A very small amount of thought will show that all differences of race and speech are much more marked and much more lasting in the East of Europe than they are in the West. It will also show that differences in religion have greater importance in the East than they have in the West, and that they put on more of the character of national differences. In the West, as we have seen, the different races which have settled in each of the great countries of Western Europe have come together to form one distinct nation in each. In each land, say England, France, Germany, one type of man, marked by the use of one language, is the rule. Everything which departs from that rule, everything which uses any other language, is exceptional. And anything that departs from the general rule takes for the most part the form of mere fragments or survivals, objects of curious historical and linguistic interest, but having no bearing on practical politics. The political unity of France is not threatened because Flemish, Walloon, Breton, Basque, and Provencal are all spoken within the French border. The political unity of Great Britain is not threatened because Welsh and Gaelic are spoken within its coasts. The recent conquests of Germany stand on a different ground, because they are recent conquests, and because each of the disaffected districts lies in close neighbourhood to a larger population of its own speech. If the Breton-speaking districts of France joined on to a large independent Breton­speaking state, the Breton element in France would not be so politically unimportant as it now is. Ireland stands on a different ground, partly because two great islands never can be so thoroughly united as a continuous territory, partly because for some centuries a variety of causes made the state of things in Ireland rather Eastern than Western. With these exceptions, the rule holds good. In Western Europe each land has a dominant type, Roman or Teutonic; whatever departs from both those types is everywhere exceptional and politically unimportant And the exceptional districts, where there are any, mark their character as survivals by their geographical position. The old tongues, those which are older than both Roman and Teutonic, live on only in corners by themselves. In no part of Western Europe do we find districts inhabited by men differing in speech and national feeling, lying in distinct patches here and there over a large country. A district like one of our larger counties in which one parish, perhaps one hundred, spoke Welsh, another Latin, another English, another Danish, another Old-French, another the tongue of more modern settlers, Flemings, Huguenots or Palatines, is something which we find hard to conceive, and which, as applied to our own land or to any other Western land, sounds absurd on the face of it.

When we pass into South-eastern Europe, this state of things, the very idea of which seems absurd in the West, is found to be perfectly real. All the races which we find dwelling there at the beginning of recorded history, together with several races which have come in since, all remain, not as mere fragments or survivals, but as nations, each with its national language and national feelings, and each having its greater or less share of practical importance in the politics of the present moment. Setting aside I races which have simply passed through the country! without occupying it, we may say that all the races which have ever settled in the country are there still as distinct races. And, though each race has its own particular region where it forms the whole people or the great majority of the people, still there are large districts where different races really live side by side in the very way which seems so absurd when we try to conceive it in any Western country. We cannot conceive a Welsh, an English, and a Norman village side by side; but a Greek, a Bulgarian, and a Turkish village side by side is a thing which may be seen in many parts of Thrace. The oldest races in those lands, those which answer to Basques and Bretons in Western Europe, hold quite another position from that of Basques and Bretons in Western Europe. They form three living and vigorous nations, Greek, Albanian, and Rouman. They stand as nations alongside of the Slavs who came in later, and who answer roughly to the Teutons in the West, while all alike are under the rule of the Turk, who has nothing answering to him in the West But it must be further remembered that this abiding life of races and languages is not confined to the lands which are under the Turk.

It comes out in its strongest form in these lands; but it comes out also in a form nearly as strong in the lands which form the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. It is in short a characteristic of Eastern Europe generally as distinguished from Western. And the causes of this difference will be easily seen, if we look carefully into the history of Eastern Europe as distinguished from Western.

The main causes of this difference between Eastern and Western Europe are twofold. The first cause is the different position which the Roman Empire held in the West of Europe and in the East. The second cause is the presence in the East of certain elements which have nothing answering to them in the West. East and West have three elements in common, while the East has a fourth element which it has all to itself. First, there are, both in East and West, the nations which were there before the Roman power began. Secondly, there is the Roman power itself, still existing in its effects. Thirdly, there are the Aryan nations which came in since the establishment of the Roman power. All these are common to West and East; only their proportions and relations to one another are not the same in the East as they are in the West, a difference which is caused by the different positions which the Roman power held in the two cases. But, fourthly, the East has a fourth element which is not to be found in the West, namely the non-Aryan races which have come in since the establishment of the Roman power. Among these the Turks are the most important; but they are not the only non-Aryan settlers, and the difference between the settlement of the Turks and the settlements of the other non-Aryan races forms one of the most instructive parts of our whole subject.

In examining these two causes of those differences between Eastern and Western Europe which lie on the surface, we shall find that the condition of the earlier nations which were there before the Romans came, and over whom they extended their power, was altogether different in the East from what it was in the West. In the West, in Gaul and Spain. the Romans found nations much less civilized than themselves, nations which were ready to look up to their conquerors as masters and to adopt the language, the manners, and the name of Romans. In the West therefore the first element, the element older than the Roman dominion, has lingered on only in the shape of fragments and survivals. The great mass of the people of those lands became practically Roman. In the West the second element in our list, the Roman element, swallowed up nearly the whole of the first. But in Eastern Europe the Romans found a nation more civilized than themselves, a nation which they conquered politically, but to which in everything else they were as ready to look up, as the nations of the West were ready to look up to them. This was the Greek nation. When the Romans conquered the South-eastern lands, they found there three great races, the Greek, the Illyrian, and the Thracian. Those three races are all there still. The Greeks speak for themselves. The Illyrians, are represented by the modern Albanians. The Thracians are represented, there seems every reason to believe, by the modern Romanians. Now had the whole of the South-eastern lands been inhabited by Illyrians and Thracians, those lands would doubtless have become as thoroughly Roman as the Western lands became. There would be in the East Romance and Slavonic nations, as there are in the West Romance and Teutonic na­tions, with perhaps some fragments and survivals of Illyrian and Thracian lingering on, as Basque and Breton have lingered on in the West. But the position of the Greek nation, its long history and its high civilization, hindered this. The Greeks could not become Romans in any but the most purely political sense. Like other subjects of the Roman Empire, they gradually took the Roman name; but they kept their own language, literature, and civilization. In short we may say that the Roman Empire in the East became Greek, and that the Greek nation became Roman. The Eastern Empire and the Greek-speaking lands became nearly coextensive. Greek became the one language of the Eastern Roman Empire while those that spoke it still called themselves Romans. Till quite lately, that is till the modern ideas of nationality began to spread, the Greek­speaking subjects of the Turk called themselves by no name but that of Romans. This people, who might be called either Greek or Roman, but who have now again taken up the Greek name, has lived on as a distinct nation to our own time. It is a nation which has largely assimilated its neighbours, but which has not been assimilated by them.

While the Greeks thus took the Roman name without adopting the Latin language, another people in the Eastern Peninsula adopted both name and language, exactly as the nations of the West did. If, as there is good reason to believe, the modern Romanians represent the old Thracians that nation came under the general law, exactly like the Western nations. The Thracians became thoroughly Roman in speech, as they have ever since kept the Roman name. They form in fact one of the Romance nations, just as much as the people of Gaul or Spain. They are a Romance nation on the Eastern side of the Adriatic instead of on the Western. The third nation, that of the Illyrians, Skipetar, or Albanians, have been largely assimilated by the Greeks. Though they may be truly said to exist as a nation, still their existence as a nation has been mainly owing to their living a wild people living in a wild country. They hold a position between that of a nation like the Greeks and that of a mere survival of a nation like the Basques. The Romanians too, though they learned the Roman language and have kept the Roman name, can never have so fully adopted the Roman civilization as the Gauls and Spaniards did. In short, the existence of a highly civilized people like the Greeks hindered in every way the in­fluence of Rome from being so thorough in the East as it was in the West. The Greek nation lived on, and alongside of itself, it preserved the other two ancient nations of the peninsula. Thus all three have lived on to the present as distinct nations. Two of them, the Greeks and the Illyrians, still keep their own languages, while the third, the old Thracians, speak a Romance language and call themselves Romanians.

Thus the existence of the Greek nation with its higher civilization has influenced the relations of the Roman power to the old nations of the peninsula, and it has kept them alive as nations. It also affected the relations of the Roman power to the Aryan nations, which came in afterwards. These are, to sum it up in a word, the Slavs. The Slavonic nations hold in the East a place answering to that which is held by the Teutonic nations in the West. They were the later Aryan settlers, the settlers who came into the Empire after the establishment of the Roman power. The Teutonic nations themselves founded no lasting settlements within the Eastern Empire. The Goths used the Eastern Empire as a highway to the West; they marched through it at pleasure, but it was not till they had reached the West that they founded lasting Gothic kingdoms. On the northern frontier of the Eastern Empire Teutonic kingdoms were founded by the Gepidae and the Lombards.

But even these were not lasting. The Gepidae were cut off altogether, and the Lombards passed into Italy, to find their real place in history there. The place in history which in the West belongs to the Teutonic nations which founded kingdoms in Gaul, Spain, and Italy, is filled in the East by the Slavonic nations who made their way into the Empire, andwere the forefathers of the present inhabitants of Croatia and Dalmatia, of enslaved Bosnia and Bul­garia, of liberated Servia and of unconquered Montenegro. Just like the Teutons in the West, the Slavs in the East came into the Empire in all manner of characters, as captives, as mercenaries, as allies, at last as conquerors. In the sixth century they carried havoc through all the provinces between the Adriatic and the Euxine; in the seventh century the Emperors found it wise to allow them to make permanent settlements in those provinces which in time grew into regular kingdoms. From this time we must count the Slavonic people and the Slavonic languages as one great element, in number, perhaps the greatest element, in the lands which form the great eastern peninsula of Europe.

But though the Slavs in the East thus answer in many ways to the Teutons in the West, their position with regard to the Eastern Empire was not quite the same as that of the Teutons towards the Western Empire. The Western Empire was purely Roman. The Eastern Empire was from one side Roman, and from another side Greek. Its capital was the old Greek city of Byzantium, refounded and enlarged to become the New Rome or Constantinople. Its capital then was at once Greek and Roman, and so was the dominion of which it was the head. It was politically Roman, but intellectually Greek. Its political traditions, its laws, the succession and titles of its Emperors, were all Roman, and, down to its final conquest by the Turks, it never knew any name but the Roman Empire. Latin remained for some ages the language of government and warfare. Byzantine Greek is full of Latin technical terms, very much as English is, through the effects of the Norman Conquest, full of French technical terms. But Greek was the language of literature and religion, and in the end it drove Latin out for all purposes. Thus, while the nations which pressed into the Western Empire came within the reach of an undivided Roman influence, those which pressed into the East came within the reach of a divided in­fluence, partly Greek, partly Latin. Such a divided influence was in itself less strong than the purely Latin influence in the West. Add to this that the Roman power in the East was centred in a single city in a way in which it was not in the West. The moral power of the Old Rome has been far greater than that of the New. But the physical power of the New Rome as a city has been far greater than that of the Old. The Roman Empire grew out of the Old Rome; but, when the Roman power was at its height, the local Rome itself had ceased to be the ruling city. All Western Europe had, so to speak, become Rome, and the local Rome itself was not more Roman than other parts. Its geographical position, which had made it the head of Italy, hindered it from remaining the political head of Western Europe. The city of Rome was taken over and over again by Teutonic con­querors; but by that very means its conquerors came more and more under Roman influences. Thus in the West the political succession of the Old Rome passed away to Teutonic kings, while Rome herself, through the absence of the Emperors, became the seat of a new kind of dominion under her bishops. The New Rome, on the other hand, was a great city, a great fortress, which, as a city and fortress, commanded the whole Eastern Empire, and which for nine hundred years no foreign invader could ever take. Hence, in the West, as the Roman power died out politically, its moral influence was strengthened. In the East it lived on as a political power, a power centred in one great city, a city which the nations which pressed into the Empire were always trying to take but never could. The Slaves who pressed into the Eastern Empire admired and reverenced and looked up to the New Rome. They learned its religion, and much of its civilization. Still it remained a separate political power, with which they were often at war. It followed from all this that the Slaves in the Eastern Empire remained distinct, in a way in which Goths, Franks, and Burgundians in the Western Empire did not. They learned much from the half Roman, half Greek, power with which they had to do; but they did not themselves become either Greek or Roman, in the way in which the Teutonic conquerors in the Western Empire became Roman. Thus, as the existence of the Greek nation and Greek civilization preserved the older nations as distinct nations so the half Greek, half Roman, character of the Eastern Empire, combined with the centring of its whole power in a tingle city, kept the new comers that is chiefly the Slavs, also apart as distinct nations. Thus, while in the West everything except a few survivals of earlier nations, is cither Roman or Teutonic, in the East. Greeks, Illyrians, Thracians or Roumans, and Slavs, all stood side by side as distinct nations when the next set of invaders came, and they remain as distinct nations still.

We thus see that, even with regard to the three elements which Eastern and Western Europe may be said to have in common, there are some marked differences between the two. In both there were the nations who were there before the Roman times, there was the Roman power itself, and there were the Aryan nations which had come in since the establish­ment of the Roman power. But we have seen that the relations between these three elements were not quite the same in the East and in the West. In the East the distinctions of race and language were broader and more lasting than they were in the West. Still, with all their differences and rivalries, these nations had much in common; they all had their share in those things which are the common heritage of Christian Europe. They were all Aryans; they were all Christians; they had all come more or less fully under Greek and Roman influences. Still various causes had made it hard for them to unite, and they remained distinct and often hostile nations. These points become of importance when we come to the fourth element in Eastern Europe, the settlement in it of nations wholly foreign alike to Greeks, Albanians, Thracians, and Slavs—nations, in a word, which were neither Aryan nor Christian. The last and greatest of these were : the Ottoman Turks. But before we come to the history of the Ottoman Turks, it will be well to com­pare their settlement with the earlier settlements of other nations more or less akin to them, as this comparison will be found to be one of the most instructive parts of our subject

The relations of Eastern and of Western Europe to those nations which were neither Aryan nor Chris­tian have been widely different. One might have expected that the Semitic nations, the nations of South-western Asia, the Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs, would have played a greater part in the history of Eastern Europe than they played in the history of Western Europe. Yet the contrary has been the case both in earlier and in later times. Whatever influence the Phoenicians may have had on the Greeks in the earliest times, the Phoenician settle­ments in Europe in historical times were all in the West, in Spain, in Sicily, in the other islands of the Western Mediterranean. So it was ages after with the Arabs or Saracens. They robbed the Eastern Empire of Syria, Egypt, and Africa; they ravaged Asia Minor; they twice besieged Constantinople itself; but they formed no lasting settlement within the bounds of Eastern Europe. But in the West they conquered nearly the whole of Spain, and they kept part of that conquest for nearly eight hundred years. They held Sicily for a shorter, but a considerable time; and the only European province of the Eastern Empire which they ever won, the island of Crete, was won by a band of adventurers from Spain. Thus the strictly Semitic power, the power of the Saracen as distinguished from that of the Turk, has really been stronger in Western than in Eastern Europe. Yet we cannot reckon the Semitic power as one of the elements in Western Europe. It was only in Spain that the Saracen power was really abiding, and even from Spain it has utterly paissed away. It could pass utterly away, because, though it lasted so long, it was always an alien power in Europe, and never really took root. We need not count the Semitic power as an element either in Eastern or Western Europe; for in Eastern Europe the Semitic nations never settled, and from Western Europe they are quite gone. The case is quite different with regard to that class of nations which form an im­portant element in Eastern Europe, but which have nothing answering to them in the West. This is the group of nations to which the Turks belong, and of which in Europe the Ottoman Turks are the most prominent members.

Taking then the Turk as the greatest and the most prominent specimen of those nations in Eastern Europe which did not originally belong to the European community of nations, and leaving out of sight for a moment, the fact that he is only one member of that class, let us ask how the Turk looks as compared with the other nations of the Eastern peninsula, Greek, Albanian, Romanian, and Slav. We have seen that two chief causes had combined to keep those nations distinct, and to make any union among them very hard. At last there came among them, in the form of the Ottoman Turk, a people with whom union was not only hard but impossible, a people who were kept distinct, not by special circumstances, but by the inherent nature of the case. Had the Turk been other than what he really was, he might simply have become a new nation alongside of the other South-eastern nations. Being what he was, the Turk could not do this. He could not sit down alongside of the other nations. He could not assimilate the other nations or be assimi­lated by them. He could not sit down among the other nations as a constant neighbour and occasional enemy. If he came among them at all, he could come only as a ruler, and, if as a ruler, then as an oppressor. We must now trace out what are the causes which, even in Eastern Europe where the lasting distinction of races is a characteristic of the history of the country, have given the Turk a position wholly unlike the position of any of the other races.

Why then has the conquest made by the Turks been of a nature so different, not only from other conquests made in Western Europe, but even from other conquests made in Eastern Europe ? Why is the position of the Turks as a distinct people some­thing quite unlike the position of any other people, even in lands where nations have a tendency to remain specially distinct ? The reason is because the Turk has no share in any of those things which, among all differences, are shared in common by the European nations. The Turk belongs to another branch of the human family from the nations of Europe. He has no share in the common history of these nations, in their common memories, their common feelings, their common civilization, lastly, what is more important than all the rest, he does not profess any of the forms of the Christian religion, but follows the religion of Mahomet.

First then, the Turk has no share in that original kindred of race and language which binds together all the European nations. The original Turks did not belong to the Aryan branch of mankind, and their original speech is not an Aryan speech. The Turks and their speech belong to altogether another class of nations and languages. They were wholly distinct alike from the Aryan inhabitants of Europe and from the inhabitants of Western Asia, who, wherever they were not Aryan, mainly belonged to the Semitic family. The Semitic nations must, in all those points which distinguish Eastern from Western life, be set down as belonging to the Eastern divi­sion. Yet in some points of language they come nearer to the Aryans than the other non-Aryan nations, and some of them have reached a higher stage of civilization and civil polity than any of the nations which lie beyond both the Aryan and the Semitic range. It is not needful for our purpose to go deep into any scientific enquiry, as to the exact relations of those nations and languages of Asia and Northern Europe which are neither Aryan nor Semitic. For our purpose, it will be enough to class all those of them with which our subject has anything to do under a name which is sometimes given to them, that of Turanian. The old Persians, who spoke an Aryan tongue, called their own land Iran, and the barbarous land to the north of it they called Turan. In their eyes Iran was the land of light, and Turan was the land of darkness. From this Turan, the land of Central Asia, came the many Turkish settlements which made their way, first into Western Asia and then into Europe. The Turks are thus far more dis­tant from any of the Aryan, or even from any of the Semitic nations, of Europe and Asia than any one of those nations can be from any other. From us Euro­peans they are more distant than the Persians and Hindoos, who are Aryan kinsfolk, though we and they have been so long parted. They are more distant—a fact which it is very important to notice—even than their Semitic forerunners and teachers in the Mahometan religion, the Arabs or Saracens. It is true that the original Turkish blood must have been greatly modified, as their language has been greatly modified, by their passage through Persia and Asia Minor. It must also have been greatly modified by their being joined by many European renegades, and by their custom of forcing the youth of the nations whom they conquered to serve in their armies and to embrace their religion. In this way we might say that the Turks in Europe are an artificial nation, and it is certain that many of them must be, in actual descent, of European blood. But the original stock was something altogether foreign to Europe, and, in a case like this, it is the original stock which gives the character to the whole. The Turks in Europe have neither assimilated the nations which they have conquered, nor have they been assimilated by them. They have simply adopted a great many renegades, one by one. And those renegades have of course been assimilated by the body which they have joined. They have practically become Turks.

Now we cannot reasonably doubt that this original difference in blood and language has made it harder than it would otherwise have been for the Turks to become partakers of the common possessions of the European nations, in short for them to become an European nation. It would in any case have made it harder for them, cither, like conquerors in Western Europe, to become one people with the con­quered, or, like conquerors in Eastern Europe, to sit down as a distinct nation alongside of other nations. But there is no reason to believe that, had other circumstances been favourable, the original difference of race would of itself have made it impossible for them to do so. Experience teaches us the contrary.

For other Turanian nations beside the Ottoman Turks have also made their way into Europe, and the history of some of those nations has been quite unlike the history of the Ottoman Turks. These other Turanian nations came into Europe much earlier than the Turks, and they came by a different road. In chronological strictness then they should have been mentioned before the Turks; but, in order to make the difference between their history and that of the Ottoman Turks more clear, it seemed well first of all to draw a general picture of the position of the Ottoman Turks. The chief point to be shown is that, while in any case it was harder for a Turanian than for an Aryan people to enter into the European fellowship, yet, in the case of other Turanian nations, though hard, it was not impossible. In the case of the Ottoman Turks certain special circumstances made it altogether impossible.

Setting aside any curious questions as to the re­mains of Turanian nations in Europe earlier than the coming of the Aryans, the historical incursions of the Turanian nations, their attacks upon the Aryan nations of Europe, began more than a thousand years before the coming of the Ottoman Turks, in the fourth century of our aera. Thus the Huns began to make themselves terrible to Romans, Teutons and Slavs. But in Western Europe neither the Hun nor any other Turanian people ever made any lasting settlements. When Attila and his Huns invaded Gaul in the fifth century, Romans, Goths, and Franks all joined together. They smote the barbarians on the Catalaunian fields, and saved Western Europe from a Turanian occupation. In the East things took a different course. There Turanian settlers, ages before the coming of the Ottoman Turks, grew up into great kingdoms. Passing by a crowd of nations which play an important part in Byzantine history but which have left no modem traces behind them, we must mark that the Avars founded a great kingdom on the northern borders of the Eastern Empire and often carried havoc through the lands of the Empire itself. The Avars passed away be­neath the sword of Charles the Great; but two other Turanian settlements must be specially noticed, because they throw much light on the present ques­tion. Long before the Turks came into Europe, the Magyars or Hungarians had come; and, before the Magyars came, the Bulgarians had come. Both the Magyars and the Bulgarians were in their origin Turanian nations, nations as foreign to the Aryan people of Europe as the Ottoman Turks themselves. But their history shows that a Turanian nation settling in Europe may cither be assimilated with an existing European nation or may sit down as an European nation alongside of others. The Bulgarians have done one of these things; the Magyars have done the other; the Ottoman Turks have done neither.

So much has been heard lately of the Bulgarians as being in our times the special victims of the Turk that some people may find it strange to hear who the original Bulgarians were. They were a people more or less nearly akin to the Turks, and they came into Europe as barbarian conquerors who were as much dreaded by the nations of South-eastern Europe as the Turks themselves were afterwards. The old Bulgarians were a Turanian people who settled in a large part of the South-eastern peninsula, in lands which had been already occupied by Slavs. They came in as barbarian conquerors; but, exactly as happened to so many conquerors in Western Europe, they were presently assimilated by their Slavonic subjects and neighbours. They learned the Slavonic speech; they gradually lost all traces of their foreign origin. Those whom we now call Bulgarians are a Slavonic people speaking a Slavonic tongue, and they have nothing Turanian about them except the name which they borrowed from their Turanian masters. Their case has been not unlike that of the settlements of the Franks in Gaul or of the Nor­mans in England. When we call their land Bulgaria and its people Bulgarians, it is almost as if our own land were called Normandy and ourselves Normans. It is in some points as when the land and people of Gaul came to be called France and French from their Frankish conquerors. The Bulgarians entered the Empire in the seventh century, and embraced Christianity in the ninth. They rose to great power in the South-eastern lands, and played a great part in their history. But all their later history, from a com­paratively short time after the first Bulgarian conquest, has been that of a Slavonic and not that of a Turanian people. The history of the Bulgarians therefore shows that it is quite possible, if circumstances are favourable, for a Turanian people to settle among the Aryans of Europe and to be thoroughly assimilated by the Aryan nation among whom they settled.

