judge at that place, as set forth in a letter from the said Mr. Tomagian to Lord Granville, dated the 28th of November 1872, in which Mr. Tomagian charges Sir Philip Francis with arbitrary and oppressive conduct towards him, and with denial of justice and abuse of his office?

Sir, in declining to interfere on behalf of Mr. Paul Tomagian, the Foreign Office acted under the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown, to whom the Papers relating to Mr. Tomagian's complaints against Messrs. Hanson, the bankers, at Constantinople, were referred. He is not a British subject, but a native of Turkey, who procured British protection some years ago.