The other case of earlier Turanian settlement, that of the Magyars or Hungarians, shows that Turanian settlers can, even when they are not assimilated, sit down in Europe and become an European nation. The Magyars, who two hundred years ago were among the subjects and victims of the Turks, have lately taken to profess great friendship for the Turks on the ground of common origin. This is certainly carrying the doctrine of race very far indeed. But there is just this much of truth in it, that the Turanian Magyars came into Europe, like the Bulgarians, as a race of Turanian conquerors. They came in the last years of the ninth century. For a while they were the terror of East and West. But in the West they simply ravaged; in the East they sat down as a distinct nation. And to this day they still keep marked traces of their foreign origin, while the original Bulgarians lost all traces of theirs in about two hundred years. The Magyars still remain a distinct nation, speaking their own Turanian tongue. In the kingdom of Hungary to which they have given their name, they still abide as in some sort a ruling race among its Slavonic inhabitants, though they certainly do not hold them in the same kind of bondage in which the Turks hold their subject nations. We therefore cannot say that the Magyars have been assimilated, like the old Bulgarians; but we may fairly say that they have been incor­porated among the nations of Europe. For, not very long after their settlement, they adopted the religiorn and the general civilization of Europe, and they have ever since been reckoned as an European nation. It has been a point of great importance in the history of Eastern Europe that the Magyars, though geographically they belong rather to Eastern than to Western Europe, got their Christianity and civilization from the West, and not from the East. But our present point is that, though they kept their own tongue and remained a distinct nation; they did adopt the religion and civilization of Europe in some shape. Thus, though their history has not been the same as the history of the Bulgarians, it has been very different from the history of the Turks. And it should always be remembered that both Bulgarians and Magyars have been among the nations whom the Turks have overcome and borne rule over. Their original kindred with the Turks has not enabled them, any more than any of the other nations whom the Turks overcame, either to assimilate the Turks to themselves, or to be assimi­lated by them.

It is therefore most important constantly to bear in mind the history of the Bulgarians and Magyars, and the difference between their case and that of the Turks. Two of the Turanian nations which settled in Europe have become more or less thoroughly European. The third has not become European at all. This shows that even difference of origin, though very important, is not of itself enough to account for the fact that the Turks, though they have been so long settled in Europe, have never become European. The cause of that fact must be sought in difference of origin, combined with certain other circumstances which have affected the settlement of the Turks, but which did not affect the settlements of the Bulgarians or the Magyars.

We have thus traced out the special characteristics of the nations of South-eastern Europe, as compared with the nations of the West We have seen how the earlier nations which were there before the Roman conquest still abide as nations. We have seen how one of them did in a manner make the Roman Empire its own, how in those lands the names Roman and Greek came to have much the same meaning. We have seen how, after the establishment of the Roman power, the Slavonic nations settled in the Eastern Empire, much in the same way in which the Teutonic nations settled in the Western Empire, but with some important differences, differences which arose out of the earlier history of those lands and which have affected their later history. We have seen further how in the East there was a fourth clement which has nothing answering to it in the West, namely the settlement of nations which were not European or Aryan at all. We have seen that some of these non-Aryan settlers could be assimilated by their Aryan neighbours, while others could sit down alongside of them as one nation among others. That is, in different ways, they could both become more or less thoroughly European. Lastly we have seen that another race of non-Aryan settlers has been able to do none of these things, but has always remained distinct. It has conquered a large part of Europe and held several European nations in bondage, but it has never itself in any sort become European. We must now go on to ask what were the special reasons which hindered the Ottoman Turks from doing as the Bulgarians did, or even as the Magyars did, what in short has hindered them from ever becoming an European nation.

 

CHAPTER III.

THE OTTOMAN TURKS AND THEIR RELIGION.

 

We must now go back to the points which we drew out in the first Chapter, the points in which Euro­pean nations agree together, but in which the Turk differs from all of them, the things which they all have in common, but in which the Turk has no share. First among these we placed general kindred of race and speech, inasmuch as all the European nations, with the smallest exceptions, belong to Aryan stock, while the Turks belong to the Turanian stock. But we have further seen in the last chapter, that this original difference, had it stood by itself, would not have been enough to hinder the Turks from becoming Europeans by adoption. It doubtless would in any case have made it harder for them to do so; but it would not of itself have made it impossible. For, as we have seen, other Turanian nations, the Bulgarians and Magyars, have become European by adoption. We have now to see what it was by virtue of which the change which was hard, but still possible, in the case of the Bulgarians and Magyars has been altogether impossible in the case of the Ottoman Turks.

To answer this, we must go through our other points of likeness and unlikeness in order. The second point which we saw that the European nations had in common, besides their original Aryan kindred, was that they have a common history. They all have certain historic memories in common, memories which are chiefly derived from the dominion and influence of Rome. From these memories comes a vast common stock of what we may call literary and intellectual possessions. In all this the Bulgarians and Magyars, so far as they became European, came to have their share, if not by inheritance at least by adoption. The Bulgarians came under Greek, the Magyars under Latin influences. But in all those memories, and in all that comes of those memories, as the Turks have no share by inheritance, so neither have they ever won any share by adoption. They have no share in that stock of common ideas and feelings which belongs to the European nations in general. They have no share in the two languages which are the common possession of Europe, the Greek and the Latin. They have their own languages and literature, of which we for the most part know nothing, as they for the most part know nothing of ours. They have their own Turkish language, as we have our own tongues, Teutonic, Romance, or Slavonic. What Greek and Latin have been to us, Arabic and Persian have been to them. They have occupied one of the two great scats of Roman power, one of the great scats of Greek civili­sation, but they have not thereby become Roman or Greek, or Eurpean in any way. While the Teutons in the West, while the Slaves in the East, came into the Roman Empire, as half conquerors, half disciples, the Turks have come in wholly as conquerors, not at all as disciples. Settled in Europe, they have remained untouched by all that distinguishes Europe and the colonies of Europe from Asia and Africa. The throne of the New Rome is occupied by an Asiatic ruler surrounded by an Asiatic people. Nor is this any the less true, because, not the Turkish people in general, but the ruling class among them, have very lately put on a certain European varnish. The nature of the Turkish power is not changed because certain classes of Turks learn to speak an European language and to wear an European dress. Such a mere varnish has nothing in common with the deep moral influence which the Western Rome had on the Teuton and the Eastern Rome on the Slave. The Turk still remains foreign to the feelings and habits and historic memories of Europe. Of the other two Turanian settlements in Europe this is not true. The modern Bulgarian is whatever the other Slavs are; the Magyar, though he keeps his Turanian language, has his share in the great heritage of Western Europe, in the tongue and the civilization of Rome.

This brings us to the third point of difference between the Turks and the European nations, the point which is really the key to all the other points of difference. We have seen that it is not impossible for Turanians settled in Europe to become more or less thoroughly European, to obtain a share in much of those things which distinguishes European nations from others. But while other Turanian nations have done this, the Turks have never done it. Why is this? Why could not the Turks do either as the Bulgarians did or as the Magyars did ? The reason is because the Bulgarians and the Magyars embraced the common religion of Europe, while the Turks have never em­braced it. Here is the great difference of all. As soon as the Bulgarians and Magyars became Christians, the great difference between them and the other nations of Europe was at once taken away. The Bulgarians indeed, after some questioning and dis­puting, embraced Christianity in its Eastern form, while the Magyars embraced it in its Western form. And many troubles and divisions in Europe have come of this difference. Still both did become Christians, and thus both became sharers in all those ideas and feelings which are common to Christians of every sect, but which are not shared by Pagans or Mahometans, the Turks, on the other hand, entered Europe as Mahometans, and Mahometans they still remain. Here then is the great point of difference of all, that point which makes it altogether impossible for the Turks really to become an European nation. They cannot become an European nation, as long as they remain Mahometans; and there is no known case of any Mahometan nation accepting any other religion.

The question will now fairly be asked, why could not the Turks lay aside their old religion, as the Bul­garians and Magyars laid aside theirs, and embrace the religion of Europe as the Bulgarians and Magyars embraced it. The answer may be given in a very few words. The Bulgarians and Magyars could embrace Christianity, because they were heathens; the Otto­man Turks could not embrace Christianity, because they were Mahometans. Because the Bulgarians and Magyars were further off from the religion and civili­zation of Euro|>e than the Turks were, for that very reason they were able to adopt the religion and civilization of Europe, and the Turks were not. This is a case in which we may reverse the familiar proverb, and say that no bread is practically better than half a loaf. That is to say, a half civilization stands as a hindrance in accepting a more perfect civilization. A half truth in religion stands in the way of accepting more perfect truth. Experience proves this in all ages of European history. The rude nations of Western, Northern, and Eastern Europe easily adopted the religion and civilization of Rome. No Mahometan nation has ever been known to accept Christianity; no nation that, has reached the half civilization of the East has ever been known to accept the full civilization of the West This fact, the fact of the wide distinction in these matters between the Ottoman Turks and the earlier Turanian settlers in Europe, is the very key of our whole subject. The Turks are what they are, and they remain what they arc, because their religion is Mahometan. It by no means follows that every Mahometan government must be as bad as the Ottoman government is now. For many Mahometan governments have been much better. But no Mahometan government can ever give to its subjects of other religions what we in Western Europe- are used to look on as really good govern­ment. No Mahometan nation can really become part of the same community of nations as the Christian nations of Europe. These positions make it needful to look a little further into the nature of the Maho­metan religion, and into the relations which, under a Mahometan government, must always exist, between its Mahometan subjects and its subjects of other religions.

This question is in itself a perfectly general one, not a special question between Mahometanism and Chris­tianity, but a question between Mahometanism and all other religions. It is not needful here to enquire what would be the position of a nation of some third religion, neither Christian nor Mahometan. We need not ask whether such a nation could be really admitted into the European community, or whether it could give really good government to any Christian or Mahometan subjects that it might have. A great deal might be said in answer to such a question, as a matter of curious speculation. But the question is of no practical importance for our present subject. The only practical choice in Europe lies between Chris­tianity and Mahometanism. The practical point is that, whatever a nation of some third religion might do, a Mahometan nation cannot live on terms of real community with Christian nations; a Mahometan government cannot give real equality and good government to its Christian subjects. The question in modern Europe lies between Christian and Ma­hometan, because all the nations of Europe besides the Turks are Christian. But it must be borne in mind that the question of the relation between Mahometan and Christians is only part of a greater question, that is, of the relation between Mahometans and men of other religions generally. What is true of Mahometans and Christians in Europe, is, or has been, true of Mahometans and Pagans in Asia. It is true that the opposition between Maho­metanism and Christianity in Europe has been sharper than the opposition between Mahometanism and other religions elsewhere. And this has come of two causes; first, because Christianity and Mahometanism are more distinctively rival religions than any other two religions that can be named; secondly, because Christians in Europe, have, for nearly four hun­dred years past, had little to do with any Mahometanm except the Ottoman Turks, that is, with the fierces and the most bigoted of all Mahometans. Still, the relation between Mahometans and Christians in South-eastern Europe is only part of the general relation between Mahometans and men of other religions everywhere. What is true in the case of South-eastern Europe will be found to be true in the main, though it will often need some qualification, in every land where Mahometans have borne rule over men of any other creed.

The fact simply is that no Mahometan govern­ment ever has given or can give real equality to its subjects of other religions. It would be most unjust to put all Mahometan governments on a level in this matter. There have been Mahometan rulers who have avoided all wanton oppression of their non­Mahometan subjects; but, even under the best Mahometan rulers, the infidel, as he is deemed in Mahometan eyes, has never been really put on a level with the true believers. Wherever Mahometans have borne rule, the Mahometan part of the population has always been a ruling race, and the Christian or other non-Mahometan part has always been a subject race. The truth is that this always must be so; it is an essential part of the Mahometan religion that it should be so. The Koran, the sacred book of the Mahometans, bids the true believers to fight against the infidels, till the infidels either em­brace Islam or submit to pay tribute. By paying tribute, they purchase the right to their lives and their property, which are otherwise held to be forfeited, and to the exercise of their religion on certain conditions. Their fate therefore is not the worst of all possible fates; they are not, like some conquered nations, either swept away from the face of the earth or condemned to actual personal slavery. Nor are they subject to anything which can in strict­ness be called religious persecution. That is to say, the Christian, or rather the non-Mussulman, subject of a Mahometan government is not, simply as a non­Mussulman, subject to death, bonds, or other legal punishment That he should be free from penalties of this kind is implied in this very notion of the tributary relation. His payment of tribute exempts him from any penalities of the kind. So far the position of the Christian under a Mahometan ruler is better than that of the Christian heretic has been under many Christian rulers. His religion is tolerated; but it is simply tolerated, and the toleration is of a purely contemptuous kind. There is no real religious equality. The Christian may freely embrace Islam, and no Christian may hinder him from so doing. But for a Mahometan to embrace Christianity is a crime to be punished with death. Thus the non-Mussulman subjects of a Mussulman ruler sink to the condition of a subject people. In the case of a people conquered by Mussulman invaders, they sink into bondmen in their own land. They remain a distinct and inferior community, reminded in every act of their lives that the Mussulmans are masters and that they are servants. They so remain as long as they are faithful to their religion: by forsaking it they may at any moment pass over to the ranks of their conquerors. Thus every Christian under a Mussulman government is in truth confessor for his religion, as he might gain greatly by forsaking it. Still it is plain that such a state of things as this, grievous and degrading as it is, does not in theory involve any act of oersonal oppression. That is to say, though the Christian is treated in every thing as inferior to the Mussulman, yet his life, his property, and the honour of his family might be safe. Under any Mahometan ruler who did his duty according to his own law, they would be safe, because the Christian by the payment of tribute purchases his right to all these things. But the great evil of a law which condemns any class of people to degradation is that the practice under such a law is sure to be worse than the law itself. The relation between Christian and Mussulman under Mussulman rule is fixed, not by a law like an Act of Parliament, which may at any time be changed, but by a supposed divine law which cannot be changed. The relations between the Christian and the Mussulman, that is, the abiding subjection and degradation of the Chris­tian, are matters of religious principle. The law enjoins neither persecution nor personal oppression: it enjoins toleration, though merely a contemptuous toleration. But when the toleration which the law enjoins is purely contemptuous, when the subjection of all religions but the dominant one is consecrated by a supposed divine sanction, it is almost certain that the practice will be worse than the law; it is almost certain that contemptuous toleration will pass into an ordinary state of personal oppression, varied by occasional outbursts of actual persecution. So history shows that it has been. Instances may indeed be found in which Christians or other non-Mussulmans have fared better under a Mussulman govern­ment, than the law of the Koran prescribes ; as a rule, they have fared worse. It could in truth hardly be otherwise. When the members of one religious body feel themselves to be, simply on account of their religion, the superiors and masters of their neighbours of another religion, the position is one which opens every temptation to the worst passions of the human heart. A man must have amazing command of him­self, if, when it is his religious duty to treat a certain class of men as subject and degraded, he does not deal with them in a way which carries with it some­thing yet more than subjection and degradation. A bad man, even an average man, will be tempted every moment to add direct insult and oppression beyond what the letter of his law ordains. And so it has been in the history of all Mahometan governments which have borne rule over subjects of other religions, especially over Christians. The best have been what in Western Europe we should call bad; and their tendency has been like most bad things, to get worse. The Christian subjects of Mahometan powers have often been much better off than Christian subjects of the Turk are now. But in no case have they been what in Western Europe we should call really well off, and the tendency has always been for their condition to get gradually worse and worse.

The truth is that the Mahometan religion is, above all others, an aggressive religion. Every religion which does not confine itself to one nation, but which proclaims itself as the one truth for all nations, must be aggressive in one sense. That is to say, it must be anxious to bring men within its pale; in other words it must be a missionary religion. Now Mahometanism is eminently a missionary religion; but it is something more. It is aggressive in another sense than that of merely persuading men to embrace its doctrines. It lays down the principle that the faith is to be propagated by the sword, Other religions, Christianity among them, have been propagated by the sword; but it is Mahometanism only which lays it down as a matter of religious duty that it should be so propagated. No ruler who forced Christianity by the sword on unwilling nations could say that any precept of the Gospel bade him do so. And, as the precepts of the Gospel have come to be better understood, most Christians have agreed that such a way of spreading the faith is altogether contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. But the Mussulman who fights against the infidel till he makes his choice between the old alternatives of Koran or Tribute is simply obeying the most essential precept of his religion. This duty of spreading the faith by the sword, which the Koran enforces on all Mussulmans, at once places the Mahometan religion in a specially hostile position towards all other religions. And furthermore the whole character of that religion makes it the special rival of Christianity. Without going into questions of theological dogma, one main cause of this special rivalry between Christianity and Islam is because those two religions have so much in common. The Christian would say of the Mahometan, and the Maho­metan would say of the Christian, that in each case the creed of the other had more of truth in it than there was in any other creed which was not the whole truth. As compared with heathen religions, the strife between Christianity and Mahometanism has the pro­verbial bitterness of the strifes of kinsfolk. A few plain facts show the special rivalry of the two religions. Many heathen nations have embraced Christianity, and many have embraced Mahometanism. They have done so in both cases, sometimes freely, some­times by force. And in both cases they have, by embracing either Christianity or Mahometanism, raised themselves in every way, moral, social, and religious. The advantage has been so clearly on the side of the Christian or Mahometan teacher that the heathens themselves have come to perceive it. But no Christian nation has ever embraced Mahometanism; no Mahometan nation has ever embraced Christianity. For they are distinctly rival religions, and not only rival religions, but religions which represent rival systems of social and political life. Each holds itself to be theologically the one truth; each believes itself to represent a higher and better civil and social system. And the Mahometan further believes that his civil and social system is directly of divine authority. The Christian does not hold that the Gospel is a legal code for all times and places; the Mahometan does hold that the Koran is such a code. Here, as Christians and all who are not Mahometans hold, lies the great fault of the Mahometan system. Precepts which were admirable in the time and place where they were first given, precepts which were a great reform when Mahomet first preached them to the Arabs of the seventh century, have been forced, wherever the Mahometan power has spread itself, upon all nations for all time. Hence, while a Christian government is simply bound to shape its conduct according to the moral precepts of the Gospel, a Mahometan government is bound to enforce the Koran as the law of the ­land. Hence too, while the Gospel is altogether silent about the relations between the spiritual and temporal powers, while Christian nations have therefore settled that question in different ways at different times, the Mahometan religion settles it in one way for all time. Wherever the Mahometan system is fully carried out, the spiritual power carries the temporal power with it. The successor of the Prophet, the Caliph, is Pope and Emperor in one. In the Mahometan system there is no distinction between Church and State, no distinction between religious and civil duty. Every action of a good Mussulman is not only done from a religious motive, but is done directly as a religious act. From this spring both the best and the worst features of the Mahometan system. This carrying of religion into everything, the swallowing up, as one may say, of the secular life in the religious life, leads to much that is good in the relations of Mahometans towards one another. A good and earnest Mahometan, who carefully follows the precepts of his own law, must, at least towards men of his own faith, practise many of the moral virtues. The Mussulman too is never ashamed of his religion or of any of the observances which it enjoins. And this is certainly more than we can say of all Christians. In short, if Islam had never gone beyond Arabia, we might have reckoned Mahomet among the greatest benefactors of mankind. The only fault which could in such a case have been laid to the charge of his system would be that, in re­forming the old evils of the Eastern world, polygamy and slavery, he had for ever consecrated them. The worst that we could have said of Islam within its own peninsula would have been that it was so great a reform as to make a still greater reform altogether hopeless.

But this very feature which brings out so much good in the relations of Mahometans to one another is the very one which, before all others, makes Mahomet­anism the worst of all religions in its relation to men of any other religion. The feeling of exclusive religious pride and religious zeal which it engenders is very like that spirit of exclusive patriotic zeal and pride which may be seen in the history of various nations. The Mahometan has something in common with the old Roman. The good and the bad features of the old Roman character sprang from the same source. The Roman commonwealth was to him what the creed of Islam is to the sincere Mahometan. For the Roman commonwealth he would freely give himself, his life, and all that he had. Towards his fellow citizens of that commonwealth he practised many virtues. But as he was ready to sacrifice him­self to the commonwealth, so he was equally ready to sacrifice everything else The rights of other nations, the very faith and honour of Rome herself, were as nothing in his eyes, if he deemed that the greatness of the commonwealth could be advanced by disregarding them. So it is with the Mahometan religion. No religion has ever called forth more intense faith, more self-sacrificing zeal, on the part of its own professors. But the one precept which corrupts all, the precept which bids the true believer to fight against the infidel, turns that very faith and zeal which have in them so much to be admired into the cruellest instruments of oppression against men of all other creeds.

At this stage it may very likely be asked, and that not unfairly, whether it is meant to charge all Maho­metan nations and all Mahometan governments with the crimes which disgrace the rule of the Ottoman Turks. The answer is easy. If it is meant to ask whether all Mahometan nations and governments have been guilty of those crimes in the Mine degree, we may unhesitatingly answer, No There is a vast difference between one Mahometan nation or government and another, just as there is a vast difference between one Christian or Pagan nation or government and another. But it is none the less true that the crimes which mark the Ottoman rule spring directly from the principles of the Mahometan religion. They show the worst tendencies of that religion carried out in their extremest shape. There have been other Mahometan powers under which those tendencies have not been allowed to reach the same growth. That is to say, there have been Mahometan govern­ments which have been very far from being so bad as that of the Ottoman Turks. But under every Mahometan government those tendencies must exist in some degree; therefore, while some Mahometan governments have been far better than others, no Mahometan government can be really good according to a Western standard. For no Mahometan govern­ment which rules over subjects which are not Mahometans can give really equal rights to all its subjects. The utmost that the best Mahometan ruler can do is to save his subjects of other religions from actual persecution, from actual personal oppression; he cannot save them from degradation. He cannot, without forsaking the principles of his own religion, put them on the same level as Mussulmans. The utmost that he can do is to put his non-Mussulman subjects in a state which, in every Western country would be looked upon as fully justifying them in revolting against his rule. And, as we have seen, the tendencies to treat them worse than this are almost irresistible. Among the Ottomans those tendencies have reached their fullest development. A rude people, a bigoted people, in its beginning a band of adventurers rather than a nation, rose to power undera line of princes who were endowed with unparalleled gifts for winning and keeping dominion, but who had but a small share in those qualities which make domi­nion something other than a mere rule of force. The Ottomans have been simply a power. They have been a power whose one work has been the subjugation of other nations, Mahometan as well as Christian, a power whose sole errand has been that of conquest, and which therefore, as soon as it ceased to conquer, sank into a depth of wickedness and weakness beyond all other powers. The Ottoman Turk, a conqueror and nothing more, has had no share in the nobler qualities which have distinguished many other Mahometan nations which have been conquerors and something else as well, he has no claim to be placed side by side with the higher specimens of his own creed, with the early Saracens or with the Indian Moguls. It would be a blessed change indeed if the lands of South-eastern Europe could be transferred from the rule of the corrupt gang at Constantinople to a rule just, if stern, like that of the first Caliphs. But, even under the rule of the first Caliphs, they would still be in a case which would cause any Western people to spring to arms. No Mahometan ruler, I repeat, can give more than contemptuous toleration; he cannot give real equality of rights. One Mahometan ruler tried to do so, and not only tried but succeeded. But he succeeded only by casting away the faith which hindered his work. Akbar was the one prince born in Islam who gave equal lights to his subjects who did not profess the faith of Islam. But he was also the one prince born in Islam who cast away the faith of Islam. To do his work, the noblest work that despot ever did, he had to cast aside the trammels of a creed under which his work could never have been done. No fact proves more clearly that under Mahometan rule there can be no real reform than the fact that the one Mahometan prince who wrought a real reform had to cease to be Mahometan in order to work it.

So again with regard to another point. It may be asked, Is the Mahometan religion necessarily incon­sistent with proficiency in literature, art, and science? Here too a different answer may be given according to the different standard which we take. The East has its own literature, art, and science, apart from those of the West: the East has its own civilization apart from that of the West. We may deem that the East is inferior to the West in all these things, and history proves that it is so. But the real point is, not that one is inferior or superior to the other, but that they are essentially distinct. Our position is that the Turk has never won for himself any share in the common intellectual possessions of the West. Even in the East, no one would place him in these respects on a level with either the Arab or the Persian. But our point is wholly with regard to his share in the intellectual possessions of the West. In those pos­sessions we may say that no Mahometan nation has ever had a full share, and that the Ottoman Turk has had no share at all. The Saracen, both of the East and of the West, has his distinct place in the history of art and science; the Ottoman Turk has none. What the real share of the Saracens in these matters is I have tried to show elsewhere. I need here only repeat that those who speak of the Spanish Saracens as ever having at any time had learning, art, and science all to themselves simply show that they are themselves in the blackness of darkness with regard to the history of Christendom generally, and specially with regard to the history of the Eastern Kome.

We have gone off somewhat from the main track of our argument to mark how far the special evils of Ottoman rule are shared by Mahometan govern­ments in general, and how far they are directly owing to the Mahometan religion. The answer is that they are directly owing to the Mahometan religion, that they must in some measure affect every Mahometan government, but that the special character and position of the Ottoman Turks has aggravated the worst tendencies of the Mahometan religion, and has made their rule worse than that of any of the other great Mahometan powers of the world. We now come back to the fifth point of difference between the state of South-eastern Europe under the Turk and the state of the nations of Western Europe under their several national governments. It follows from all that has gone before that the nations of Western Europe, saving those small exceptions which have been already spoken of, have national governments of their own, but that the nations of South-eastern Europe have not. Let us once more compare the Bulgarian and the Ottoman Turk. The Bulgarians came in as heathen invaders. They embraced Christi­anity, and were lost among their Christian neighbours and subjects. Their government then became a national government. The Turks came in not as heathen but as Mahometan invaders. They have not embraced Christianity. They have always remained distinct from their Christian neighbours and subjects. Their government has never become a national government to any but the invading race themselves. It is a string of causes and effects. The rule of the Bulgarian could become a national government, because he embraced Christianity, and he was able to embrace Christianity because he came in as a heathen. The rule of the Ottoman Turk has never become a national government, because the Turk has never embraced Christianity, he could not embrace Christianity because he came in as a Mahometan. It is a fact well worthy of remembrance that both the Bulgarians, and somewhat later the Russians, when they became dissatisfied with their own heathen religion, had Mahometanism and Christianity both set before them, and that they deliberately chose Christianity. Had either of those nations chosen otherwise, the history of Europe would have been very different from what it has been. The rule of the Bulgarian would have been what the rule of the Turk has been. The state of things which began in the South-eastern lands in the fourteenth century would have begun in the ninth. We need not stop to show how different the whole history of the world would have been, if the heathen Russians, instead of adopting Christianity, had adopted Mahometanism. As it was, both nations made a better choice, and the history of the Bulgarian, as compared with that of the Ottoman Turk, has given us the most instructive of lessons. The heathen conquerors could be turned into Christian brethren; the Mahometan conquerors could not And, remain­ing Mahometans, they could not give a national government to those of the conquered who remained Christians. Now among those who so remained were the bulk of the conquered nations, the nations themselves as nations. Many individuals everywhere, in some lands large classes, embraced, as was not very wonderful, the religion of the conquerors, and so rose to the level of the conquerors. But the vast majority clung stedfastly to the faith whose con­tinued profession condemned them to be bondmen in their own land. Thus the distinction of religion marked off the two classes of conquered and conquerors, subjects and rulers, the people of the land and the strangers who held them in subjection. Had it been merely the distinction of conqueror and conquered, that might have died out as it has died out in so many lands. The Turk might by this time have been as thoroughly assimilated as the Bulgarian. But the distinction of religion kept on for ever the distinction between conquerors and conquered. The process of conquest, the state of things directly follow­ing on conquest, still goes on after five hundred years.

Thus the rule of the Mahometan Turk is not, and cannot be, a national government to any of his Chris­tian subjects. This must be thoroughly understood, because so many phrases which we are in the habit of using are apt to lead to error on this point. We said in an earlier chapter that many words which have one meaning when we apply them to the state of things in Western Europe, have another meaning or no meaning at all when we apply them to the state of things in South-eastern Europe. If in shaking of things in South-eastern Europe we use such words as “sove­reign, “subject,” “government,” “law,” we must re­member that we are using them with quite another meaning than they bear when applied to the same things in Western Europe. Thus in common lan­guage we speak of the power which is now established at Constantinople as the Turkish “government” or the Ottoman “government.” We speak of the Sultan as the “sovereign” of Bulgaria, Bosnia, Thes­saly, or Crete. We speak of the Christian inhabitants of those countries as the Sultan’s “subjects.” His subjects they undoubtedly are in one sense; but it is in a sense quite different from that which the word bears in any Western kingdom. The word “subject” has two quite different meanings when we speak of a Turkish subject and when we speak of a British sub­ject. When we call an Englishman a British subject, we mean that he is a member of the British state, and we call him subject rather than citizen simply because the head of the British state is a king or queen and not a republican magistrate. Every British subject is the member of a body of which the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland is the head. But if we call a Bulgarian an Ottoman subject, it does not mean that he is the member of a body of which the Ottoman Sultan is the head. It means that he is the member of a body which is held in bondage by the body of which the Ottoman Sultan is the head. It does not simply mean that he is a subject of the Grand Turk as a political ruler. It means that he is also subject to all the lesser Turks as his daily op­pressors. If we speak of “government,” the “Turkish government,” and the like, the words are apt to sug­gest, often unconsciously, that they have the same meaning when they are applied to Eastern Europe as they have when applied to Western Europe. What we understand by “government” in Western Europe is the administration of the law. The govern­ment is the body which protects those who obey the law, and which punishes those who break it. And in all the countries of Western Europe, whether they are called kingdoms or commonwealths, the nation itself has some share, more or less perfect, more or less direct, in appointing and controlling both those who make the law and those who administer it. When this is the case, it matters nothing for our purpose whether the state is called a kingdom or a common­wealth, whether the mass of the nation are spoken of as “subjects” or as “citizens.” For our purpose, for the comparison between Eastern and Western Europe, “subject” and “citizen” mean the same thing. We speak of a British “subject" and we speak of a French “citizen”, but the use of the two different words simply marks the difference of the form of the executive in the two countries. “Subject” and “citizen” alike mean a man who is a member of a political community, and who has, or may by his own act acquire, a share in the choice of those who make and who administer the law. The duties of the sovereign and of the subject arc correlative. The subject owes allegiance to the sovereign who gives him protection; the sovereign owes protection to the subject who lives under his allegiance. All this applies in its fulness to all constitution a I states, whether they are called kingdoms or commonwealths. It applies in a less degree even to despotic states, so far as the despotic sovereign is really the head of the nation and has interests and feelings in common with the nation. But in South­eastern Europe, under the rule of the Turk, there is nothing which answers to the state of things which we have just been describing. If therefore we use words like “government,” “sovereign”, “subject” to describe a state of things which dews not exist in those lands, we must remember in what sense we are using them. As far as the Turks themselves are concerned, the Turkish government is a govern­ment, though a despotic one. To the Turks the Sultan is their sovereign, the head of their nation. As members of that nation, they are his subjects. A Turk is a subject of the Sultan, if not in the sense in which an Englishman is the subject of his Queen, yet at least in the sense in which a Russian is the subject of his Emperor. But the Christian subjects of the Sultan, that is the people of the lands in which the Sultan and his Turks are encamped as strangers, so far from being the Sultan’s subjects in the English sense, are not even his subjects in the Russian sense. He is not the head of their nation, but the head of a foreign nation, a nation whom they look on as their bitterest enemies. They are not his subjects, because he does not give them that protection which is involved in the relation of sovereign and subject, that protection which the Russian receives from his despotic sovereign no less than the Englishman from his constitutional sovereign. They are not his subjects in the English, or even in the Russian sense, because, as he gives them no protection, they owe him no allegiance. He is not their sovereign, but a stranger who holds them down by force. They are not his subjects, except in the sense of being held down by force. If we apply the word “sovereign” and “subject” to the relation between the Turkish Sultan and the Christian nations which are under his power, we must remember that we use those words in a sense in which we might speak of a burglar who has broken into a house as the “sovereign” of that house, and the owner of the house and his family as the “subjects” of the burglar.

The rule of the Turk in short over the Christian nations which are under his power is a rule of mere force and not a rule of law. This must be so when­ever a Mahometan government bears rule over subjects of any other religion; but it is so in a truer and fuller sense when the Mahometan government is the government of the Ottoman Turk. The rule of a Mahometan power cannot be a rule of law to its subjects of any other religion; for them no law, strictly speak­ing, exists. They have not, as the people have in a con­stitutional state, any share, however indirect, in making the law. So far from having a share in making the law, the law is not even made in their interest or for their benefit, as it may be even in a despotic state, when the despot is really the head of the nation. In a Mahometan state the only law is the Koran, the sacred book of Mahomet; or rather it is not the Koran itself, but what the Koran has been made into by successive expounders and commentators. But the law thus made is a law made wholly in the interest of the Mahometan rulers, not at all in that of their Christian subjects. The Christian is in strictness out of the pale of the law; the utmost that he can do is to purchase certain rights, the security of his life, his property and the exercise of his religion, by the payment of tribute. The law is not made for him, and the law is not administered for him. So far as he is in theory entitled to its protection, that protec­tion is a mere name, because the witness of an infidel cannot by the Mahometan law be taken against the true believer. The Christian is thus absolutely without protection. Even supposing the court to deal quite justly according to its own rules, to punish all crimes which are proved according to its own rules, still a crime done by a Mahometan against a Christian can hardly ever be punished, because it can hardly ever be proved. If it be done in the presence of any number of Christian witnesses, but of Christian witnesses only, their witness cannot be taken and the crime cannot be punished. Such is the theory of the Mahometan law. Its practice has been better and worse in different times and places. Under the Turkish rule now it is for the most part very hard to get justice done for a crime committed by a Maho­metan against a Christian, unless the Christian can both bribe the judge and hire Mahometan witnesses. Practically then a Mahometan may do what he choses to a Christian with very little fear of being punished for it. It is plain that to apply the words “law” and “government” to a state of things like this is a mere abuse of words. For the Christian subject of the Turk law and government do not exist. The thing which usurps their names is not law and government, but simply a system of organized brigandage.

The utter difference between the meaning of the word government, as applied to Western and to South-eastern Europe, will be best understood if we look at it in this way. We have seen that among the nations of Western Europe, unless in a few ex­ceptional corners, no one wishes to get rid of the government of his country, though he may wish to modify and improve it in many ways. The Swiss, the Englishman, the Russian, live under very different forms of government; and it is possible that this or that man among those three nations may think that the form of government which he sees in one of the other nations is better than his own. He may wish to reform his own government according to the model of the other. But, at the utmost, all that he wishes is to reform the government of his country, not to get rid of it. All alike wish to remain members of a political community which shall be Swiss, Eng­lish, or Russian. But the Christian subject of the Turkish government does not wish to reform the Turkish government; he does not wish to re-construct it after the model of some other government; he simply wishes to get rid of it altogether. He is not a member of a Turkish political community; for, while he is under the power of the Turk, he stands outside all political communities. Nor does he wish to become a member of a Turkish political com­munity; for he is not a Turk, and he does not look on Turks as his countrymen. What he wishes is to become a member of a political community of his own nation, which shall have nothing to do with the Turk. He knows nothing of the so-called Turkish “govern­ment,” or of his so-called “sovereign” the Sultan, except so far as he is compelled by force to know something of them. They are not the heads of his own nation, but the heads of a foreign and hostile nation. These arc the plain facts as to the state of South-eastern Europe; and, if we do not wish to use words which are altogether misleading, we must adapt our language to the facts; otherwise we shall fall into strange mistakes Thus it has sometimes been said that, if the Christians of the East have grievances, they ought to lay them before “their own government”  and not to listen to “foreign intriguers”. In so saying not only are the facts of the case altogether misstated, but the words themselves are used in a misleading sense. As a matter of fact, the subject nations have over and over again laid their grievances before the power which calls itself their government, and they have got no redress by so doing. It is impossible that they could have redress by so doing, for the power to which they applied was not their own govern­ment, nor any government at all. That power could not redress their grievances, because to re­dress their grievances would be to destroy itself. For the existence of that power, that falsely called government, is itself the greatest of their griev­ances, the root and cause of all lesser grievances. Those again who are spoken of as foreign intriguers are, in the eyes of the subjects of the Turk, not foreigners but countrymen. They are that part of their countrymen who have kept or won their freedom, while they themselves are left in bondage. The English statesman who gave that piece of advice spoke as if the Turk was the countryman of the Bosnian Christian, as if the Turkish government was his government, as if the Servian or the Montenegrin was a foreigner to him. In truth, the Bosnian Christian looks on the Servian or Montenegrin as his country­man; he looks on the Turk as a foreigner. He does not look on the Turkish government as his government at all; for it does not discharge the common duties of government. But he would gladly be under any government, Servian, Montenegrin, or any other, which would discharge those duties. So we often hear of the interests of Turkey, “the friends of Turkey,” “the enemies of Turkey.” If by “Turkey” is meant the land and people over which the Turks rule, as we should mean if we spoke of the “ interests,” the “ friends,” the " enemies,” of England or France, then those phrases are used in a sense which is utterly misleading. People talk of the “interests of Turkey”, meaning the “interests of the Turks.” But whatever is for the real interest of Turkey is against the interest of the Turks: for the interest of the Turk is to keep Turkey in bondage ; the interest of Turkey is to get free from the bondage of the Turk. So the enemies of the Turks are the friends of Turkey; the friends of the Turk are the enemies of Turkey. At the late Conference at Constantinople we sometimes heard of the “representatives of Turkey,” mean­ing two Turks who were allowed to sit with the Europecan ambassadors. Now all those European ambassadors might in a sense be called “represen­tatives of Turkey;” for it is to be hoped that they were all trying to do something for the good of the land and people of Turkey. But the two Turks were in no way representatives of Turkey; for they were doing all that they could against the land and people of Turkey by striving to prolong their own wicked dominion over them.

So again” of this or that province of the land which we call Turkey. By a “foreign occupation” was meant the presence of civilized troops who should protect the people of the land. But those who used that phrase seemed to forget that those lands arc already under a foreign occu­pation, a foreign occupation of the worst kind. The Turks, as has been often said, are simply an army of occupation in a conquered country. They have been so for five hundred years, and they remain so still. They are encamped on the lands of other nations, where they hold down the rightful owners by force. They are essentially an army; for every Turk is armed, while the Christian is unarmed. The only objection to calling them an army is that in an army there is discipline, and a soldier who does wrong may be punished, while in the Turkish army of occupation there is no discipline. For every Turk may do whatever wrong he chooses to the people of the land, and he is never punished for so doing. Wherever the armed Turk is, whether he is enlisted as a regular soldier of the Sultan or not, there is the foreign army of occupation. What was really proposed was, not to bring in a foreign occupa­tion as something new, but to change one foreign occupation for another. It was proposed to put a friendly foreign occupation instead of a hostile one; it was proposed to take away the Turkish army of oppressors, and to put instead an European army of protectors. It was proposed to take away the army which killed and robbed the people of the land at pleasure, and to put instead of them an army which should save the people of the land from being killed and robbed. That the army of foreign robbers themselves disliked such a proposal was only natural: but it was very strange to hear, as we often heard, that such a measure was against the dignity, the independence, or the interests of “Turkey.” The Turk of course did not want to be put aside, and to put' him aside might be said to be against his interest; but to put him aside was the very thing which the interest of Turkey, its land and people, demanded above all things.

This way of talking about “Turkey” and “the Turks” as if they meant the same thing comes from our Western way of looking at things. As England is the land of England, as France is the land of the French, we get almost unwittingly into a way of speaking as if Turkey were the land of the Turks. And if we allow ourselves to speak in a misleading way, we can hardly fail to get in some degree confused in our thoughts as well as in our words. We cannot too constantly remember, we cannot too often repeat, that the Turks in the land which we call Turkey are not the people of the land, but simply an army of occupation encamped among them. They are an army of foreign invaders, towards whom the people of the land have only one interest and one duty, namely to free themselves from the foreign yoke as soon as they can. The words “army of occupation” so exactly express the truth of the case that there are no words which the friends of the Turks—that is, the enemies of the land and people of Turkey—so greatly dislike to hear. Those words exactly set forth the truth of the case; they bring out strongly that the Turk, though he has been so long in the land, is as much a stranger as he was when he first came, that his rule which began in force has been kept on by sheer force ever since. It was a foreign army which entered the land five hundred years back, and it is a foreign army which keeps the land in bondage still. The Turk who occupies the Greek and Slavonic lands is still as much a stranger in those lands, as much a mere foreign invader, as the Germans were in France, when a few years luck they held part of France as an army of occupation. In one case the foreign occupation lasted only for a year or two; in the other case it has gone on for ages; but it has not changed its nature by length of time. Only between the two cases there was this great difference, that France was occupied by a civilized and disciplined army, acting according to the rules of civilized warfare, while the Greek and Slavonic lands are occupied by a barbarian army which knows no rules of discipline at all. The regular soldiers of the Sultan are doubtless the least mischievous part of the army of occupation, for they are under some kind of discipline. The worst part of the army of occupation is made up of the armed Turks scattered through the whole land, who are under no discipline, and who do whatever evil they may think good. To call them an army of occu­pation is not, as the friends of the Turks often say, a figurative or rhetorical way of speaking. It is the soberest and truest way of setting forth the past history and the present state of the Turk, and of the lands which he holds under his yoke.

We have seen now what the Turk is, and we have seen that it is mainly his religion that has made him what he is. From all this another point follows. A system of this kind, a system under which the bond­age of the mass of the people of a country is enforced by their rulers as a matter of religious duty, is in­capable of reform. It can be got rid of; it cannot be reformed. It may be got rid of in three ways; first, by the rulers embracing the religion of their subjects; secondly, by the subjects embracing the religion of their rulers; or thirdly, by trans­ferring power to hands under which contending races and religions may be put on a level of real equality. The two former alternatives do not come within the range of practical politics. The general conversion of the Mahometans to Christianity is out of the question. It is barely possible in some special districts under special circumstances. The general conversion of the Christians to Mahometanism is  equally out of the question; and, even setting purely theological feelings aside, it is a solution which no one in Western Europe could wish for. The only means of putting an end to the state of things which neces­sarily follows on Mahometan rule is to put an end to the Mahometan rule itself. Schemes of reform lie as much out of the range of practical politics as any general conversion either way. A Mahometan govern­ment cannot really reform; it cannot get rid of the inherent evils of Mahometan society; nor can it get rid of the unjust relations in which in every Mahometan country Mahometans must stand towards men of other religions. Christianity has got rid of the two great evils of polygamy and slavery. Mahometanism can­not get rid of them, because they are allowed and consecrated by the Mahometan law. So too a Ma­hometan government cannot really reform the relations between its Mahometan and non-Mahometan subjects. It cannot give its non-Mahometan subjects the bene­fits which they have a right to demand. It cannot put them on a level with its Mahometan subjects : it cannot put them on a level with the inhabitants of countries where the government is not Mahometan. For it is the first principle of the Mahometan religion not to do any of these things. One Mahometan govern­ment may lie, as we have seen, very much better than another; but none can be really good. The utmost that any Mahometan government can do is to protect its non-Mahomctan subjects from actual persecution, from actual personal oppression. It cannot do more than this. I)o what it will, it cannot, as long as it remains Mahometan, make its non-Mahomctan sub­jects other than a subject class in their own land. It therefore cannot reform, in the sense in which reform is understood in Western Europe. It cannot give the people of Eastern Europe what they seek for and what they have a right to demand, namely a con­dition equal to that of the people of Western Europe. Any scheme which expects that which is impossible lies without the range of practical politics. The expectation of reforms from the Turk, as expecting what is beyond all things impossible, lies pre­eminently without that range. The only solution which comes within that range is the transfer of the power of the Turk to other hands.

We have thus seen who the Turk is, and what he is. We have seen in what he differs from the nations of Europe, and why he can never really enter into the fellowship of the nations of Europe. We have seen that the Turks are a people alien to the blood, language, civilization, and religion of Western Europe. They have made conquests; but they have never legitimated their conquests in the way that other conquerors have. They have never either assimilated the conquered nor yet been themselves assimilated by them. They have always remained a distinct race, holding the people of the land in bondage. The people under their rule have no national government; what calls itself a government is simply a dominion of strangers ruling by force. Their Sultan gives no protection to his Christian subjects; therefore his Christian subjects owe him no allegiance. And this state of things is one which cannot be mended, because it is a state of things which the religion of the Turks enforces as a religious duty. They are Mahometans, and a Mahometan government is bound to treat its subjects of other religions as a conquered race, and not to put them on a level with Mahometans. As long therefore as that Mahometan government lasts, there can be no real reform. If the people of South-eastern Europe are to be made really free, if they are to be raised to the level of the people of Western Europe, the great hindrance which keeps them from so doing must be taken out of the way. That hindrance is the power of the Turk. The power of the Turk must therefore pass away.

We have thus, in these three chapters, traced in a general way, the nature of the Ottoman power in Europe. We will now go on in the following chapters to trace out somewhat more fully what the Ottoman Turks have done in the European lands in which they are encamped. That is, we will go on to trace out the leading features in the history of the Ottoman power in Europe, how it began, how it rose to great­ness, how it sank to the state of utter corruption and degradation in which we sec it now.

 

 

CHAPTER IV.

THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE OTTOMAN POWER.

 

We have thus traced out the distinguishing charac­teristics of Eastern and of Western Europe. We have seen what are the great races which have from the beginning inhabited the South-eastern peninsula. We have shown the special position of the Turks among them, and the points in which they stand aloof from the European nations. We have seen also what is the nature of their rule over those European nations which they have brought into bondage, and how impossible it is that their rule can ever be mended. Thus far we have done this only in a general way; we have seen what, according to the laws of cause and effect, could hardly have failed to happen. We have now to see more fully how the working of those causes and effects has been carried out in fact We have seen what the Turks, being what they were, could not fail to do. We must now. see more minutely, by the help of history, what the Turks have really done.

Our immediate subject is not the history of all the Mahometan nations, not evert the history of all the Turkish dynasties, but more specially the history of the Ottoman Turks, and mainly the history of their doings in the lands which they have conquered in Europe. Of the first Mahome­tans, that is the Arabs or Saracens, and of the earlier Turkish dynasties, I have said something in another book, and I will repeat as little as I can of what I have said there. At the same time in treating the special history of the Ottoman Turks, it will be necessary to draw certain distinctions. For some of the things which we may have to say about the Ottoman Turks will apply to Mahometan powers in general, and some will not. It is quite certain, as has already been shown, that no Mahome­tan government can ever rule over men of another religion in a way which any one in Western Europe would call ruling well. It is quite certain that no Mahometan nation can ever rise to the highest point of civilization. Still there are great differences, which ought not to be forgotten, between one Mahometan nation and another, just as there are differences between one Christian nation and another. Some Mahometan nations have been much more civilized than others, and the rule of some Mahometan governments over men of other religions has been milder than that of others. In speaking of the Ottoman Turks, we must carefully distinguish what is common to them with all other Mahometan nations and what is peculiar to themselves. We must distinguish the Turks from the Saracens, and we must further distinguish the Otto­man Turks from other Turks. We may safely say that no Mahometan nation—we are almost tempted to say no other nation—ever produced so long a series of great rulers as the Ottoman Turks. That is, if by greatness we understand the power of carrying out a man’s purposes, good or bad. No people can show so long a succession of rulers who were at once wise statesmen and skilful captains as the early Ottoman Sultans. Their business was to conquer; as long as they went on conquering they were great; when they ceased to conquer they fell into utter decay and degradation. Again, as regards what we call civiliza­tion, as distinguished from political and military success, the Ottoman Turks will be found to stand above some and below others of the chief Mahometan nations. But what specially distinguishes them is that no other Mahometan people has ever had so great a dominion over men of other religions. It follows that the worst feature of the Mahometan J religion, its treatment of the unbeliever, comes out on ;a greater scale and in a worse form in their history ; than in any other.

The Ottoman Turks, it must be remembered, are only one branch out of many of the great Turkish family, which is one of the most widely spread among the families of mankind. There were several dynas­ties of Mahometan Turks before the Ottomans arose, and there are to this day vast nations of Turks, some of them mere savages, who have never embraced Ma­hometanism. It must always be borne in mind that all Mahometans are not Turks, and that all Turks are not Ottomans. The Turks with whom we have to do are those Turks who learned the Mahometan religion at the hands of the Saracens, and specially with that body of them which made their way into Europe and founded the Ottoman dominion there. The Turks and Saracens first came to have dealings with one another at the moment when the Saracen dominion which the Turks were to supplant was at the height of its power. This was in the year 710, seventy-eight years after the death of Mahomet. It was in that year that the Saracens passed from Africa into Spain, and made the beginning their greatest conquest in Europe. In the same year they first crossed the Oxus, and began to make converts and subjects among those Turks who lived between that great river and the Jaxartes. In the next year the conquest of Sind gave the Saracen dominion the greatest extent that it ever had. This last possession however was not long kept, and the great Maho­metan conquests in India, conquests with which we have now no concern, did not begin till long afterwards. But it is worth noticing that it was almost at the same moment that the Mahometan religion and the Mahometan power made their way into India, into Western Europe, and into the land which was then the land of the Turks. The Caliph or successor of the Prophet, the temporal and spiritual chief of all who profess the Mahometan creed, now ruled over lands washed by the Atlantic and over lands washed by the Indian Ocean. The word which went forth from his palace at Damascus was obeyed on the Indus, on the Jaxartes, and on the Tagus.

While the whole Mahometan world was thus under one ruler, the Christian nations were divided among many rulers. But there were two Christian powers which stood out above all others. The Roman Empire still had its seat at Constantinople, and still held, though often in detached pieces, the greater part of the European coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The Saracens had lopped away Syria, Egypt, and Africa; the Slavs had pressed into the South-eastern penin­sula; the Bulgarians had settled south of the Danube, and the Lombards had conquered great part of Italy.

Still both the Old and the New Rome obeyed the one Roman Emperor, and the Roman Empire was still the first of Christian powers, and still kept the chief rule of the Mediterranean. The other great Christian power was that of the Franks in Germany and Gaul, the power which was, at the end of the century, to grow into a new Western Empire with its seat at the Old Rome. Thus the Roman power still went on, only cut short and modified in various ways by the coming in of the Teutons in the West and of the Slavs in the East. And herein comes a very instructive parallel. For, as soon as the Saracens began to conquer and convert the Turks, the Turks begin to play a part in the history of the Saracen dominion in Asia which is much like the part which was played in Europe by the Teutons towards the Western Roman Empire and by the Slavs towards the Eastern. The Turks appear under the Caliphs as slaves, as subjects, as mercenaries, as practical masters, as avowed sovereigns, and lastly, in the case of the Ottomans, as themselves claiming the powers of the Caliphate. The dominions of the Caliphs gradually broke up into various states, which were ruled for the most part by Turkish princes who left a merely nominal superiority to the Caliph. It is not our business here to go through all of them. But one must be mentioned, that out of which the Ottoman dynasty arose. This was the Turkish dynasty of the house of Seljuk, which was the greatest power in Asia in the eleventh century. Their early princes, TogrulBeg, Alp-Aislan, and Malek Shah, were not only great conquerors, but great rulers after the Eastern pattern. They had many of the virtues which are commonly found in the founders of dynasties and their immediate successors. The Seljuk Turks pressed their conquests to the West, and so had more to do with Christians than any of the Turkish dynas­ties before them had. And it should carefully be noticed that it is from this time that a more special and crying oppression of the Christians under Ma­hometan rule begins. The Turks, even these earlier and better Turks, were a ruder and fiercer people than the Saracens, and they were besides full of the zeal of new converts. Doubtless, even under the Saracen rule, the Christian subjects of the Caliphs had always been oppressed and sometimes persecuted. But it is plain that, from the time when the power of the Turks began, oppression became harder and persecu­tion more common. It was the increased wrong­doings of the Turks, both towards the native Chris­tians and towards pilgrims from the West, which caused the great cry for help which led to the cru­sades. There were no crusades as long as the Saracens ruled; as soon as the Turks came in, the crusades began.

In the latter part of the eleventh century began those long continued invasions of the Eastern Roman Empire by the Turks which led in the end to the foundation of the Ottoman power in Europe. There is no greater mistake than to think that the whole time during which the Eastern Empire went on at Constantinople was a time of mere weakness and decline. Such a way of talking at once shows its own folly. A power which was beset by enemies on all sides, in a way in which hardly any other power ever was, could not have lived on for so many ages, it could not have been for a great part of that time one of the chief powers of the world, if it had been all that time weak and declining. The Eastern Emperors are often said by those who have not read their history to have been all of them weak and cowardly men. Instead of this, many of them were great conquerors and rulers, who beat back their enemies on every side, and made great conquests in their turn. The great feature in the history of the Eastern Empire is not constant weakness and decline, but the alterna­tion of periods of weakness and decline followed by periods of recovered strength. In one century pro­vinces are lost; in another they are won back again, and new provinces added. It was in one of these periods of decline, following immediately after the greatest of all periods of renewed power, that the Turks and Romans first came across one another. I say Romans, because the people of the Eastern Empire called themselves by no other name, and the nations of Asia knew them by no other name. The Eastern Empire was indeed fast becoming Greek, as the Western Empire may be said to have already become German. But the Emperors and their subjects never called themselves Greeks at any time, and the time has not yet come when it becomes convenient to give them the name.

The Turkish invasion of the Empire came just after a time of brilliant conquest and prosperity under the Macedonian dynasty of Emperors. This dynasty began in the ninth century and went on into the eleventh. Under it the Empire gained a great deal, and lost comparatively little. At the very beginning of the period, in 878, the Saracens completed the conquest of Sicily, which had been going on for almost fifty years. A hundred years later, in 988, Cherson, an outlying possession in the Tauric peninsula or Crimea, was taken by the Russian Vladimir. On the other hand, the power of the Empire was vastly increased both in Europe and in Asia. The dominions of the Emperors in Southern Italy were increased; Crete was won back; the great Bulgarian kingdom was conquered, and the other Slavonic states in the Eastern peninsula became either subject or tributary to the Empire. In Asia large conquests, including Antioch, were made from the Saracens; Armenia was annexed, and the power of the Empire was extended along the eastern shores of the Euxine. The greatest conquests of all were made in the reign of Basil the Second, called the Slayer of the Bulgarians, who reigned from 976 to 1025. A dominion of this kind, which depends on one man, is something like a watch, which, if wound up, will go for a while by itself, but will presently go down, if it is not wound up again. So, as after Basil no great Emperor reigned for some while, the Empire began again to fall back, not at once, but within a few years. About the middle of the eleventh century came one of the periods of decline, and the Empire was cut short by the Normans in Italy and by the Turks in Asia. The Seljuk Sultan Alp-Arslan invaded Asia Minor, a land which the Saracens had often ravaged, but which they had never conquered. He overthrew the Emperor Romanos in battle, and treated him per­sonally with marked generosity. This was in 1071, and from this time dates the establishment of the Turks, as distinguished from the Saracens, in the lands which had been part of the Roman Empire. All the inland part of the peninsula was now occupied by the Turks, and, when in 1092 the great Seljuk dominion was broken up, the city of Nikaia or Nice, the place of the famous council, became the capital of a Turkish dynasty. The map will show how near this brought the Turks to Constantinople. And it might hardly have been thought that three hundred and sixty years would pass before the Turks entered the imperial city. But, as ruling over a land conquered from the Roman Empire, the Sultans who reigned at Nikaia called themselves Sultans of Roum, that is of Rome. It was this great advance of the power of the Seljuk Turks which caused the Christian nations of the West to come to the help of their brethren in the East.

The history of the crusades concerns us here only so far as, by affecting both the Eastern Roman Empire and the power of the Seljuk Turks, they did in the end pave the way for the advance of the Ottomans. The effect of the first crusade was to drive back the Turks from their position at Nikaia which was so threaten­ing to the Empire. The Emperors who now reigned, those of the house of Komnenos, were for the most part either wise statesmen or good soldiers. Under their reigns therefore came another period of renewed strength, though the Empire never again became what it had been under the Macedonians. We are most concerned with their advance in Asia. There, follow­ing in the wake of the crusaders, they were able to win back a great part of the land, and the capital of the Seljuk Sultans fell back from Nikaia to Ikonion. The dominion of these Sultans gradually broke up after the usual manner of Asiatic powers, and so paved the way for the coming of a mightier power of their own race. But meanwhile events were happening in Europe which equally paved the way for the growth of new powers there. After the time of revival under the Komnenian Emperors came another time of decline in the latter years of the twelfth century. The Bul­garians threw off the Roman yoke, and formed a restored Bulgarian kingdom which cut the Empire short to the north-west. At the other end of the Empire, a separate Emperor set himself up in the isle of Cyprus. A time of utter weakness and dis­union had come, when it seemed as if the Empire must fall altogether before any vigorous enemy.

And so in some sort it happened. A blow presently came which may be looked on as really the ending of the old Roman Empire of the East. In 1204 Constantinople was taken by a band of crusaders who had turned away from the warfare to which they were bound against the Mahometans in Asia, to overthrow the eastern bulwark of Christendom in Europe. Now begins the dominion of the Franks or Latins in Eastern Europe. The Christians of the West were known as Latins, as belonging to the Western or Latin Church which acknowledged the authority of the Bishop of Rome. And they were called Franks, as Western Europeans are called in the East to this day, because most of them came from countries where the French tongue was spoken. But along with the French-speaking cru­saders came the Venetians, who had a great trade in the East, and who had already begun to estab­lish their power in Dalmatia. Constantinople was taken, and Baldwin Count of Flanders was set up as a Latin Emperor. So much of Romania, as the Eastern Empire was called, as the Franks and Vene­tians could get hold of was parcelled out among the conquerors. But they never conquered the whole, and Greek princes kept several parts of the Empire. Thus what really happened was that the Empire was split up into a number of small states, Greek and Frank. We now cannot help using the word Greek; for, after the loss of Bulgaria, the Empire was wholly confined to Greek-speaking people, and we need some name to distinguish them from the Franks or Latins. But they still called themselves Romans; and it is strange, in reading the Greek writers, to hear of wars between the Romans and the Latins, as if we had gone back to the early days of the Old Rome and the Thirty Cities of Latium. Latin Emperors reigned at Constantinople for nearly sixty years. For a few years there was a Latin kingdom of Thessalonica, and there were Latin princes at Athens and in Pelo­ponnesus, while the commonwealth of Venice kept the great islands of Corfu and Crete, and allowed Venetian families to establish themselves as rulers in several of the islands of the Aegean. On the other hand, Greek princes reigned in Epeiros, and two Greek Empires were established in Asia. One had its scat at Trapezous or Trebizond on the south-east coast of the Euxine, while the other had its seat at Nikaia, the first capital of the Turkish Sultans of Roum. This last set of Emperors gradually won back a considerable territory both in Europe and Asia, and at last, in 1261, they won back Constantinople from the Latins. Thus the Eastern Roman Empire in some sort began afresh, though with much smaller territory and power than it had before the Latin conquest. It was threatened on all sides, by Bulgarians, Servians, Latins, and Turks; and no great Emperors reigned in this last stage of the Empire. Yet, even in these last days, there was once more something of a revival, and the Emperors gradually won back nearly the whole of all Peloponnesus.

Thus a way was opened for a new race of conquerors both in Europe and Asia, by the breaking up of the power of the old Emperors who, even as late as the eleventh century, had reigned at once in Italy and in Armenia. Instead of the old Eastern Empire, there was now only a crowd of states, two of which, at Constantinople and Trebizond, kept on the titles of the old Empire. None of them were very great, and most of them at enmity with one another. The thirteenth century too, which saw the break-up of the Empire in Europe, saw also the break-up of the older Mahometan powers in Asia and the beginning of the last and the most abiding of all. This was in fact the time when all the powers of Europe and Asia seemed to be putting on new shapes. In the thir­teenth century the Western Empire in some sort came to an end as well as the Eastern. For after Frederick the Second the Emperors kept no abiding power in Italy. In Spain the Mahometan power, which had once held nearly the whole peninsula, was shut up within the narrow bounds of the kingdom of Granada. Castile now took its place as the leading power of Spain, and France was in the like sort established as the ruling power of Gaul. And, while great Christian powers were thus established in the western lands which had been held by the Mahometans, the Caliph­ate of Bagdad itself was overthrown by conquerors from the further lands of Asia. I have said in an earlier book that at this time in the middle of the thirteenth century, Islam seemed to be falling back everywhere. But in truth the blow which seemed the most crushing of all, the overthrow of the Caliphate by the Moguls, was part of a chain of events which brought on the stage a Mahometan power more terrible than all that had gone before it. We have now come to the time of the first appearance of the Ottoman Turks.

I have spoken elsewhere of the conquests of the Moguls both in Europe and in Asia. We have here to deal with them only so far as, in the course of their attacks on all other powers Christian and Mahometan, they began also to cut short the power of the Seljuk Sultans of Roum. But these last found unlooked-for helpers. The tale runs that, in a battle between the Turks and the Moguls, the Turks, as the weaker side, were being worsted, when an unknown company of men came to their help. These proved to be a wandering band of Turks from the far East, who, in the confusions of the times, were seeking a settlement under their leader Ertoghrul. Through their help the Seljuk Sultan overcame his enemies. The strangers were rewarded with a grant of lands, and those lands, step by step, grew into the Ottoman Empire. At this time the Latin Empire still lingered at Constantinople, but the Greek Emperors at Nikaia had won back large territories both in Asia and in Europe. Partly at the expense of the Greeks, partly at the expense of other Turkish Emirs or princes, Ertoghrul and his son Othman or Osman gradually grew in power. Warriors flocked to the new standard, and Othman became the most powerful prince in Western Asia. From him his followers took the name which it has ever since borne, that of Osmanli or Ottoman.

Our strictly Ottoman history now begins, and one characteristic feature of Ottoman history may strike us from the very beginning. The house of Othman arose on the ruins of the house of Seljuk; but whatever our own day may be destined to see, no other power has yet arisen on the ruins of the house of Othman. No other Eastern power has had such an abiding life. The Bagdad Caliphate lasted as long by mere reckoning of years; but for many ages the Bagdad Caliphate was a mere shadow. Other Eastern powers have commonly broken in pieces after a few genera­tions. The Ottoman power has lasted for six hundred years; and, stranger than all, when it seemed for a moment to be going the way of other Eastern dynasties, when the power of the Ottoman Turk seemed to be breaking in pieces as the power of the Ghaznevid and the Seljuk Turk had broken in pieces before him, the scattered fragments were again joined together, and the work of conquest and rule again began. But by means of this very abiding life, by prolonging the rule of a barbarian power in the midst of modern civilization, the rule of the Ottoman has shown us, in a way in which the earlier Turkish dynasties could not show us, what a power of this kind comes to in the days of its long decay. An Eastern dynasty, above all a Mahometan dynasty, is great and glorious according to an Eastern standard as long as it remains a conquering dynasty. The Ottoman Turks remained a conquering dynasty longer than any other. Their power was thus so firmly established that it has been able to outlive the causes which broke up earlier dynasties. But, by having its being thus prolonged, it has lived on to give an example of corruption and evil of every kind for which it would be hard to find a parallel among the worst of earlier dynasties.

The Ottoman Turks have never been, in any strict sense, a nation. They were in their beginning a wandering horde, and even in the time of their greatest dominion they kept up much of the charac­ter of a wandering horde. They have nowhere really become the people of the land. Where they have not borne rule over Christians, they have borne rule over other Mahometans, and they have often oppressed them nearly as much, though not quite in the same way, as they have oppressed their Christian subjects. They have been, we may ray, a ruling order, a body ready to admit and to promote any one of any nation who chose to join them, provided of course that he accepted the Mahometan religion. In this has lain their strength and their greatness but it has been throughout, not the greatness of a nation, but the greatness of a conquering army, bear­ing rule over other nations. Stripping conquest and forced dominion of the false glory which surrounds them, we may say that the Ottomans began as a band of robbers, and that they have gone on as a band of robbers ever since. To a great part of their history, especially to their position in our own times that description would apply in its fulness. But it would not be wholly fair to speak in this way of the early Ottomans. The settled and self-styled civilized Turk is really more of a robber than the wandering barbarian under whom his power began. When conquest simply means transfer horn one despot to another, the conquered often gain lather than lose. The rule of the conquering despot is stronger than that of the despot whom he conquers, and a strong despot usually comes nearer to a good ruler than a weak one. That is to say, he does a kind of justice in his dominions. However great may be his own personal crimes and oppressions, he puts some check on the crimes and oppressions of others. As long therefore as the Ottoman rulers were strong, as long as they were conquerors, there was a good side to their rule. Most of the Sultans were stained with horrible crimes in their own persons; but most of the early Sultans had many of the virtues of rulers and conquerors. It was when their power began to decay that the blackest side of their rule came out. The oppression of the Sultans themselves became greater. To oppression was added the foulest corrupton, and the weak Sultans were not able, as the strong ones had been, to keep their own servants in some kind of order. In short, the Ottoman rulers were the longest, and the early Ottoman rulers were the greatest, of all lines of Eastern despots. Because of their greatness, their power has been more long lived than any other. Because it has been more long lived, it has in the end become worse than any other.

We must be prepared then from the beginning to find in the Ottoman rulers much that is utterly repul­sive to our moral standard, much that is cruel, much that is foul, joined with much that may fairly be called great. They were in any case great soldiers. If we may apply the name statesmanship to carrying out any kind of purpose, good or bad, they were also great statesmen. And it is not till they have passed into Europe that their worst side distinctly prevails. And he who was at once the greatest of all and the worst of all was he who fixed his throne in Con­stantinople. As long as they remained in Asia, the Ottomans might pass for one among many Asiatic dynasties. It is their establishment in Europe which gave them their special character.

It is hardly for me to settle how far the exploits of the patriarch of the new dynasty, of Ertoghrul himself, belong to legend or to history. Both he and his son Othman were merely Asiatic rulers. They were not even avowed sovereigns; they still respected the nominal superiority of the Seljuk Sultan at Ikonion. Othman bears a high character among Eastern rulers; yet he murdered his uncle simply for dissuading him from a dangerous enterprise. The slaughter of brothers and other near kinsfolk has always been a special feature of Ottoman rule. Othman however at least slew his uncle in a moment of wrath; later Sultans sacrificed their brothers by wholesale out of cold-blooded policy. Othman enlarged his dominions at the expense of the Emperors, and just before his death, in 1326, his armies took Brusa, which became the Asiatic capital of the Ottomans. It is with Othman0s son Orkhan that the Ottoman Empire really begins. He threw off his nominal allegiance to the Sultan, though he still bore only the title of Emir. And in his time the Ottomans first made good their fixating in Europe. But while his dominion was still only Asiatic, Orkhan began one institution which did more than anything else firmly to establish the Ottoman power. This was the institution of the tribute children. By the law of Mahomet, as we have seen, the unbeliever is allowed to purchase life, property, and the exercise of his religion, by the payment of tribute. Earlier Mahometan rulers had been satisfied with tribute in the ordinary sense. Orkhan first demanded a tribute of children. The deepest of wrongs, that which other tyrants did as an occasional outrage, thus became under the Ottomans a settled law. A fixed propor­tion of the strongest and most promising boys among the conquered Christian nations were carried off for the service of the Ottoman princes. They were brought up in the Mahometan faith, and were employed in civil or military functions, according to their capacity. Out of them was formed the famous force of the Janissaries, the new soldiers, who, for three centuries, as long as they were levied; in this way, formed the strength of the Ottoman armies. These children, torn from their homes and cut off from every domestic and national tie, knew only the religion and the service into which they were forced, and formed a body of troops such as no other power, Christian or Mahometan, could command. In this way the strength of the conquered nations was turned against themselves. They could not throw off the yoke, because those among them who were their natural leaders were pressed into the service of their enemies. It was not till the practice of levying the tribute on children was left off that the conquered nations showed any power to stir. While the force founded by Orkhan lasted in its first shape, the Ottoman armies were irresistible. But all this shows how far the Ottomans were from being a national power. Their victories were won by soldiers who were really of the blood of the Greeks, Slavs, and other conquered nations. In the same way, while the Ottoman power was strongest, the chief posts of the Empire, civil and military, were con­stantly held, not by native Turks, but by Christian renegades of all nations. The Ottoman power in short was the power, not of a nation, but simply of an army. The Ottomans began, and they have gone on ever since, as an army of occupation in the lands of other nations.

By the end of Orkhan’s reign the Ottoman power was fully established in Asia Minor. Its Emirs had spread their power over all the other Turkish settlements, and nothing was left to the Christians but a few towns, chiefly on the coast. Above all, Philadelphia and Phocaea long defended themselves gallantly after everything else was lost. The chief Christian power in Asia was now no longer the Roman or Greek Emperor at Constantinople, but the more distant Emperor at Trebizond. Besides their possessions on the south coast of the Euxine, these Emperors also held the old territories or the Empire in the Tauric Chersonesos or Crimea. The Turks had now the whole inland part of Asia Minor. And this inland part of Asia Minor is the only part of the Ottoman dominions where any Turks are really the people of the land. The old Christian population has been quite displaced, and Anadol or Anatolia, the land of the East, is really a Turkish land. Yet it can hardly be said to be an Ottoman land. There the ruling body have borne sway over the descendants of the old Seljuk Turks. The Ottomans in short are strangers everywhere. They arc strangers bearing rule over other nations, over Mahometans in Asia, over Christians in Europe.

The Ottoman rule oxer Christians in Europe began in the last years of Orkhan. The state of South­eastern Europe in the fourteenth century was very favourable for the purposes of the Turks. We have seen how utterly the old Empire was broken up and how the Greek speaking lands were divided among a crowd of states, Greek and Franks. A new power had lately arisen in the Aegean through the occupation of Rhodes and some of the neighbouring islands by the Knights of St. John. A military order is not well fitted for governing its dominions; but no power can be better fitted for defending them, and the Knights of St. John at Rhodes did great things against the Turks. The power of the Emperors at Constantinople, cut short by the Turks in Asia, was cut short by the Bulgarians in Europe. It was only in Peloponnesus that they advanced at the cost of the Latins. Just at the time before the Turks crossed into Europe, a new power had arisen, or rather an old power had grown to a much greater place than it held before. Stephen Dushan, King of Servia, who took the title of Emperor, had estab­lished a great dominion which took in most part of Macedonia, Albania, and Northern Greece. But the Greek Emperors kept Constantinople and the lands round about it, with detached parts of Mace­donia and Greece, including specially the great city of Thessalonica. Had the Servian Emperor been able to win Constantinople, a power would have been formed which might have been able to withstand the Turks. Servia would have been the body, and Con­stantinople the head. As it was, the Turks found in Servia a body without a head, and in Constantinople a head without a body. The Servian Empire broke up on the death of its great king, and the Greeks were divided by civil wars. Thus, instead of Servians and Greeks together presenting a strong front to the Turks, the Turks were able to swallow up Greeks, Servians, and all the other nations, bit by bit.

The Ottomans did not make their first appearance in Europe as avowed conquerors. They appeared, sometimes as momentary ravagers, sometimes as mercenaries in the Imperial service or as allies of some of the contending parties in the Empire. Thus in 1346 the Emperor John Kantakouzenos called in the Turks to help him in civil war. From this time we may date their lasting presence in Europe, though they did not hold any permanent possessions there till in 1356 they seized Gallipolis in the Thracian Chcrsonesos. This was the beginning of the Ottoman dominion in Europe. From this time they advanced bit by bit, taking towns and provinces from the Empire and conquering the kingdoms beyond the Empire, so that Constantinople was quite hemmed in. But the Imperial city itself was not taken till nearly a hundred years after the first Turkish settlement in Europe. It must always be remembered that the Turks overcame Servia and Bulgaria long before they won Thessalonica, Constantinople, and Peloponnesus. Their first conquests gathered threateningly round Constantinople; but they did not as yet actually attack it. Nor did they always at once incorporate the lands which they subdued with their immediate dominions. In most of the lands of which the Turks got possession, the process of conquest shows three stages. There is, first, mere ravage for the sake of plunder, and to weaken the land which was ravaged. Then the land is commonly brought under tribute or some other form of subjection, without being made a part of the Sultan’s immediate dominions. Lastly, the land which is already practically conquered be­comes a mere Ottoman province. In this way it is worth noticing that, as we shall see further on, a large part of the European dominions of the Turk, though they were subdued long before the taking of Con­stantinople, were allowed to keep on some shadow of separate being under tributary princes till after Constantinople was taken.

The first lasting settlement of the Turks on Euro­pean ground was made, as we have seen, while Orkhan still reigned. But it was in the reign of Murad or Amurath the First, the successor of Orkhan, that the first settlement at Gallipolis grew into a compact European power. Ina very few years from their first occupation of European territory, the Turks had,altogether hemmed in what was left of the Empire.

As early as 1361 Amurath took Hadrianople, which became the European capital of the Ottomans till they took Constantinople. Nothing was now left to the Empire but the part of Thrace just round Constantinople, with some of the cities on the Euxine, together with the outlying possessions which the Emperors still kept in Macedonia and Greece. Among them were the greater part of Peloponnesus, and the Chalcidian peninsula with Thessalonica. In Asia all that remained to the Empire was a little strip of land just opposite Constantinople, and the two cities of Philadelphia and Phocaea, which might now almost be looked on as allied commonwealths rather than as parts of the Empire. But Amurath not only cut the Empire short, he also carried his arms into the Slavonic lands to the north. They lay as temptingly open to conquest as the Greek lands. The power of Servia went down at once after the death of Stephen Dushan, and Bulgaria a few years later was split up into three separate kingdoms. Amurath’s first important conquest in this direction was the taking of Philippopolis in 1363. That city had changed masters several times, but it was then Bulgarian. Bulgaria just now, besides her own divisions, had wars with Hungary to the north and with the Empire to the south. Yet amid all this confusion, several powers did unite to withstand the Turks; and it was only gradually, and after several battles, that either Servia or Bulgaria was conquered. It seems to have been about 1371 that the chief Bulgarian kingdom, that of Trnovo, became tributary. But while Servia and Bulgaria were breaking in pieces, Bosnia to the north­west of them, which lay further away from the Turks, was growing in power. A great Slav confederation was formed under the Bosnian King Stephen, and Bosnians, Croats, and Servians for a little while won some successes over the Turks. But at last a great confederate army, Bosnian, Servian, Bulgarian, and Wallachian, was utterly defeated by the Turks at Kossova in 1389. Amurath himself was killed, not in the battle, but by a Servian who pretended to desert. But he was at once succeeded by his son Bayezid or Bajazet, who reaped the fruits of the victory. In the course of two or three years after the battle, Servia and Wallachia became tributary, and the greater part of Bulgaria was altogether conquered.

It is from the battle of Kossova that the Servians, and the Southern Slavs generally, date the fall of their independence. Bosnia, in its corner, still re­mained but little touched; it was ravaged, but not yet conquered. But all the lands which had made up the great Servian and Bulgarian kingdoms of former times were now either altogether conquered by the Turk, or made tributary to him, or were driven to maintain their independence by ceaseless fighting. And as the lands which the Turks subdued were made into tributary states before they were fully annexed, the Turks were able to use each people that they brought under their power as helpers against the next people whom they attacked. Thus at Kossova Amurath had already Christian tributaries fighting on his side. From this time till Servia was completely incorpo­rated with the Turkish dominions, the Servians had to fight in the Turkish armies against the other Chris­tian nations which the Turks attacked. In this way the strength of the Christian nations was used against one another, till the Turk thought the time was come more directly to annex this or that tributary land. In this the policy of the Ottomans was much the same as the policy of the Romans in old times. For they also commonly made the lands which they conquered into dependent states, before they formally made them into Roman provinces. In either case it may be doubted whether the lands which were left in this intermediate state gained much by not being fully annexed at once. Still the way by which the Otto­man Empire came together suggests the way by which it ought to fall asunder. Some of the tributary lands have always kept a certain amount of separate being. Some have, after a long bondage, come back again to the tributary state. In short, experience shows that the natural way for restoring these lands to their ancient independence is by letting them pass once more through the intermediate state. Only this time it must be with their faces turned in the direc­tion of a more thorough freedom, not of, as in ages past, in the direction of a more thorough bondage.

The accession of Bajazet marks a distinct change in the history of Ottoman conquest. Up to this time the Ottoman princes had shown themselves—except in the exaction of the tribute children—at least not worse than other Eastern conquerors. With Amurath’s successor Bajazet the darker side of the Ottoman dominion comes more strongly into view. He was the first to begin his reign with the murder of a brother out of cold policy. Under him too that foul moral corruption which has ever since been the distinguishing characteristic of the Ottoman Turk came for the first time into its black prominence. Other people have been foul and depraved; what is specially characteristic of the Ottoman Turk is that the common road to power is by the path of the foulest shame. Under Bajazet the best feature of the Ma­hometan law, the almost ascetic temperancc which it teaches, passed away, and its worst features, the re­cognition of slavery, the establishment of the arbitrary right of the conqueror over the conquered, grew into a system of wrong and outrage of which the Prophet himself had never dreamed. Under Bajazet the Turk fully put on those parts of his character which dis­tinguish him, even more than other Mahometans, from Western and Christian nations. Yet amid all this corruption, Bajazet could sometimes exercise a stern Eastern justice, and the mission of his race, the mission of warfare and conquest, still went on; Bajazet was surnamed the Thunderbolt, and he was the first of the Ottoman princes to exchange the humbler title of Emir for that of Sultan. Yet, after Bajazet had consolidated the results of the victory of Kossova by his Bulgarian and Servian conquests, the actual dominion of the Ottomans did not make such swift advances under him as it had made under his father Amurath. It was rather distinguished by a scourge worse than that of actual conquest, by con­stant plundering expeditions. carried on chiefly for the sake of booty and slaves—the slaves being specially picked out for the vilest purposes. These ravages spread everywhere from Hungary to Peloponnesus. But the most remarkable conquest of Bajazet was in Asia. Philadelphia still held out, and its citizens still deemed themselves subjects of the Emperors at Constantinople. Yet, when Bajazet thought proper to add the city to his dominions, the Emperor Manuel and his son were forced, as tributaries of the Sultan, to send their contingent to the Turkish army, and to help in the conquest of their own city. But enemies presently came against Bajazet both from the West land from the East. His enemy from the West he overthrew; but he was himself overthrown by his enemy from the East. A large body of crusaders came to the help of Sigismund King of Hungary, the same who was afterwards Emperor of the West. But Bajazet, at the head of his own Turks and of his Christian tributaries who were of course forced to serve with them, overthrew Sigismund and his allies in the battle of Nikopolis in 1396. A number of Christian knights from the West were massacred after the battle, and others were put to ransom ; among these last was one whose name connects Eastern and Western history, John Count of Nevers, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, the second of those dukes of Burgundy who play so great a part in the history of France, England, and Germany. Bajazet also was the first of the Sultans who directly attacked Con­stantinople. Things looked as if the last traces of the Eastern Empire were no awbout to be wiped out. But the Ottoman conqueror was presently met by a still more terrible conqueror from the further East. The conquests of Timour, the famous Tamerlane, which spread slaughter and havoc through Mahometan Asia, gave a moments respite to Christian Europe. Of his career I have said somewhat elsewhere. What concerns us now is that Bajazet was overthrown and taken captive by Timour at Angora in 1402. No such blow ever fell on any Ottoman prince before or after.

After the defeat and captivity of Bajazet, things looked as if the Ottoman dominion had run the common course of an Eastern dominion, as if it was broken up for ever. And, as I before said, the most wonderful thing in all Ottoman history is that, though it was broken up for a moment, it was able to come together again. The dominions of Bajazet were for a while divided, and their possession was disputed among his three sons. At last they were joined together again under his son Mahomet the First. Still the time of confusion was a time of relief to the powers which were threatened by the Turks, and, even after Mahomet had again joined the Ottoman dominions together, he was not strong enough to make any great conquests. Thus the European power of the Ottomans made but small advances during his reign. It was otherwise under his son Amurath the Second, during whose reign of thirty years, from 1421 to 1451, the Turkish power, notwithstanding some reverses, greatly advanced. He failed in an attack on Constantinople, but he took Thessalonica, which had lately passed from the Empire to the Venetians. So in his wars with Hungary he underwent several defeats from the great captain Huniades; but his defeats were balanced by victories. And in one battle it must be allowed that the Turk was in the right and the Christian in the wrong. In a triumphant campaign, the Hungarian army had reached the Balkan. By the peace which followed, Servia again became independent, and Wallachia was ceded to Hungary. Then Wladislaus, King of Hungary and Poland, was persuaded to break the treaty, but he was defeated at Varna and the Otto­man power was again restored. Still the crowning of all, by the taking of the Imperial city and the com­plete subjugation of the lands on the Danube, was not the work of Amurath, but was reserved for the days of his son.

This son was Mahomet the Second, surnamed the Conqueror. We may take him as the ideal of his trace, the embodiment in their fullest form of Ottoman greatness and Ottoman wickedness. A general and statesman of the highest order even from his youth, a man who knew his own purposes and knew by what ends to achieve his purposes, no man has a clearer right to the title of great, so far as we can conceive greatness apart from goodness. We hear of him also, not merely as soldier and statesman, but as a man of intellectual cultivation in other ways, as master of many languages, as a patron of the art and literature of his time. On the other hand, the three abiding Ottoman vices of cruelty, lust, and faithlessness stand out in him all the more conspicuously from being set on a higher pedestal. He finished the work of his predecessors; he made the Ottoman power in Europe what it has been ever since. He gave a systematic form to the customs of his house and to the dominion which he had won. His first act was the murder of his infant brother, and he made the murder of brothers a standing law of his Empire. He overthrew the last remnants of independent Roman rule, of independent Greek nationality, and he fixed the relations which the Greek part of his subjects were to bear both towards their Turkish masters and towards their Christian fellow-subjects, he made the northern and western frontiers of his Empire nearly what they still remain. The Ottoman Empire, in short, as our age has to deal with it, is, before all things, the work of Mahomet the Conqueror. The prince whose throne was fixed in the New Rome held altogether another place from even the mightiest of his predecessors.

Mahomet had reigned two years, he had lived twenty-three, on the memorable day, May 29th 1453, when the Turks entered the city of the Caesars and when the last Emperor Constantine died in the breach. The last ruling prince of his house, he was also the worthiest. The degradation of the last hundred years of the Empire is almost wiped out in the glory of its fall. The Roman Empire of the East, which had lasted so long, which had withstood and outlived so many enemies, whose princes had beaten back the Persian and the Saracen, the Avar, the Bulgarian, and the Russian, now at last fell before the arms of the Turk. The New Rome, so long the head of the Christian and civilized world, became the seat of Mahometan and barbarian rule. The Sultan took the place of a long line of Caesars. And the great church of Saint Sophia, the most venerated temple of the whole Eastern Church, the seat of Patriarchs and the crowning place of Emperors, has been, from Mahomet’s day to our own, a mosque for Maho­metan worship. And now that the Imperial city was at last taken, Mahomet seemed to make his policy both to gather in whatever remained unconquered, and to bring most of the states which had hitherto been tributary under his direct rule. Greece itself, though it had been often ravaged by the Turks, had not been added to their dominions. The Emperors had, in the very last days of the Empire before the fall of Constantinople, recovered all Peloponnesus, except some points which were held by Venice. Frank Dukes also reigned at Athens, and another small duchy lingered on in the islands of Leukas and Cephalonia and on the coasts of Akarnania. The Turkish conquest of the mainland, again saving the Venetian points, was completed by the year 1460, but the two western islands were not taken until 1479. Euboia was conquered in 1471, when the Venetian governor Erizzo, who had stipulated for the safety of his head, had his body sawn asunder. No deeds of this kind are recorded of the earlier Ottoman princes; but by Mahomet’s time the Turks had fully learned those lessons of cruelty and faithlessness which they have gone on practising ever since. The Empire of Trebizond was conquered in 1461, and the island of Lesbos or Mytilene in 1462. There was now no independent Greek state left Crete, Corfu, and some smaller islands and points of coast, were held by Venice, and some of the islands of the Aegean were still ruled by Frank princes and by the Knights of Saint John. But, after the fall of Trebizond, there was no longer any inde­pendent Greek state anywhere, and the part of the Greek nation which was under Christian rulers of any kind was now far smaller than the part which was under the Turk.

While the Greeks were thus wholly subdued, the Slavs fared no better. In 1459 Servia was reduced from a tributary principality to an Ottoman province, and six years later Bosnia was annexed also. The last Bosnian king, like the Venetian governor in Euboea, was promised his life; but he and his sons were put to death none the less. One little fragment of the great Slavonic power in those lands alone remained. The little district of Zeta, a part of the Servian kingdom, was never fully conquered by the Turks. One part of it, the mountain district called Tsernagora or Montenegro, has kept its independence to our own times. Standing as an outpost of freedom and Christendom amid surrounding bondage, the Black Mountain has been often attacked, it has been several times overrun, but it has never been con­quered. In a ceaseless warfare of four hundred years, neglected, sometimes betrayed, by the Christian powers of Europe, this small people, whose whole number does not equal the population of some of our great towns, has still held its own against the whole might of the Turkish power. First under hereditary princes, then under warrior bishops, now under here­ditary princes again, this little nation of heroes, whose territory is simply so much of the ancient land of their race as they are able to save from barbarian invasion, have still held their own, while the greater powers around them have fallen. To the south of them, the Christian Albanians held out for a long time under their famous chief George Castriot or Scanderbeg. After his death in 1459 they also came under the yoke. These conquests of Mahomet gave the Ottoman dominion in Europe nearly the same extent which it has now. His victories had been great, but they were balanced by some defeats. The conquest of Servia and Bosnia opened the way to endless inroads into Hungary, South-eastern Ger­many, and North-eastern Italy. But as yet these lands were merely ravaged, and the Turkish power met with some reverses. In 1456 Belgrade was saved by the last victory of Huniades, and this time Mahomet the Conqueror had to flee. In another part of Europe, if in those days it is to be counted for Europe, Mahomet won the Genoese possessions in the peninsula of Crimea, and the Tartar Khans who ruled in that peninsula and the neighbouring lands became vassals of the Sultan. The Ottomans were thus brought into the neighbourhood of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. The last years of Mahomet’s reign were marked by a great failure and a great success. He failed to take Rhodes, which belonged to the Knights of Saint John; but his troops suddenly seized on Otranto in Southern Italy. Had this post been kept, Italy might have fallen as well as Greece; but the Conqueror died the next year, and Otranto was won back.

Thus two Empires, and endless smaller states, came out of the power of the Ottomans under the mightiest of their Sultans. Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, all came under the yoke. But it must not be forgotten that it was by the arms of men of Greek, Slav, and Albanian blood that they were brought under the yoke. For the Janissaries formed the strength of the Otto­man armies, and the Janissaries were formed of the kidnapped children of the conquered nations. Thus the Christian nations of South-eastern Europe had their own strength turned against them, and were overcome by the arms of their own children. And presently the far-seeing eye of Mahomet found out that their wits might be turned against them as well as their arms. He saw that the Greeks had a keener wit, either than his own Turks or than the other subject nations, and he saw that their keen wit might, in the case of a part of the Greek nation, be made an instrument of his purposes. By his policy the Eastern Church itself was turned into an instrument of Turkish dominion. Speaking roughly, the lower clergy throughout the conquered lands have always been patriotic leaders, while the Bishops and other higher clergy have been slaves and instruments of the Turk. Greek Bishop bore rule over Slavonic churches, and so formed another fetter in the chain by which the conquered nations were held down. In course of time the Sultans extended the same policy to temporal matters. The Greeks, not of Old Greece, but of Constantinople, the Fanariots, as they came to be called, became in some sort a ruling race among their fellow-bondmen. Their ability made them use­ful, and the Turks learned to make use of their ability in many ways. In all conquests a certain class of the conquered finds its interest in entering the service of the conqueror. As a rule, such men are the worst class of the conquered. They are commonly more corrupt and oppressive than the conquerors themselves. It therefore in no way lessened but rather heightened the bitterness of Ottoman rule, that it was largely carried on by Christian instruments. The Slavonic provinces had in fact to bear a two-fold yoke, Turkish and Greek. But this it should be remembered only applies to the Greeks of Constantinople. The Greeks of Greece itself and the rest of the Empire were no better off than the other subjects of the Turk. It must be remembered too that, after all, the Fanariot Greeks themselves were a subject race, cut off from all share in the higher rule of their country. That was reserved for men of the ruling religion, whether native Turks or renegades of any nation. And lastly it should be remembered that, under the rule of Mahomet the Conqueror, every man, Turk, Christian, or renegade, held his life and all that he had at the pleasure of Mahomet the Conqueror.

The Turkish rule was now fully established over a considerable part of Europe, over nearly the whole of the lands between the Adriatic and the Euxine. Save where the brave men of Zeta still held out on the Black Mountain and where the city of Ragusa still kept its freedom, no part of those lands was under a national government. The few islands and pieces of coast which had escaped the Turk were under the rule either of Venice or of other Frank powers. From that day, till in our own century Servia and Greece became free, all those lands have been in bondage. The greater part of them remain in bondage still. Their people have not only been subjects of a foreign prince; they have been subjects of a foreign army in their own land. The rule of law has for all those ages ceased in those lands. The people of the land have had only one way of rising out of their state of bondage, namely by embracing the religion of their conquerors. This many of them did, and so were transferred from the ranks of the oppressed to the ranks of the oppressors. In some parts whole classes did so. This happened specially in Bosnia. There the mass of the land-owners em­braced Islam in order to keep their lands, while the body of the people remained faithful. These renegades and their descendants have ever since formed an oligarchy whose rule has been worse than that of the Turks themselves. The same thing happened in Bulgaria to some degree, though to a much less extent than in Bosnia. It was only in Albania that the Ma­hometan faith was really adopted by the mass of the people of large districts. In Albania a large part of the country did become Mahometan, while other parts remained Christian, some tribes being Catholic and some Orthodox. But, as a rule, throughout the European lands which were conquered by the Turk, the mass of the people clave to their faith, in defiance of all temptations and all oppressions. Rather than forsake their faith, they have endured to live on as bondsmen in their own land, under the scorn and lash of foreign conquerors, while apostasy would at any moment have raised them to the level of their conquerors. They have endured to live on, while their goods, their lives, the honour of their families, were at the mercy of barbarians, while their sons were kid­napped from them to be brought up in the faith of the oppressor and to swell the strength of his armies. In this state of abiding martyrdom they have lived, in different parts of the lands under Turkish rule, for two, for four, for five hundred years. While the nations of Western Europe have been able to advance, they have been kept down under the iron heel of their tyrants. And because they have not been able to advance as the nations of Western Europe have advanced, men in Western Europe are not ashamed to turn round and call them degraded and what not, as though we should be any better if we had lived under a barbarian yoke for as many ages as they have lived.

It may however be asked with perfect fairness, how came the Ottoman Turks, starting from such small beginnings and having at first such small power, to make such great conquests, and to win and to keep so many lands, both Christian and Mussulman? With regard to the conquests of the Ottomans over other Mussulmans, there is nothing wonderful in their making them; the wonderful thing is that they were able to keep them. Their rise to power was exactly like the rise to power of many other Eastern dynasties. Only, while other Eastern dynasties have commonly soon broken in pieces, this one kept on unbroken. Or it would be truer to say, what is really more wonderful, that, after the fall of Bajazet, the Ottoman power did break in pieces for a moment, but that it was able to come together again. The continued succession of able princes in the House of Othman, the firm administration which they established, their excellent military discipline, and above all the institution of the Janissaries, will account for a great deal. And before long we shall see that the Ottoman Sultans won a further claim to the religious allegiance, not only of their own subjects, but of all orthodox Mussulmans. With regard to their conquests over Christians, the state of the South-eastern lands at that moment gave them many advantages. The Ottomans were a power—nation is hardly the word—in the full freshness of youth and enthusiasm, military and religious. Every Janissary, it must be remembered, brought to his work the zeal of a new convert. As yet the Ottomans were in their full strength, under princes who knew how to use their strength. They found in South­eastern Europe a number of disunited powers, jealous of one another, and many of them having no real basis of national life. The Eastern Empire was worn out. The vulgar talk about its weakness and degradation, which is mere vulgar talk when it is applied to the whole time of the Byzantine history, ceases to be vulgar talk if it is confined to the last hundred and fifty years of Byzantine history. It would seem as if the strength of the Greeks had been worn out by winning back Constantinople. Certain it is that the Emperors who reigned at Nikaia in the thirteenth century were far better and more vigorous rulers than the Emperors who reigned at Constantinople in the fourteenth century. Certain it is that the greatness of Constantinople, its strength and its great traditions, helped to prolong the existence of a power whose I real day was past, and thereby to hinder the growth I of the more vigorous Slavonic nations which might 1 otherwise have stepped into its place. The Frank powers, save Venice, were small and weak, and they were nowhere national. We may believe that their rule was nowhere quite so bad as that of the Turks; still it was everywhere a foreign rule. The Greeks who were under Venice and under the Frank princes, were under rulers who were alien to their subjects in speech, race, and creed. There could be no loyalty or national feeling felt towards them. It is not very wonderful that the Turkish Sultans, with their stern determination and their admirably disciplined armies, could swallow up these powers, disunited and some of them decaying, one by one. Again the fashion of making their conquests for a while merely tributary, instead of at once fully annexing them, helped the purpose of the Turk by enabling him to employ the forces of one nation to help in subduing the nation next beyond it. So did the fashion of harrying and plundering lands be­fore their actual conquest was attempted. Men might be tempted to doubt whether regular bondage to the Turk might not be a less evil than having their lands ravaged and their children carried away into slavery.

As most things in history have their parallel, it may be well to notice that the cause which brought the Ottoman power nearer to destruction than it ever was brought at any other time was essentially the same as one of the causes which most promoted its success. Any two sects of Christians, any two sects of Mahometans, are really separated from one another by a difference which should seem very slight compared with the difference which separates both of them from men of the other religion. Yet in practice it is not always so. The Eastern Empire was saved from Bajazet, and its existence was prolonged for fifty years, because Timour, who belonged to the Shiah sect of Mussulmans, waged a religious war on the Ottomans, who have always belonged to the Sunnite sect. And in exactly the same way, nothing helped the Ottomans so much as the dissensions between the Eastern and Western Churches, the members of which could be got heartily to act with one another. Many of the Greeks said that they would rather see the Turks in Saint Sophia than the Latins, and they lived to see it. And the Latins, with a few noble exceptions, could never be got to give any real help to the Greeks. All this illustrates the law that the quarrels of near kinsfolk are the most bitter of any. And it is after all another instance of this same law which, as has already been laid, makes Christianity and Islam rival religions above all others.

The Turkish dominion in Europe was now tho­roughly formed. For some years after the death of Mahomet the Conqueror, it was hardly at all enlarged. The next Sultan, Bajazet the Second, who reigned from 1481 to 1512, was not a man of war nor in any way a man of genius like his father. His character was an odd mixture of sensuality and religious mysticism, two things which, under the Mahometan system, are not incompatible. His wars were con­fined to winning a few points from Venice, and to constant ravages of Hungary and the other Christian lands to the north. Here we may mark how evil deeds produce evil. The horrible cruelties of the Turks in these incursions provoked equal cruelties on the part of the Christians, and so a black strife of retaliation went on. Such a reign as this was naturally unsatisfactory to the ruling race. Bajazet was deposed, and, after the manner of deposed princes, he speedily died. Then came the eight years’ reign of his son Selim, called the Inflexible. His was a reign of conquest, but of conquest waged mainly against Mahometan enemies beyond the bounds of Europe. Syria and Egypt were added to the Otto­man dominion, and the Sultan added to that secular title the spiritual authority of the Caliphate. The real Caliphs of the Abbaside house had come to an end when Bagdad was taken by the Moguls, but a line of nominal Caliphs, who had no temporal power whatever, had gone on in Egypt. From the last of these phantoms Selim obtained a cession of his rights, and ever since the Ottoman Sultans have been acknowledged as chiefs of their religion by all ortho­dox Mussulmans, that is all who belong to the Sunnite sect and admit the lawfulness of the first three Caliphs. The Persians and other Shiahs of course do not ac­knowledge the religious supremacy of the Sultan, any more than the Orthodox and the Reformed Churches in Christendom acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. The Caliph, it should be remembered, is Pope and Emperor in one. For one who was already Sultan thus to become Caliph was much the same as if, in the West, one who was already Emperor had also become Pope.

The rule of the new Caliph was in some things worse than that of any of the Emirs and Sultans who had gone before him. In systematic blood-thirstiness, whether towards Christians, towards heretical Maho­metans, or towards his own ministers and servants, Selim outdid all who had gone before him. But here comes out one of the special features of Ottoman rule. The one check on the despot’s will is the law of the Prophet. What the law of the Prophet bids on any particular matter the Sultan must learn from the official expounders of that law. And it must be said, in justice to these Mahometan doctors, that, if they have sometimes sanctioned special deeds of wrong, they have also sometimes hindered them. So it was in the reign of Selim. The Mufti Djemali, whose name deserves to be remembered, several times turned the Sultan from bloody purposes. At last he withstood Selim when he wished to massacre all the Christians in his dominions and to forbid the exercise of the Christian religion. Now such a pur­pose was utterly contrary to the text of the Koran, and the act of Djemali in hindering it was the act of a righteous man and an honest expounder of his own law. But be it remembered that, if the question had been, not whether Christians should be mas­sacred, but whether they should be admitted to equality with Mahometans, Djemali must equally have withstood the Sultan’s purpose. The contem­ptuous toleration which the Koran enforces equally forbids massacres on the one side and real emancipation on the other.

The next reign was a long and famous one, that of Suleiman—the name is the same as Solomon—called the Magnificent and the Lawgiver, who reigned from 1520 to 1566. Mahomet had established the Empire; Suleiman had to extend it. But Suleiman was a nobler spirit than Mahomet. Under any other system, he would have been a good as well as a great ruler. And allowing for some of those occasional crimes which seem inseparable from every Eastern despotism—crimes which in his case chiefly touched his own ministers and his own family—we may say that he was a good prince according to his light. The Ottoman Empire was now at the height of its power. Its army was the strongest and best-disciplined of armies. But the Christian nations were now growing up to a level with their Mahometan enemies. Even the long and cruel wars among the Christian powers themselves, while they hindered those powers from joining together to withstand the Turk, schooled them in the end severally to cope with him Suleiman took  Rhodes early in his reign, and the Knights withdrew to Malta, he again sieged them at Malta in the last years of his reign, but this time without success. But the greatest of Suleiman’s victories and the most instructive fur our purpose, are those which he won in Hungary. At the beginning of his reign, in 1521, he took Belgrade. Five years later, the last of the separate Kings of Hungary—those I mean who were not also Archdukes of Austria—Lewis the Second, died in battle against the Turks at Mohacs. After that the crown of Hungary was for a long while disputed between rival Kings. Thus at once on Lewis’ death, John Zapolya, Prince of Transylvania, and Ferdinand of Austria, who was afterwards Emperor, were both chosen by different parties. Suleiman found it to his interest to support Zapolya; he even besieged Vienna, though in vain. The end was that the Emperors kept that part of Hungary which bordered on Austria and their other dominions, while princes who were vassals of the Turk reigned in Transylvania and the eastern part of the kingdom. But the Turk himself took a larger share of Hungary than either, and a pasha ruled at Buda as well as at Belgrade. Here too the progress of the Turks was helped by disunion among the Christians. Just as further south the Turks profited by the dissensions between the Catholics and the Orthodox, so in Hun­gary they profited by the dissensions between the Catholics and the Protestants. These last were of various sects, but all alike were persecuted by the bigotted Austrian Kings. It was no wonder then that the Protestants preferred the alliance, and even the sovereignty, of the Sultan to the rule of a Catholic sovereign. This fact has often been made a strange use of by the partisans of the Turks. No doubt the contemptuous toleration which the Turk gives to his Christian subjects was better than actual persecution, and men who were actually persecuted might well think that they gained by becoming his subjects. It would be so even now. A man who was forbidden to exercise his religion under pain of death or bonds would even now gain by becoming a subject of the Turk. He would have to put up with degradation; he would have to take his chance of irregular oppres­sion, oppression which might sometimes amount to robbery or murder; but no sentence of law would con­demn him to death or bonds or banishment, simply for the practice of his religion. And if it is so even now, much more was it so in the time of Suleiman, when oppression was not so great as it is now, and when it was the policy of the Sultan to attach one party in the Hungarian nation to himself, that they might act as his allies against the other party. But this does not prove that the Turk is, or ever was, really tolerant, as toleration is now understood in the West. Their toleration was always contemptuous, or at most politic. And, though it is certain that in Suleiman’s day any English Roman Catholic or Hungarian Protestant would have gained by becoming the subject of Suleiman, it is still more certain that neither of them would gain by becoming a subject of the Sultan now.

Besides the conquests of Suleiman in Hungary, the relations between the Turk and the two Rouman principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were now definitely settled. They were to be vassal states, paying tribute; but the Sultan was to have no part in their internal government. No Turk was to live in the country, and the princes were to freely chosen by the nobles and clergy of the principalities. This system lasted from 1536 to 1711. Then the Sultans took to appointing and deposing the princes at pleasure. They appointed Fanariot Greeks; and so, strangely enough, the Greeks, bondmen in their own land, became rulers in another.

Splendid as was the character and the rule of Suleiman, still it is from his day that both Turkish and Christian writers date the decline of the Turkish power. Suleiman ceased to manage all state affairs so directly as earlier Sultans had done. The power of the Viziers and the influence of the women increased. The taxes were farmed out to Jews, Greeks, and others, a system which always at once lessens the revenue of the sovereign and increases the burthens of the subject. Conquest, we are told, brought with it luxury, love of ease, love of wealth. The soldiers fought less for victory than for plunder. Certain it is that, while up to Suleiman’s time the Ottoman power had steadily advanced, after his time it began to go down. The Turkish lords of New Rome, like their Roman and Greek predecessors, had their times of revival, their days of unexpected conquest. But, on the whole, the Ottoman power now steadily declined.

After Suleiman came a second Selim, known as the Drunkard, a name which marks the little heed which he paid to the precepts of his own law. His short reign, from 1566 to 1574, was marked by the first great re­verse of the Ottoman arms. This was the overthrow of the Turkish fleet by the fleets of Spain and of Venice in the great fight of Lepanto in 1571. It has been often said, and said with perfect truth, that though the Turk was defeated in the battle, yet he had really the better in the war. For the Turk lost only his fleet, which might be replaced, while the Venetians lost the great island of Cyprus, which has ever since formed part of the Turkish dominions. But the battle of Lepanto none the less marks the turning-point in the history of the Ottoman power. It broke the spell, and taught men that the Turks could be con­quered. Hitherto, though they had failed in particular enterprises, their career had been one of constant advance. Now, for the first time, they were utterly defeated in a great battle. And, with the military power of the Ottomans, their moral power decayed also. The line of the great Sultans had come to an end. Several of the later Sultans were men of vigour and ability; but the succession of great rulers which, unless we except Bajazet the Second, had gone on without a break from Othman to Suleiman the Lawgiver, now stopped. The power of the Sultans over their distant dominions was lessened, while the power of the Pashas grew. The discipline of the Ottoman armies was relaxed, and the courts of most Sultans became a scene of corruption of every kind. Early in the seventeenth century men marked the decay of the Turkish power, and exacted that it would presently fall to pieces. Why did it not fall ? The growth of the Turkish power is easily explained. A succession of such men as the early Sultans, wielding such a force as the Janissaries, could not fail to conquer. Why their power lasted so long after it began to decay may seem, at first sight, less easy to explain. But the causes are not very far to seek. The preservation of the same ruling family, and that a family whose head is not only Sultan of the Otto­mans, but is deemed by orthodox Mussulmans to be the Caliph of the Prophet, alone counts for a great deal. More important still has been the possession of the imperial city. New Rome, under her elder lords, held on under greater dangers than have ever threatened their Ottoman successors. In quite late times the Turkish power has been propped up by the wicked policy of the governments of Western Europe. But, long before that policy began, men had begun to ask why the Ottoman power did not fall. The possession of Constantinople is of itself perhaps reason enough. In the case of the later Byzantine Emperors, the possession of Constantinople prolonged the existence of a power which otherwise must have fallen, and whose prolonged existence did no good to the world. The case is exactly the same with the dominion of the Ottomans.

 

We have thus traced the growth of the Ottoman power, from its first small beginnings till it had swelled into a vast dominion, first in Asia and then in Europe. It had grown to that extent of power by the great qualities of a long succession of princes, whose skill in the craft of conquerors and rulers sometimes goes far to make us forget their crimes. And, in the case of the Ottoman Sultans, it is not merely their personal crimes that we are tempted to forget. Their personal crimes may be paralleled in the history of other times and other nations. But there has never been in European history, perhaps not in the history of the whole world, any other power which was in everything so thoroughly a fabric of wrong as the power of the Ottomans. There has been no other dominion of the same extent lasting for so long a time, which has been in the same way wholly grounded on the degradation and oppression of the mass of those who were under its rule. Others among the great empires of the world have done much wrong and caused much suffering; but they have for the most part done something else besides doing wrong and causing suffering. Most of the other powers or the world, at all events most of those which play a part in the history of Europe, if they had a dark side, had also a bright one. To take the great example of all, the establishment of the Roman dominion carried with it much of wrong, much of suffering, much wiping out of older national life. But the Empire of Rome had its good side also. If Rome destroyed, she also created. If she conquered, she also civilized; if she oppressed, she also educated, and in the end evangelized. She handed on to the growing nations of Europe the precious inhe­ritance of her tongue, her law, and her religion. The rule of the Ottoman Turk has no such balance of good to set against its evil. His mission has been simply a mission of destruction and oppression. From him the subject nations could gain nothing and learn nothing, except how to endure wrong patiently. His rule was not merely the rule of strangers over nations in their own land. It was the rule of the barbarian over the civilized man. the rule of the misbeliever over the Christian. The direct results of Turkish conquest have been that, while the nations of Western Europe have enjoyed five hundred years of progress, the nations of South-eastern Europe have suffered live hundred years of bondage and of all that follows on bondage. The rule of the Turk, by whatever diplomatic euphemisms it may be called, means the bondage and degradation of all who come beneath his rule. Such bondage and degradation is not an incidental evil which may be reformed, it is the essence of the whole system, the groundwork on which the Ottoman power is built. The power which Othman began, which Mahomet the Conqueror firmly established, which Suleiman the Lawgiver raised to its highest pitch of power and splendour, is, beyond all powers that the world ever saw, the embodiment of wrong. In the most glorious regions of the world, the rule of the Turk has been the abomination of desolation, and nothing else. Out of it no direct good can come; indirect good can come of it in one shape only. The natives of South-eastern Europe came under the yoke through disunion. Greek, Slav, Frank, could not be brought to com­bine against the Turk. Orthodox and Catholic could not be brought to combine against the Mussulman. If the long ages during which those nations have paid the penalty of disunion and intolerance shall have taught them lessons of union and tolerance, they may have gained something indirectly, even from five hundred years of Turkish bondage. We have thus far traced the steps by which they came under the yoke. We have now to trace the steps by which, on the one hand, the yoke was made harder, while, on the other' hand, hopes began to dawn which promised that the yoke might one day be thrown off. We have in this chapter traced the gradual course of the growth of the Ottoman power; in the next chapter we must go on to trace the gradual course of its decline.

 

CHAPTER V.

THE DECLINE OF THE OTTOMAN POWER.

 

The difference between the time which we have just gone through and the time to which we have now come is well marked in this way. Thus far it is easy for any one who follows the history, even in the most general way, to carry in his head the names and order of the Ottoman Emirs and Sultans. Each of them has a character of his own; the reign of each is marked by some special event, commonly by some conquest, which is the prince’s own doing. The reign of Othman is marked by the establishment of the Ottomans as an Asiatic power. Under Orkhan they pass into Europe. Under the first Amurath Hadrianople is taken; the Eastern Empire is hemmed in; Servia becomes tributary. Bajazet, the first Sultan, defeats the great crusade from the West at Nikopolis. Mahomet the First restores the Ottoman power after its overthrow by Timour. Amurath takes Thessalonica and overthrows Wladislaus at Varna. Mahomet the Conqueror wins the city of the Caesars; he gives his dominions their lasting extent, and organizes as well as conquers. The second Bajazet, the first Sultan who was deposed, seems like a shadow from the second period cast back into the first. But the few years of Selim nearly double the extent of the Ottoman dominion, and crown its master with the sacred honours of the Caliphate. Under Suleiman the Ottoman power reaches its highest point. Even the second Selim, unworthy of remembrance in himself, lives in the memory as the prince in whose days Cyprus was won and Lepanto lost. Thus far it is easy to go, even without book. But to remember the Sultans after Selim needs an effort. A few of them stand out through some special point in their character. Amurath the Fourth (1623-1640) stands forth as the most bloody, Ibrahim (1640-1648) as the most brutally sensual, of the line. Suleiman the Second (1687-1691) and Mustafa the Second (1695-1703) were men of some force of character, who might have played a greater part than they did, if they had lived in days when their empire was rising instead of falling. Of course any one who studies the Ottoman history minutely will be able to remember the Sultans of this time, just as he may remember the Kings of England or France, great and small. The difference is that no one who reads the general history of the world with any thoughtfulness will fail to re­member the order of the Sultans for the first two hundred years or more, while for the next two hundred years he may follow the general course of events, and the general relations of the Ottomans to other powers, without always remembering who was Sultan at any particular time. No one can help remembering that Amurath died at Kossova and that Mahomet took Constantinople. But it is easy to remember the Second siege of Vienna, and to remember what terri­tories were lost and won by the peace of Carlowitz and the peace of Passarowitz, without remembering who was Sultan when each of those events happened.

At one part of the history, namely the second half of the seventeenth century, the ministers stand out rather than the sovereigns. In an Eastern despotism, where all alike are the slaves of the prince, there can hardly be such a thing as an hereditary aristocracy. A man may rise from the lowest place, even from slavery itself, to the highest offices in the empire. It is rare then in the Ottoman empire, or in any other Eastern despotism, to find anything like a succession of power in the same family. But in the seventeenth century there was an exceptional case of this kind in the family of Kiuprili. Several members of that house were chief ministers of the Sultans; they were all men of ability, and some of them were really better and more tolerant rulers than the common run either of the Sultans or their ministers. But, as a rule, through the whole of this period, such a sketch as this may deal with events and with the general course of things, without having so much to say as before about particular men. In short, the time of the great Sultans has passed away, and the time of the small Sultans has begun.

Allowing, as has been already said, for occasional fits of revived energy, the Ottoman power went steadily down after the time of Suleiman the Lawgiver. It went down in two ways. Though territory was still sometimes won, yet on the whole the Ottoman frontiers fell back. After Suleiman no lasting conquests of any importance were made, except those of the islands of Cyprus and Crete. The frontier on the north towards Hungary, and in later times towards Russia, though there have been considerable fluctua­tions and winnings back of territory, has on the whole steadily gone back. And, last of all, in our own age large parts or the Ottoman territory have been separated from it to form distinct states, either tributary or wholly independent In these ways the extent of the Ottoman dominion on the map has lessened wonderfully indeed since the days of Sulei­man. And, during the greater part of the times with which we are dealing, the power of the Sultans was getting less and less in the dominions which were left to them. The central administration got more and more corrupt, more under the influence of ministers, favourites, and women than under the authority of the Sultans themselves. The Pashas or governors of pro­vinces got more and more independent, and in some cases they made their offices practically hereditary. In¹ some parts indeed, especially toward the end of the last century, when the power of the Sultans was at its lowest, there was utter anarchy without any control of any kind. Through the seventeenth century especi­ally, we may mark the short reigns of the Sultans, as contrasted with the long reigns of most of the great Sultans. Many of them were deposed and murdered, as they have again begun to be in our own times. Nor must we forget, as one cause of decay, the wretched education, if we may so call it, of the Sul­tans themselves. Kept in a kind of imprisonment till they came to the throne, with every means of enjoying themselves, but with no means of learning the duties of rulers, they came forth from prison to be clothed with absolute power. One is really inclined to wonder that they were not even worse than they were, and that any of them aliened any sign of virtue or ability of any kind.

This may pass as a general picture of the charac­ter of Ottoman rule during the days of the decay of the Ottoman power. But it concerns us more to know what was the effect of this state of things on the nations which the Turks held in bondage. It must not be thought that the decay of the power of the Sultans brought any direct or immediate relief to the subject nations. Some indirect advantage they did gain from it; but in the main the weakening of the power of the Sultans, the general decay of their empire, meant not lessened but increased oppression ; it meant, not lighter, but heavier bondage to be borne by their Christian subjects. The great Sultans, as a rule, were not men who delighted in oppression for oppression’s sake. Their personal crimes mainly touched those who were personally near to them; they had wisdom enough to see that they would gain nothing by making the bondage of the conquered nations intolerable. In all despotisms there is more chance of justice and mercy from the head despot than from his subordinates, and many a tyrant has deemed tyranny a privilege of the crown which no subordinate might share. As the power of the Sul­tans grew weaker, the subject nations lost their one chance of redress. In such a state of things grinding local oppression at the hands of a crowd of petty tyrants takes the place of the equal, if stern, rule of the common master of all. Under such grinding local oppression, lands were untilled, houses were unin­habited, the population of the country sensibly lessened. But, as the demands both of central and of local rulers did not lessen, the burthens of those who survived were only made the heavier. Such, with a few moments of relief, has been the general state of things in South-eastern Europe since the decline of the empire began. There have been exceptions.

One or the viziers of the house of Kiuprili, Zadei Mustafa, who became vizier in 1689, was an excep­tional case of a Turkish ruler who did every justice to the Christians which the Mahometan law allowed. He thereby for the while did much for the truest prosperity of his master’s dominions. Other ministers of the same family had the wisdom to follow the same course; but the beginning of better times, or at least of brighter hopes, for the subject nations, which may be dated from the latter years of the seventeenth century, was mainly owing to quite different causes.

Those causes were chiefly two, the remission of the tribute of children and the advance of the Christian powers at the expense of the Turk. As was before said, as long as the tribute of children was levied, the subject nations really could not stir. From the time when it ceased, even when there was no actual improvement in their condition, there was the be­ginning of hope. There was a stirring of national life, such as there could not be as long as their best strength was taken from them. And every success gained by any Christian power against their masters raised the hopes and heightened the spirit of those who were under the yoke. Herein comes out the main difference between a national government and the rule of strangers. When any Christian power was at war with the Turk, the enslaved nations looked on the enemies of the Turk, not as their enemies, but as their friends. Every failure on the part of their masters, every danger that threatened their masters, gave them a hope of deliverance. In any Western country we should deem it treason for any man to help, or wish success to, the enemies of his country. But to the Christians under the Turk, it was the Turk who seemed the enemy of their country. Those who made war on the Turk seemed, not the enemies of their country, but its friends. And so it ever will be, as long as, instead of being under a government of their own, they are left under the yoke of strangers. The subject nations have often been very badly treated by Christian powers who professed to be their friends. Hopes have often been kindled, pro­mises have often been made, which were never fulfilled. Still, all these causes joined together to stir up men's minds, and to raise them from the state of utter wretchedness and despair under which they had been bowed down for so many generations.

From the middle of the seventeenth century the Turks had constant wars with the neighbouring Christian powers, wars in which, though the Turks sometimes won victories and recovered provinces, their dominion on the whole went back. The chief powers with which they had to strive up to the latter part of the seventeenth century were the common­wealth of Venice and the kingdom of Hungary, then held by the Emperors of the House of Austria. They had also wars with Poland, when the Polish kingdom, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, stretched much further to the south-east than it did before or after. And lastly, they have had wars with Russia, which, for a long time past, have been of greater moment than any of the others. But, in the latter part of the sixteenth and the greater part of the seventeenth century, the chief wars were those with Venice and with the Emperors in their character of Kings of Hungary. Both the Venetian and the Hungarian wars greatly affected the interests of the subject nations. The Hungarian wars chiefly affected the Slavs, and to some extent the Romanians. The Venetian wars mainly affected the Greeks, and to some extent also the Slavs. The possessions of Venice in the East consisted of islands and points or lines of coast These might easily be lost and won, as they often were, without the loss or gain of one settlement greatly affecting any other. But the kingdom of Hungary had, before the time of Sulei­man, lain as a compact mass, with a continuous frontier, to the north of the Ottoman dominions. And, as the Ottoman frontier went back, Hungary gradually took that character again. Along the Danube and its great tributaries, sometimes the power of the Em­perors, sometimes the power of the Sultans, advanced. But on the whole the Ottoman frontier fell back. It will be seen by the map how great a territory has been won back from the Turks since the days of Suleiman. On the other hand, though the Venetians gained some successes, though they often won back lands which they had lost and sometimes even won new lands, still, on the whole, the Venetian power fell back, and the Ottoman power advanced. In both cases, the change of frontier between the Turk and Venice or between the Turk and the Emperor was, for the Greek and Slavonic inhabitants of the disputed lands, a mere change of masters. Still there was the difference between civilized and barbarian masters The rule of Venice in her distant possessions was bad and often oppressive. It could awaken no kind of national or loyal feeling on the part of the subjects of the commonwealth. Still it was not brutal and bloody, like that of the Turks. And on the Hungarian frontier, when the Austrian kings ceased to persecute, instead of Hungarian Protestants wel­coming the Turk as a deliverer, the Christian subjects of the Turks welcomed every success of the Imperial arms as bringing deliverance to themselves.

It may be as well to sketch, as far as may be, in one continuous story the chief gains and losses of territory, especially among the islands, which hap­pened in the long wars between the Venetians and the Turks. At the time when the Turks took Con­stantinople, Venice had a dominion in Dalmatia, the boundaries of which had often fluctuated in the wars between Venice and the Kings of Hungary, and which afterwards no less fluctuated again in the wars between Venice and the Turks. Many of the Dalmatian towns in this way changed masters over and over again; but it would be impossible to tell their story except at great length. But the commonwealth of Ragusa, by contriving to keep on good terms with the Turks, kept on its independence throughout. When Mahomet took Constantinople, besides her Dalmatian dominion, Venice held some territory to the south on the Alba­nian coast, and also several points on the coasts both of Northern Greece and of Peloponnesus, Argos and Nauplia. She also held the great islands of Crete, Euboea, Corfu, and Cyprus. The first three of these she had kept continuously from the Latin taking of Constantinople. Euboea and Crete she kept till they were conquered by the Turks, while Corfu she kept till the end. The other islands off the west coast of Greece, commonly called the Ionian Islands, were tossed to and fro over and over again between Venetians, Turks, and Frank princes. But in the end Venice got them all, and kept them till the time of her own fall. Several of the islands of the Aegean were also held either by the commonwealth of Venice or by Venetian families. In 1489 the Venetians got possession of the island of Cyprus, which had hitherto been a Frank kingdom. The Venetian possessions in Peloponnesus, Euboea, and most of those in the smaller islands of the Aegean, were gradually conquered by the Turks from the reign of Mahomet the Conqueror to that of Sulei­man. Thus, at the time when the decay of the Otto­man Empire began, Venice had lost a great part of her Eastern territories, but she still kept a large in­sular dominion. She had Cyprus, Crete, Corfu and the other Ionian Islands, and a few points on the western coast and in the Aegean. In all these she was a ruler over Greeks, or, in some of the northern points, over Albanians. In Dalmatia she ruled over Slaves, except so far as the coast towns had largely become Italian.

We have already seen how Cyprus was lost in the reign of Selim the Second. In the next century Crete was lost also. The Turks attacked the island in 1645, and the war went on till 1669, when Crete was lost. This is called the war of Candia, from the long siege of the town of Candia, which was most gallantly defended by the Venetians, with the help of many volunteers from Western Europe. It must be re­membered that, though the island has sometimes got to be called Candia from the town of Candia and its memorable siege, yet the island itself has never changed its name, but has always been called Crete both by Greeks and Turks. This great island now passed under Turkish bondage. The mass of the people remained faithful, and sank to the usual lot of the subject nations, or rather to a worse lot than most of them. For a good many of the inhabitants became Mussulmans, so that there are Greek-speaking Mussulmans in Crete, just as there are Slavonic-speaking Mussulmans in Bosnia. And the result was the same as it was in Bosnia, and as it was everywhere. These renegades and their descendants were more oppressive to their Christian fellow-countrymen than the Turks themselves. In Cyprus, on the other hand, the exactions of the Sultan’s government were even greater than in most other parts; but Turks and Christians in the island were on better terms than usual. It is important to remember these distinctions; for it is easy, by draw­ing inferences which apply to one time or place only, and applying them to other times and places to fall into great mistakes. The Christian subjects of the Turk were everywhere in bondage; they were everywhere in a case which in Western Europe would be held to justify them in revolting. But it is not wonderful that bondage was lighter in some places and heavier in others; nor is it wonderful that, as a rule, renegades and their descendants were worse oppressors than the natural Turks. For the conqueror can afford to shew some kind of mercy, if it be only contemptuous mercy. The renegade is full of a mean spite towards better men than himself.

These were the chief changes of territory with regard to those great islands which were at different times held by Venice in the East of Europe. Corfu alone was always held by the Republic for nearly six hundred years, from the Latin taking of Con­stantinople to her own fall. But besides the wars in the islands and the wars in Dalmatia, Venice had also important wars with the Turks on the mainland of Greece. But these wars had a great deal to do with wars which were carried on at the same time by other European powers. It will therefore be well to go back a little in our story, in order to understand the general position in which the Turkish power stood, in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Though, as we have seen, several of the Sultans of this time were men of some vigour, though they were often served by able ministers, still decay and corruption had greatly advanced, and the Ottoman power was going down on every side. It was during this century that the tribute of children was gradually left off. The Janissaries were now no longer what they had been, and the tables were now altogether turned in military matters between the Turks and the nations of Europe. Mahomet the Conqueror had commanded armies such as no European power could put in the field against him. In the two centuries which had passed since his time, the military system of every European power had improved, while the system of the Turks had gone back. They had lost their own old discipline, and they had not learned the discipline of European armies. Thus the latter part of the seventeenth century was a general time of loss to the Ottoman power. Besides Venice and Hungary, the Turks had wars with Poland and Russia, of which we shall say more presently. Notwithstanding some occasional successes, the Turkish power gave way at all these points. During this period wars with the Turks were going on at various points from Peloponnesus to the mouth of the Don. But the war in Hungary formed the centre of all. This was now the region where the great struggle between Turks and Christians was waged, and in that regional this time the Turkish frontier steadily went back. The wars of this time were like a vast battle, in which Venice at one end, Poland and Russia at the other, were attacking and defending this and that outpost, while the main struggle went on in the lands upon the Danube.

We have seen that the conquests of Suleiman left only a small part of Hungary to its nominal king the Emperor. The greater part of the land was ruled by a Turkish Pasha, while Transylvania and part of Hungary itself formed a vassal principality. The state of things in these lands often changed, and there were several wars in the sixteenth and seven­teenth centuries. But, on the whole, the Turks kept their predominance in Hungary. In the latter halt of the seventeenth century things began to change. In 1663, while the siege of Candia was still going on, when Mahomet the Fourth was Sultan and Leopold the First was Emperor and King of Hungary, a war began in which for the first time the Imperial arms decidedly had the better. The war was famous for the great battle of Saint Gotthard, fought in 1664, in which the Imperial general Montecuculi won a great victory over the Turks under the Vizier Kiuprili. This battle was by land much the same as Lepanto was by sea. It was the first great overthrow of the Turks; it therefore marks a turning-point in their history. Or rather it was really of much greater mo­ment than Lepanto. For, though Lepanto broke the spell of Turkish success, it really did no material harm to the Turkish power. But Saint Gotthard was really the beginning of a long series of victories over the Turks on the part both of the Emperors and of other Christian powers. Yet it was like Lepanto in this, that, as the victory of Lepanto was accompanied by the loss of Cyprus, so the victory of Saint Gotthard was very soon followed by the loss of Crete. The battle was followed by a truce for twenty years between the Emperor and the Turks. Meanwhile the affairs of the Cossacks, the wild people of the border-lands between Poland, Russia, and the Turkish vassal states north of the Euxine, led to wars both with Poland and Russia. The Polish war lasted from 1672 to 1676. In this, though the famous John Sobieski won several brilliant victories both before and after his election to the Polish crown, yet Poland lost the strong town of Kaminiec, and the whole province of Podolia. This should be noticed, as it was the last time that the Turks won any large territory from any Christian power, as distinguished from merely winning back territory which they had held before. In this war both Sultan Mahomet and his minister Kiuprili had a share. Its issue is in­structive. Sobieski won battles, but the Turks kept Podolia. For the Turks were just now ruled, in the person of Kiuprili, by a single wise and strong will, while, though the Poles are one of the bravest nations on earth, yet the weak and disorderly nature of their government made them constantly lose in other ways what they won in fighting. In the Russian war, the first war of any moment between Russia and the Turk, the Sultan, who had just won a superiority over the Cossacks of Ukraine from the Poles, lost it again to the Russians. But the real beginnings of the struggle between Russia and the Turk come a few years later, though still within the times with which we are dealing. It will be better to go back to what were at the time the mote important wars in Hungary and Greece.

We have already seen that the religious intolerance of the Austrian Kings in Hungary gave a great advantage to the Turks, and that it often made the Protestants of Hungary think, with good reason, that the rule of the Turk was the less heavy bond­age of the two. No king did himself and his sub­jects more harm in this way than the Emperor I Leopold the First. His persecutions, and the revolts to which they led, laid not only Hungary but the Empire itself open to the Turks. Mahomet the Fourth was still Sultan; but he had lost his wise minister Kiuprili, and the present vizier Kara Mustafa was fond of planning enterprises too great for his power to carry out. It was he who had con­ducted the unsuccessful war with Russia; now in 1682 he undertook, not only to complete the conquest of Hungary, but once more, like Suleiman, to invade Germany itself. In 1683 the Turks again besieged Vienna, and the city was saved, not at all by the Emperor, but by John Sobieski and his Poles. Austria and Hungary were in truth delivered from the Turk by the swords of a Slavonic people, the people of a kingdom which, within a hundred years, Austria helped to dismember. A war now went on, which lasted till 1698. The Turks were gradually driven out of Hungary. In this war Sobieski at the beginning, and Prince Eugene of Savoy in its later stages, won some of their most famous victories. It might at the time be doubted whether Hungary gained much by being delivered from the Turk, only to be put under such a king as Leopold. No doubt Hungary has had much to complain of at the hands of her Austrian Kings; but the same rule applies here as everywhere else. The Christian government can amend and reform; the Mahometan govern­ment cannot. During the reign the next Sultan, Suleiman the Second, came the administration of another Kiuprili, the one who has been already mentioned as one of the very few Turkish rulers who ever really thought of the welfare of the Christians under Turkish rule. At the time, it was doubtless better to be a Christian under Kiuprili than to be a Protestant under Leopold. But mark the difference in the long run. Hungary was freed from the Turk; Bosnia and Bulgaria remained under his yoke. No subject of the Hungarian crown, not even in those Slavonic lands which have good reason to be discontented with Magyar supremacy, would now wish to change places with a Christian subject of the Turk. But it is hard that a people like the Magyars, who owe their freedom to Slavonic help, should grudge their Slavonic neighbours the same freedom which they themselves enjoy.

While the centre, as we may call it, of the general Christian army was thus victoriously bearing the main brunt of the strife in Hungary, much was also done by what we may call the two wings, the ancient power of Venice, the seemingly new, but really only revived, power of Russia. It was now that Venice, whose island dominion had been cut so sadly short by the loss of Crete, suddenly began to play a great part on the mainland of Greece. We have seen that Peloponnesus had wholly fallen into the hands of the Turks, the greater part under Mahomet, and the little that was left by him under Suleiman But in some of the wilder parts of the country, as in the peninsula of Maina, the Christians long kept a rude independence. It was not till 1614 that the people of Maina were compelled to pay the haratch, the tribute by which the non-Mussulman buys the right to toleration at the hands of the Mussulman. The Greek coasts were often visited by Spanish and other European ships in their wars with the Turk, so that the Greek inhabitants really suffered instead of their masters. At last, in the year after the siege of Vienna, when the Turkish power was giving way in Hungary, it seemed a good time for Venice to strike a blow. So in 1684 the great Venetian commander Francesco Morosini, who was chosen Doge in the course of the war, began the conquest of the peninsula. It was thought that Peloponnesus would be more easily held than Crete. The Venetian forces, with help from other parts of Europe, conquered all Peloponnesus. The war also went on in Attica and Euboea: Athens was taken, and it was in this siege that the Parthenon, the great temple of Athena, was ruined. It had been a church under the Emperors and under the Frank Dukes; but the Turks had turned it into a powder magazine, and a falling shell caused an explosion which broke it down. But the Venetians were not able to keep anything beyond the isthmus; Peloponnesus itself they did keep for a while. Thus a large part of Greece was placed under a government which, if not national, was at least civilized. The Greeks at this time had no hope for anything better than a change of masters. But the Venetian was at least a better master than the Turk: Peloponnesus passed under political bondage to the republic; but its people were saved from personal oppression and degradation.

But meanwhile events were happening in what we may call the other wing of the great battle, events which, though they seemed less at the time than either the Hungarian or Venetian wars, were the beginning of much that has gone on with increasing importance down to our own time. This is the beginning of those long wars between Russia and the Turk at which we have already glanced. Russia, it should not be for­gotten, though it is less than two hundred years since she began again to play a part in European affairs, is really a very old power. Russia is a nation which made a start, so to speak, early in life, which then re­ceived a great check, and which began a second career some ages after. In the ninth century the Russians, a Slavonic people, though under rulers of Scandi­navian descent, threatened the Eastern Empire, just as the Bulgarians and afterwards the Servians did. Only, while the Bulgarians and Servians came by land, the Russians for the most part came by sea. They crossed the Euxine, and tried to take Con­stantinople, and afterwards they had wars with the Emperors on the Danube. Presently Russia became Christian; Vladimir, its first Christian prince, had as I have already said, deliberately preferred Chris­tianity to Islam. The Russians got their Christianity from Constantinople, and thus, being both Slavonic in race and Orthodox in creed, they had a closer tie to the nations who were under the Turk than any of the nations of Western Europe. The Church of Russia was for several ages dependent on the Church of Constantinople; but for several ages too Russia had no means of taking any share in the affairs of South-eastern Europe, or indeed in the general affairs of Europe at all. Two things joined to keep Russia back, First, the great Russian power of the ninth and tenth centuries broke up into several smaller states. Then, in the thirteenth century, the power of Russia was altogether overthrown by those same Mogul invasions which, by overthrowing the Seljuk Turks and the Bagdad Caliphate, had made the ground ready in Asia for the first growth of the Ottomans. On these Moguls, better known by the name of Tartars, Russia was dependent for more than two hundred years. Thus the Russians, like the people of South-eastern Europe, had in some sort Mahometan masters. They had not indeed, as the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Servians had, a body of oppressors scattered through their whole land. They were rather like Wallachia and the other lands which were tributary to the Turk. Still they had felt bondage at the hands of Mahometan masters. They had therefore a traditional hatred of Mahometan rule; and, as members of the Orthodox Church, they had a tie of special fellowship with the South-eastern Christians. The history of Russia answers in some points to the history of Spain. In both these lands at the extreme east and west of Europe, Mahometan masters had to be driven out, and there are some points of likeness in the processes by which they were driven out in the two cases.

At the time which we have now reached, two of the great seats of the Tartar power, at Kasan and at Astrakhan, had long been held by Russia. But the Tartars of Crim, that is of the peninsula of Crimea and the neighbouring lands, still remained. And, as long as they remained, Russia, whose fleets had in old times sailed over the Euxine to attack Constantinople, was even more thoroughly cut off from that sea than Castile had been cut off from the Mediterranean by the Saracens of Granada. The Khans of Crim had been vassals of the Sultans ever since the time of Mahomet the Conqueror, and their affairs, and those of the Cossacks to the north of them, led to disputes between Russia, Poland, and the Turks. The wars between Russia and the Turks began in the middle of the seventeenth century, and we have already spoken of a war somewhat later, in which Russia won the land of Ukraine. But in the reign of Peter the Great, under whom Russia first began to play any great part in European affairs, the wars between Russia and the Turks put on a new character. Hitherto the Euxine had been wholly under the power of the Turks, and was chiefly used for their trade in slaves. No European nation had had any commerce there since Mahomet the Conqueror had taken the Genoese possessions in Crimea. The object of Russia was now for a long time to get free access to the sea, which the Turks of course tried to keep to themselves. This strife was begun when Peter the Great took Azov in 1696. For a long while after that time the possession of Azov, as the key of the Euxine, was the great point of contention between Russia and the Turks. It was disputed with fluctuating success during a great part of the next century.

Thus, at the end of the seventeenth century, the Turks had been at war with all their Christian neigh­bours, and they had lost territory at all points except one. They had gained Podolia; but they had lost Peloponnesus, Hungary, and Azov. Most of these territories they formally gave up by treaties in 1699 and 1700. The Peace of Carlowitz in marks 1699 marks a point in the history, or more truly in the decline, of the Ottoman power. Up to this time the Sultans had deemed themselves the superiors of all European princes, and had treated them and their ambassadors with great haughtiness. Sometimes they imprisoned ambassadors, and dealt in other ways contrary to the received law of nations. Strictly following the law of their own Prophet, they would not make peace with any Christian power; they would only grant truces. Now, in the reign of Mustafa the Second, they were driven to treat with European powers on equal terms, and formally to give up territory. They formally ceded Peloponnesus to Venice, and gave back Podolia to Poland. But, oddly enough, it was not a peace for ever, but only a truce for twenty-five years, which was concluded between the Turk and the power which had won most back from him. By this truce the Turks gave up all Hungary, except the district called the Banat of Temesvar, with Transylvania and the greater part of Slavonia. This treaty, it should be remarked, was concluded under the mediation of England and the United Provinces. This shows that we have now got to the beginnings of modern diplomacy. Russia was not a party to the Peace of Carlowitz; but she concluded an armistice for two years, which in the next year was changed into a thirty years’ truce. By this truce Russia kept Azov.

The Turkish power thus received one of the heaviest blows that was ever dealt to it. From that blow it has never really recovered. The power of the Turk has never again been what it was before the wars which were ended by the Peace of Carlowitz. But we have already said that the Ottoman power, just like the Byzantine power before it, had times of revival, which alternated with times of decay. So, through a great part of the eighteenth century, the Turks were still able to win victories, and, though they won no new ground, they sometimes won back a good deal of what they had lost. There soon were wars again between the Turks and all their European enemies, except Poland, whose day of greatness has now come quite to an end. War with Russia broke out again in 1711, and this time the Turks had the better. By the Treaty of the Pruth, Azov was re­stored to the Turk. Here was one success, and this was followed by the Turkish conquest of Peloponnesus, Tenos, and whatever else Venice held on the Eastern side of Greece in 1715. The Turks went on to threaten Corfu and Dalmatia; but in 1716 the Emperor Charles the Sixth, who of course was also King of Hungary, made an alliance with Venice. Charles the Sixth was more powerful than any Emperor had been since Charles the Fifth. Men began to hope that the Turks might be altogether conquered, and that a Christian Emperor might again reign at Constantinople. This indeed did not happen; but the Imperial armies, under Prince Eugene, made large conquests from the Turks. The small part of Hungary and Slavonia which the Turks kept was won back, and Belgrade, with a large part of Servia, a small strip of Bosnia, and the western part of Wallachia, became part of the dominions of the House of Austria. Things were now different from what they had been under Leopold. Every inch of territory won from the Turk was so much won for civilization and comparative good government, and the Imperial armies were welcomed as deliverers by the people of the lands which they set free. By the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718, made for another term of twenty-five years, all these conquests were confirmed to the Emperor. But he shamefully neglected the interests of Venice, and Peloponnesus was again confirmed to the Turk, when there were hopes of winning it back. Venice now, as a power, passes out of our story, though we shall hear again of the fate of what was left of her Eastern possessions. Through the rest of the eighteenth-century Austria and Russia are the powers which keep up the struggle; in the nineteenth century it is Russia only.

There is no need to go through every detail of war and diplomacy in these times, but only to mark those events which form real landmarks in the decline of the Turkish power. Thus it has no bearing on our subject, though we may mark it for its very strange­ness, that in the latter days of Peter the Great the Czar and the Sultan joined together to make conquests from Persia. And when the war again began in Europe, the tide seemed at first to have turned to the side of the Turks. Russia was eager to get back Azov, and the Emperor Charles was ready to go on with the conquests which had begun early in his reign. War began again on the part of Russia in 1735, and of Austria in 1737. The Russians made conquests, but did not keep them; and, now that the Emperor Charles had no longer a great general like Eugene, he lost much of what he had won in the earlier war. By the peace of Belgrade, in 1739, Belgrade, with all that had been won in Servia, Bosnia, and Wallachia was given back by the Emperor to the Turk. We read of this and other like things very calmly, as this or that clause of a treaty, and we some­times forget what they really mean. To give up those lands to the Turk meant that the people of those lands were taken from under a government which was not a national government, which doubtless had many faults according to the standard of our times, but which still was a Christian and civilized government having some notion of right and wrong, and were put once more under the cruel bondage of Mahometan tyrants. How the people of these lands felt as to the change, we see by the way in which, whenever they had a chance, they helped the Imperial armies against the Turks. We see this specially in the next war between Austria and the Turk, which was waged in the last years of the Emperor Joseph the Second. Belgrade was again taken, and other conquests were made; but nearly all was given back by the Emperor Leopold the Second at the Peace of Sistova in 1791, when the Turk again got Belgrade. In this last war the Servians fought most gallantly on the Imperial side, and learned much military discipline. But, as usual, they were made the playthings of policy in other directions, and were shamefully given up to their cruel masters. But a great deal came out of the taste of civilized government and civilized discipline which Servia had in these wars.

The war which was ended by the Peace of Sistova was the last of the wars between the Turks and the Emperors of the House of Austria for the possession of Hungary, Servia and the other lands on the Danube, wars which had gone on, with breaks from time to time, ever since the battle of Mohacz. The result of all these wars was that Hungary was freed from the Turk, but that Servia and Bosnia were left in his clutches. But it must always be borne in mind that all these lands alike, Hungary, Servia, and the rest, have been lost and won again in exactly the same way. The frontier which now divides the Hungarian kingdom from the Turk is simply the result of the successive victories and defeats of the Austrian arms, from the deliverance of Vienna in 1683 to the betrayal of Belgrade in 1791. There is no reason but the accidents of those wars, the accident that Charles the Sixth had a great general early in his reign and had no great general in his later years, to account for the fact, that part of the lands on the Danube are now under a civilized government, while part are left under the Turk. In the days of Sobieski and Eugene, men had not learned to talk about the integrity and the independence of the Ottoman Empire, or to think it a good thing for Christian nations to be held in Turkish bondage. Whatever may have been the mixture of generous and merely politic motives in the minds of the men of those times, they at least did not openly profess the doctrine that certain nations should be deprived of the rights of human beings for the sake of the supposed interests of some other nation. The great powers of those days, Austria and Russia alike, cruelly deceived and for­sook the nations that were under the Turks. But they at least did not tell them that their bondage was to be maintained as if it were something for the general good of mankind. The ministers of the despotic governments of those days were not ashamed to use the subject nations for their own purposes, and then to betray them. But they would have been ashamed to stand up and either to deny that those subject nations had wrongs, or to make those wrongs a matter of mockery.

The wars between Austria and the Turk are thus ended. They ended in establishing the frontier which remains still, except so far as one of the lands which were given up to the Turk has won its freedom for itself. But the wars between the Turk and Russia still went on. As long as the Austrian wars went on, there was commonly a Russian war at the same time, while there were other wars with Russia in which Austria had no share. Thus, at the Peace of Belgrade in 1736, when Austria gave up so much, it was agreed that the fortifications of Azov should be destroyed, and that Russia should be shut out from the Euxine. It was not till the reign of Catharine the Second that the real advance of Russia began. The first war of her reign began with the declaration of war by the Turk in 1768, and it was ended by the famous treaty of Kainardji in 1774. Two points are specially to be noticed in the wars which now begin. This first war had a special effect in stirring up the Greeks to revolt. A Russian fleet appeared in the Aegean, and the Greeks of Peloponnesus rose against their oppressors. They were badly used by Russia, just as the Servians were by Austria; they were by no means backed up as they ought to have been against the Turks, or protected from their vengeance. Still it was a great thing for the Greeks again to feel that their masters had powerful enemies, and that they themselves could do something against their masters. And now too the people of Montenegro begin to play a part in all the wars against the Turk. They had always kept their own independence by endless fighting. Their land had been often overrun, but it was never really conquered. Montenegro was now under the rule of its Bishops, who, somewhat strangely according to our notions, acted also as civil and military chiefs. Russia had long given the Montenegrins a certain measure of help and encourage­ment, and in all the wars from this time, Montenegro, as an Orthodox land always at war with the Turk, was found an useful ally.

The treaty of Kainardji, which finished this war, marks an important stage in the history, just as the Peace of Carlowitz marked another. The Peace of Carlowitz taught the Turk that he was no longer to deal with the Christian nations of Europe as if he were their superior. The Peace of Kainardji taught him the further lesson that he was not really their equal. The Ottoman power was now for the first time brought into some measure of dependence. By this treaty Russia at last gained the long disputed posses­sion of Azov, with some other points on the Euxine, and the Tartars of Crim were recognized as a state independent of the Turk. It is worth notice that, by the treaty, the spiritual authority of the Sultan, as Caliph of the Prophet, was fully recognized on behalf of these Tartars, at the same time that they were released from his temporal authority. The principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia were re­stored to the Turk, on condition of his observing their ancient privileges and at the same time acknowledging a right in Russia to remonstrate in case of any breach of them. Russia was acknowledged by this treaty as the protector of the Christian sub­jects of the Turk; in truth the principle was pro­claimed, though not in so many words, that Turkish rule was something different from anything that we understand by government. It was practically proclaimed that those whom he called his sub­jects had need of the protection of another power against the man who called himself their sovereign.

Both at the time and ever after, this treaty has been looked on as the beginning of the fall of the dominion of the Turk. For it did in truth make the Ottoman power in some sort dependent on Russia, and ever since the power of the Turk has steadily gone down and the power of Russia has steadily advanced.

At the same time it must be remembered that whatever good Russia did at this time to the enslaved nations was wholly indirect. More than once Russia stirred them up to revolt, and then left them in the lurch. The truth is that, in those days, the more gene­rous emotions which, in our days, have stirred whole nations, especially the feeling of sympathy between men of kindred race, hardly existed. It was not, as now, the Russian people who were stirred to help their oppressed brethren; it was merely the rulers of Russia who carried out their own schemes of policy. Still, with every step that the power of the Turk went back, the nations that were still under his yoke took fresh heart. At no time have they really wished for annexation by Russia, though doubtless at any time, if they had been driven to choose between the rule of the Turk and the rule of the Russian, they would have chosen the rule of the Russian. But every time that the power of their masters was weak­ened, they saw fresh hopes of deliverance, whether by the help of Russia, or, better still, by their own right hands. We must therefore set down every advance made by Russia at the cost of the Turk as, indirectly at least, a step towards the deliverance of the subject nations.

After the Treaty of Kainardji thess steps pressed fast upon one another. In 1783 the land of Crim was altogether incorporated with Russia, which thus at last got a great sea-board on the Euxine. This was one of those things which could not fail to happen. The Tartars of Crim could not possibly keep on as an independent state. It was something like Texas, which, when it was cut off from Mexico, could not fail to be joined to the United States. Russia, a growing power, could not be kept back from the sea. The next war, from 1787 to 1791, was the last in which Austria shared, that which was ended by the Peace of Sistova, when Belgrade was last given back to the Turk. It almost seemed as if, between the two Christian powers, the Turk would have been altogether crushed. But, as we have seen, the Emperor Leopold drew back, and the loss of the Austrian alliance, together with the general state of affairs in Europe, caused Russia to draw back also. Still this war gave Russia the famous fortress of Oczakow, and advanced the Russian frontier to the Dniester. Russia thus gained, but Christendom lost. For this increase of the territory of Russia did not mean the deliverance of any Christian people, while the surrender of Belgrade was the betrayal of a Christian city to the barbarians. It did not perhaps much matter when Russia ended a war in which Montenegro had helped her without making stipulations on behalf of Montenegro. For the Montenegrins could help themselves, and could keep their own borders. It was different when Greeks and Servians, who had helped Russia and Austria, were again left under the rule of the Turk. Still the whole course of events helped to raise the hopes of the subject nations, and to make them feel their strength. Before the next war between Russia and the Turk began, one of the subject nations had done great things for its own deliverance.

We have now reached another marked stage in our tale. We have gone through the history of the decline of the Ottoman power, so far as that decline was the work either of its own vices or of warfare with enemies beyond its borders. The two causes had worked together. Each cause of decline had strengthened the other, and the two together had called a third cause into being. Up to this time, our tale of warfare has been mainly a tale of external warfare. So far as we have had any revolts of the subject nations to record, they have not gone beyond help given by the subject nations to the external enemies of the Turk. From this point the character of the story changes. The main interest will now gather round the efforts of the subject nations to free themselves. The external wars of the Turk now stand in a certain relation in the general history of the world; they stand in a special relation to the struggles of the subject nations themselves. The wrongs of those nations are the cause or the pretext or the occasion for every war. Something for their good or for their harm is contained in every treaty. We may therefore fittingly draw a line at this point; we may end our history of the mere decline of the Ottoman power, and begin a new chapter with the revolts of the subject nations.

 

CHAPTER VI.

THE REVOLTS AGAINST THE OTTOMAN POWER.

 

We have now reached our own century. We have to tell the history of things of which the latest are still going on, while the earliest happened so near to our own times that a few old people can still re­member them. The wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had taught the subject nations their own strength, and they now began to strive to win freedom for themselves. Both the two great races have had their share in the work. The Slavs began; the Greeks followed; in later times the Slavs have again been foremost. The history is a continu­ous tale, so far as that there has hardly been a moment during the present century when revolt against the Turk has not been going on in some corner or other of his dominions. But, for that very reason, because different nations have revolted at different times and in different places, the story is in another sense not continuous. The greatest of the Slavonic revolts and the greatest of the Hellenic revolts were going on at the same time, without having much directly to do with one another. It will therefore be well, first to tell the story of the deliverance of Servia, then the story of the deliverance of Greece, and then the story of the revolts, partly Greek but mainly Slavonic, which have happened since Europe betrayed the subject nations to the Turk by the treaty of Paris in 1856.

The surrender of Belgrade to the Turk was the last and the most shameful act of the wars between the Turk and the Emperors. Yet this betrayal of the Servians by their Christian allies did very directly help towards the freedom of Servia. It taught the Servians that they might, by their own right hands, win something better than either of the two things which as yet had been their only choice. They learned that they might cease to be the subjects of the Sultan without Incoming the subjects of the Emperor. As soon as the Servians were given back to the Turk after a taste of civilized government, they found themselves worse off than ever. The Emperor, in giving up Belgrade, did indeed stipulate for an amnesty for the Servians who had acted on his side; but just at that moment amnesties and stipula­tions of any kind did not count for much. It would have been a hard fate, if men who had been once set free had been given back to one of the great Sultans, or even to one of the Saracen Caliphs. But a harder fate than either was in store for the Servians whom the Peace of Sistova gave back to the Turk. The greater part of the Ottoman dominion was now in a state of utter anarchy. The authority of the Sultan went for nothing. Servia was now in the hands of local military chiefs, the leaders of the rebellious Janissaries. In some parts bands of men which might be called armies went about taking towns and ravag­ing the country at pleasure. Brave men among the Christians took to a life of wild independence, throwing off, for themselves at least, the Turkish yoke altogether. In other parts the Sultans found it necessary to allow the Christians to bear arms, in defence alike of themselves and of the Sultan’s authority against Mussulman rebels. Thus, in all these ways, the subject nations were gaining courage and were learning the use of arms. And it must be remembered that now the bravest and strongest of their children were no longer taken from them, but were left to grow up as leaders of their countrymen. In such a state of things as this, the rule of the Sultan, where it was to be had, was the least of many evils. We therefore sometimes actually find an alliance between the Sultan and the Christians against their local oppressors. This was the case in Servia. The Servians, under the yoke of their local oppressors, cried to the Sultan for help, and the Sultan was for a while disposed to favour their efforts against his rebellious officers. But the war against local oppressors gradually swelled into a war against the chief oppressor himself. Herein is an instructive lesson. A Sultan may for a while, for his own purposes, favour his Christian subjects against local Mahometan oppressors. But such an alliance can never be lasting; it can last only so long as the interests of the Sultan and the interests of the Christians remain the same; and that can only be for a very short time. The two may act together as long as they have a common enemy; as soon as that common enemy is overthrown, their interests part asunder. The yoke of the Sultan will often be lighter than that of the local tyrant; but men who have thrown off the heavier yoke will not be willing to put their necks under the lighter yoke. They will rather be stirred up by their success to cast off every yoke, heavy or light. On the other hand, though a Sultan may find it for his momentary interest to favour Christians against Mahometans who are in rebellion against himself, he will not find it for his interest to do anything which may stir up a general spirit of resistance in the Christians against the Mahometans. The alliance between a despot and a people is always dangerous and precarious; because such an alliance can only be founded on interest, and the interest of a despot and of a people can never be the same for any long time together. And this, which is true in any case, becomes tenfold more true when the despot is Maho­metan and the people arc men of any other religion. So it was with Servia. The war which began in 1804 with an appeal to the Sultan against local oppressors grew in the next year into war with the Sultan himself, which led in the end to the deliverance of Servia.

By this time the affairs of Servia, and of the subject nations generally, were getting mixed up, in a way in which they had not been before, with the general affairs of Europe. It was not now merely the powers whose dominions bordered on those of the Turk, but Western powers like France and England, which came to have a direct share in the affairs of the South­eastern lands. We have seen something like the beginning of this at the Peace of Carlowitz where England and the United Provinces acted as mediators. And, long before that French Kings, both Francis the First and Lewis the Fourteenth, were not ashamed to give help and comfort to the Turks in their wars with the Emperors. Lewis the Fourteenth, while he was persecuting Protestants in his own king­dom, was not ashamed to pretend to be the protector of the Protestants in Hungary and Transylvania. But, from the last years of the eighteenth century onwards, the affairs of the South-eastern lands began to have a much more direct connexion with the affairs of Europe in general. The French Revolution had begun before the Emperor Leopold had given up Belgrade to the Turk. The wars which sprang out of that revolution began soon after; and they were at their full height when the Servians were fighting for their freedom.

After the surrender of Belgrade, but before the Servian revolt really began, Russia and the Turk had become allies. The revolutionary French, under Buonaparte, had in 1798 attacked Egypt, and this led the Turk into an alliance with Russia and England. Oddly enough, one result of this alliance between a Mussulman, a Protestant, and an Orthodox power was to set up again for a little while the tem­poral dominion of the Pope which the French had upset. At a later stage, in 1805, Russia again de­manded a more distinct acknowledgement of the Russian protectorate over the Christians. Sultan Selim wept, and presently came under the influence of France, which power, by annexing the Illyrian pro­vinces of Austria, had become his neighbour. Selim presently, Turk-like, broke his faith by deposing the princes of Wallachia and Moldavia contrary to treaty, and now England and Russia were both armed against him. The barbarian bragged as usual, and this time with more reason than usual. A Turkish fleet was burned in the Propontis by the English; a little more energy, and Constantinople might have been taken, and Europe might have been cleansed of Asiatic intruders. Later still, when Buonaparte and Alexander of Russia were for a while friends, there were further schemes for getting rid of the Turk altogether, and for dividing his dominions between Russia, Austria, and France. Such a division would doubtless have been an immediate gain for the subject nations. Any civilized masters, Russian, Austrian, or French, would have been better than the Turks, even under a reforming Selim. But for some at least of the subject nations better things were in store. They were, partly by their own valour, partly by help from Christian nations, to be raised to a state in which they had no need to acknowledge any masters at all.

The war between Russia and the Turk went on till it was ended in 1812 by the Peace of Bucharest. By that peace Russia kept Bessarabia and all Moldavia cost of the Pruth, which river became the boundary instead of the Dniester. The war concerns us chiefly so far as its course influenced the course of the war between the Turk and the Servian patriots. When­ever Selim was frightened by the advance of Russia, he made promises to the Servians; whenever he thought that he had a chance against Russia, he withdrew or broke his promises. Up to 1805 the Servian war was not strictly war against the Sultan, it was a war against the Sultans rebellious enemies. Under their leader, Czerni, Kara, or Black George, the Servians fought valiantly against their local tyrants but they tried to make favourable terms with the Sultan through the mediation of Russia. Selim, instead of granting any terms, attacked the men who had been fighting against his enemies. But Czerni George and the other Servian chiefs crushed his forces right and left, and the Russian army was on the march. Selim was cowed; he offered to let Servia go free in every thing, except payment of tribute and keeping a small Turkish garrison in Belgrade. But, as soon as Selim heard of the French successes against Russia, he backed out of his promises and went on with the war. Presently, in 1807, Selim was deposed and soon after murdered, as was also Mustafa who was set up in his stead. Then, in 1808, began the reign of the fierce Mahmoud the Second, another Turkish reformer, the nature of whose reforms are well remembered by the people of Chios. The war went on till the peace with Russia in 1812. That treaty contained some provisions on behalf of Servia which might have been more clearly expressed, but which certainly were meant to make Servia a tributary state, free from all Turkish interference in its internal affairs. But now the Turk no longer feared Russia; he feared her still less when Buonaparte was marching against her. Mahmoud therefore thought himself strong enough to break the treaty. Servia was attacked again; Czerni George lost heart, and took shelter in the Austrian dominions. Servia was conquered, and Mahmoud the reformer had it all his own way. The old tyranny was brought back again. The Turk did after his wont; every deed of horror which is implied in the suppression of an insurrection by Turkish hands was done in the sup­pression of the insurrection of Servia. When Belgrade submitted, the Turks promised to put no man to death. Turk-like, they beheaded and impaled the men to whom they had promised their lives. Men still live who remember seeing their fathers writhing on the stake before the citadel of Belgrade. For these good services Servia has been told by the man who rules the counsels of England that she ought to be grateful to the Turk.

Such was the first act of the Servian drama. Servia was conquered; her first deliverer had fled. But a new deliverer arose in Milosh Obrenovich. He was not a hero like Czerni George, and he was guilty of some great crimes, specially in procuring the death of George himself. Still he gradually won the freedom of the land, and in 1817 he was chosen Prince. Servian affairs dragged on for several years; this and that agreement was made with the Turk, but none were fully carried out. By the treaty of Akerman, in 1826, Mahmoud consented to Servian independence. The land was to be free, saving only the payment of tribute and the keeping of Turkish garrisons in cer­tain fortresses. But Mahmoud thought but little of treaties. He massacred the Janissaries, he made himself a new army, and thought that he could defy all mankind. He was taught better, as we shall see when we come to the affairs of Greece, at Navarino and at Adrianople. It was not till the treaty of Adrianople in 1829 that the provisions for the independence of Servia were really carried out.

Since then Servia has been a separate state under its own princes; but more than one change of dynasty has taken place between Milosh and his descendants and the descendants of Czerni George the land has flourished and advanced in every way, as it never could have done under Turkish masters. The Prince of Servia rules over a fire people. But lor a long time freedom was imperfect, as long as the Turks kept garrisons in Belgrade and other fortresses. In 1862 Servia had a proof that, where the Turkish soldier is allowed to tread, he will do as he has ever done. A brutal outrage of the usual Turkish kind on a young Servian was resisted; the barbarian garrison presently bombarded Belgrade. Diplomacy dragged on its weary course; but at last, after five years, Servia was wholly freed from the presence of the enemy. The Turkish troops were withdrawn, and since then Servia has been wholly free, saving the tribute which goes, which sometimes does not go, from the purses of her free children, for the tyrant whose yoke she has thrown off to squander on his vices and follies.

Such has been the deliverance of Servia. We must now go back some years to begin the tale of the deliverance of Greece. And, though the deliverance of Greece itself did not begin till Servian freedom was nearly won, still the deliverance of Greece is closely connected with a chain of events which influenced the affairs of Servia. Down to the last years of the eighteenth century, no part of the Greek nation was even nominally free. That part of the nation that was not subject to the Turk was subject to Venice. The Venetian possessions now consisted of the Ionian Islands, and a few points on the coast of Albania and Epeiros. These last lay in detached pieces to the south of the dominion of Venice in Dal­matia. When Austria and France divided the Venetian possessions in 1797, these outlying pos­sessions of Venice were to pass to France. But, when Russia and the Turk made an alliance in the next year, it was settled that the Turk should have the Venetian possessions on the coast, and that the islands should be formed into a nominal republic, which should be at once tributary to the Turk and under the protection of Russia. Of the points on the coast some were presently subdued by the famous Ali Pasha of Joannina, but Parga held over till after the general peace, and was then surrendered. As the acquisition of Podolia late in the seventeenth century was the last case in which the Turk extended his dominion over a considerable province which he had never before held, so this was the last time in which he extended his dominion by the acquisition of outlying points on the coast of one of his provinces. Both this and the supremacy over the islands might pass for an increase of the power of the Turk; but all these transactions were in effect a blow dealt to his power. The towns which were taken really passed, not to the Sultan, but to his rebellious vassal Ali, and the surrender of Parga against the will of its inhabi­tants stirred up a strong feeling everywhere. And the erection of the islands into a separate state was really a great step in the direction of Greek freedom. However nominal might be the freedom of a commonwealth which was put under the lordship of two despots, men saw in its foundation the beginning of better things for the Greek people. Part of the Greek nation had been declared free, and however shadowy their freedom might b. such a declaration could not fail to do much towards kindling the hopes of that part of the nation which was still under the yoke. Thus the Greeks at one end and the Servians at the other were stirred up at almost the same time. The new commonwealth was presently swallowed up by France; but at the Peace in 1815 it was set up again, under a protectorate on the part of England which did not differ much from actual sovereignty. Still the Greeks who were subjects of the Turk saw by their side other Greeks who, if not really free, were at least under civilized instead of under barbarian masters. And this helped to keep up hope and a spirit of enterprise in the whole nation.

We are now coming near to the greatest events in the later history of the Turkish power and of the nations under the Turkish yoke. This is no other than the general uprising of the Greek nation against its barbarian lords, the liberation of part of the Greek nation, and the formation of the liberated part into a new and independent European state. The revolt of Servia began first; but the Greek and the Servian war were going on at the same time, and both were mixed up with the general affairs of Europe, especially with the wars between Russia and the Turk. It is only in this last way that the Greek and the Servian revolutions are at all brought together. Each was an indirect help to the other, by diverting a part of the Turkish force; but the two struggles could hardly be said to be carried on in concert. Many causes joined together to stir up the spirit of the Greek nation. When we speak of the Greek nation, we must remember that the Greeks and those Albanians who belong to the Orthodox Church have always had a strong tendency to draw together. A large part of Greece was at various times settled by Albanians, and among these should be specially mentioned the people of the small islands of Hydra and Spezza, because they did great things for the cause. But there are Albanians in other parts of Greece also, and it must be remembered that the Albanians generally, both Christian and Mahometan, have always kept up a strong national feeling. Christians and Mahometans alike have always been discontented, and often rebellious, subjects of the Turk. Some of them were able to maintain their independence for a long time in wild parts among the mountains. Such were the people of Souli, Christian Albanians who were never fully subdued till 1803, when they were overcome by Ali of Joannina. This was a conquest of Christians by Mahometans; but it was not a conquest of Christians by Turks. It was in truth a conquest of Albanians by Albanians. Ali was a cruel and faithless tyrant; still he was not a Turk, but an Albanian; he was a rebel against the Sultan, and he was so far an indirect friend of the Sultan’s enemies. And, like many other tyrants, among all his own evil deeds, he did certain amount of good by keeping smaller oppressors in order. Thus the most opposite things joined together to weaken the Turkish power and to stir up the spirit of the Greeks. The way in which the Souliots withstood Ali, and the way in which Ali withstood the Sultan, both helped. Just at the end of his life, Ali, who had destroyed the freedom of Spuli and Parga, was actually in alliance with the Greeks who had risen up to win their own freedom.

The Greek Revolution, or War of Independence, began in 1821, and the first fighting was where one would certainly not have looked for it, namely, in the Danubian Principalities. It could hardly be said that the Greeks had suffered any wrongs in that part of the world; but the rule of Greek princes had brought together a considerable Greek element in that quarter, and it was there the war actually began. There was fought the first battle at Drageshan, where the Greeks showed that they could fight bravely, but where they were defeated by the Turks. The real Greek War of Independence was of quite another kind, and had quite another ending. It is most important to remember that the rising was in no way confined to the narrow bounds of that part of Greece which was set free in the end. The whole Greek nation rose in every part of the Turkish dominions where they had numbers and strength to rise. They rose throughout Greece itself, both within the present kingdom and in Epeiros, Thessaly, and Macedonia, in Crete too and Cyprus and others of the islands. In some parts they were too weak to rise at all; in some parts the rising was easily put down; and in some parts where there was no rising at all the Turk did as he always had done, as he always will do whenever he has the power. Wherever the Turk was strong enough, he did then exactly as he did last year. Fifty years and more ago men were shocked by the story of the massacres of Chios, Kassandra, and Cyprus, just as we have been shocked by the story of the massacres of Bulgaria. Sultan Mahmoud, whom it has been the fashion to praise, was guilty of exactly the same crimes as his predecessors and his successors. In Constantinople innocent men were slaughtered day by day by the Sultan’s order. The Patriarch Gregory suffered martyrdom; and what should specially be noticed, good men among the Turks themselves who tried to stop the cruelties of Mahmoud and the Turkish populace were, in some places murdered, in others disgraced. This also has happened again in our own time.

The effect of Mahmoud’s cruelties was to put down the revolt in many places, but in many others, especially in the greater part of old Greece, the Christians were able to hold their own. Truth forbids us to pretend that the Greek war was a scene of unmixed virtue and patriotism on the Greek side. No insurrection ever was or will be. War is a fearful scourge, even when carried on by civilized armies; and it is, in the nature of things, something yet more fear­ful when it is carried on between barbarians and men who have long been held down by barbarians, and have therefore learned somewhat of barbarian ways. The revolt of Greece against the Turk, like the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain, was marked by some ugly deeds on the part of the patriots as well as on the part of the oppressors. And, as usual, jealousies and dis­sensions often weakened the patriot arms. It could not be otherwise; men who had just escaped from bondage will carry about them some of the vices of the slave; it is only in the air of freedom that they can get rid of them. But many great and noble deeds were done also. Among the foremost in the struggle were the men of some of the islands, the Albanians of Hydra and Spezza, and the Greeks of Psara. These islands were among the parts of the Turkish dominions which suffered least, or rather they did not directly suffer at all. They contributed a quota of men to the Sultan’s fleet, and beyond that were led to themselves. Shallow people sometimes ask. Why should men who were so much better off than their neighbors be the foremost to revolt ? The reason is simply because they were better off than their neighbours. Men who enjoy a partial freedom, who therefore have some knowledge of what freedom is, will be more eager to win perfect freedom, and will be better able to win it than those who are in utter bondage and who have neither heart nor strength to stir. Besides this, there are such things, though some people seem to think otherwise, as noble and generous feelings, which lead those who are free themselves to help those who are in bondage. Therefore great things were done in the War of Independence by those who were themselves nearest to independence. Such were the two foremost men of the War of Inde­pendence by sea, the Albanian Andrew Miaoules of Hydra and the Greek Constantine Kanarés of Psara.

The Greek revolution was mainly the work of the Greeks themselves, counting among them the Christian Albanians. They had some help, but not very much, from the other subject nations. The Servians had their own war of independence going on; but a few Bulgarian and Romanian volunteers did good service in Greece. But more was done by volunteers from England, France, and other western countries. Lord Byron’s name is well known as one who in his latter days gave himself for the Greek cause, and much was done by other Englishmen, as Lord Cochrane, Sir Richard Church, General Gordon, and Captain Hastings, the worthy fellow of Miaoules and Kanarés by sea. These are men whose names should be remembered in days like ours, when Englishmen sell themselves to the service of the barbarian. And great things were done by the Greeks and Albanians them­selves, as by the Souliot hero Mark Botzarés, and by Alexander Mavrokordatos, who was not a mili­tary man, but a Fanariot of Constantinople, almost the only one of that class who did anything. He bravely defended Mesolongi against the Turks in one of its two sieges. In short, among many ups and downs, the Greeks, with such help as they had, were able to hold the greater part of Greece itself against the Turks, from European governments, Russian or any other, they had no help. Most powers were against them; none were for them; till at length things took such a course that Christian rulers could not for very shame keep themselves from stepping in.

After the war had gone on for some years, Sultan Mahmoud found that neither his massacres in other places nor the armies which he sent against Greece itself could break the spirit of the Greek people. Greece at one end, Servia at the other end, were too strong for him. He had to send for what was really foreign help. In the break-up of the Turkish power, Mahomet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, had made himself practically independent of the Sultan, just as earlier Turkish Emirs had made themselves independent, at one time of the Saracen Caliphs, at another time of the Seljuk Sultans. Mahmoud, in order to bring back the Greeks under his yoke, had to humble himself to ask for help of his rebellious vassal. In a war against Christians where plunder and slaves might be had. Mahomet Ah was ready to help; so he sent his son Ibrahim (Abraham) with an Egyptian force The Greeks, who had held their ground against the Turks alone, found Turks and Egyptians together too strong for them. Ibrahim, who afterwards, like most tyrants, was honourably received in England, went on the deliberate principle of making the land a desert, by ­slaying or enslaving the whole Christian population. Thus he went on committing every kind of crime and fiendish outrage that even a Turk could think of in Crete, Peloponnesus, and elsewhere, from 1824 to 1827. At last the patience of Europe was worn out

What followed is well worthy of our study just now. The first movement on behalf of right came from England, and England at once sought for Russia as ally. The Minister of England, Mr. Canning, did not write and tell the Turk to suppress the insurrection; he did not forbid any help to be given to the victims of the Turk; he did not think that the liberation of Greece lay beyond the range of practical politics. He saw well enough that there were difficulties; but he knew that human duty chiefly takes the form of overcoming difficulties. In short, he was a man and an Englishman, with the heart of a man and an Englishman, and he acted as such. In 1826 England and Russia agreed on a scheme for the liberation of Greece which was distinctly drawn up, not in the narrow interests of England or of Russia, but in the interests of humanity. Both powers disclaimed any advantage for themselves; they sought the advantage of others and of humanity in general. Greece was to become a separate tributary state, like Servia. Presently Mahmoud signed the treaty of Akerman with Russia, which, as we have seen, is an important stage in the history of all the principalities on the Danube. But with regard to Greece Mahmoud was obstinate; the wild beast would not let go his prey till it was dragged out of his jaws. In those days men knew the art, which seems since to have been forgotten, of dealing with wild beasts in such cases. The “rights,” the “dignity,” the “susceptibility” of the barbarian went for very little then. The sentimental admiration of the Turk had not yet set in, nor did base talk about English interests then rule everything. Canning was guided by reason and humanity. In July 1827 England, France, and Russia signed the Treaty of London, by which they bound themselves to compel the Turk, by force, if it should be needful, to acknowledge the freedom of Greece. In November was fought the great battle of Navarino. Three great European powers, representing three great divisions of the Christian name, Orthodox Russia, Catholic France, Protestant England, joined their forces to crush the power of the barbarian and to set free his victims. The Turkish and Egyptian fleet was destroyed, and Greece was saved. But by that time the great English Minister was dead: the Treaty of London was his last work. Men succeeded him who could not understand his spirit or walk in his steps. The great salvation of Navarino was spoken of in the next Kings speech as an “untoward event.” England therefore had no share in the great works that followed. France had the glory of clearing Peloponnesus from the Egyptian troops; Russia had the glory of bringing the Turk on his knees at Adrianople. Mahmoud himself had to yield, and by accepting the Treaty of London, to consent to the liberation of Greece.

Such was the wise and generous policy of England under a great Minister; such was the way in which she fell back under smaller men. Such was the way in which, fifty years back, three great European powers could join together to do righteousness. The pride of the Turk was utterly humbled, his power was utterly broken. A large part of his dominions was taken from him, that is a large part of mankind was set free from his tyranny and again admitted to the rights of human beings. Servia and Greece were now free; Greece became not only free, but altogether independent. This last was a special humbling of Mahmoud’s pride. He had insolently said that he would allow no interference between him and those whom he called his subjects. No one should interfere with his right to rob, massacre, and do all other things that a Sultan does to his sub­jects. He was presently driven to acknowledge the independence of those subjects, to deal with them as an independent power, to receive a minister from them, and to send a minister to them. And all this was done simply by union, determination and vigour, by dealing with the Turk, not after any sentimental fashion, but as reason and experience teach us is the only way to deal with him. Mahmoud bragged as loud as any Turk can brag now; but his bragging was stopped at Navarino and Adrianople. And we learn another lesson from this history. As long as Mahmoud thought that he could have his own way, he massacred whom he would, Christian and Mussulman. After Navarino and Adrianople he left off massacring. To bring the Turk to reason only needs a will: the way is perfectly plain. Canning not only knew the way, but had the will. Any other Minister who has Canning’s will can easily find Canning’s way.

Greece now became an independent state; but it took some time for the powers exactly to settle its boundaries and its form of government. Several boundaries were traced out, one after another, and at one time it was actually proposed to leave all the western part of the present kingdom, Aitolia and Akarnania, to the Turk. As it was, somewhat more than this was set free; but still a large part of the Greek nation was left in bondage, includ­ing some of the parts which had done and suf­fered most in the War of Independence. Epeiros, Thessaly, and Chalcidice, Crete and Chios, and Psara, the birthplace of Kanarés, were all left to the barbarians. It is hard to give any reason why, if one part of the nation was to be freed, another part was to be left in bondage. And now that the Turk was utterly cowed and weakened, it would have been as easy to wrest a large territory from him as a small one. The truth is that the powers were beginning to be afraid of their own work. Nowhere in Europe was there any man in power with a wise and generous heart like Canning. The crushing of a despot and the setting up of a free people was something which seemed new and strange. It was something which the powers of those days, as they could not wholly back out of what they had already done, seemed anxious to do as feebly and imperfectly as they could. Mere diplomacy seems never to understand either the facts of the past or the needs of the present. For mere diplomacy always thinks that it can settle every thing by mere words and by signing papers; it leaves the thoughts and wishes and feelings of nations out of sight. The diplomatists wished to cripple Greece, and they did cripple it. In so doing, they did a great wrong to that part of the Greek nation which they left in bondagc. and they hindered that part of Greece which was set free from flourishing as it otherwise might have done. All history shows that, when a people has been set free, its impulse is to extend itself and to enlarge its borders, either by arms or by persuasion. Greece was shut up in a narrow boundary, and was strictly forbidden to extend itself. The policy of the powers with regard to Greece was as much as if, when the Swiss Con­federation began, the powers of Europe had said that Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden might remain united, and might even admit Luzern, but that they might on no account admit Bern or Zurich. Happily in the fourteenth century there was no diplomacy, and nations were allowed to grow; in the nineteenth century there was diplomacy, and nations were not allowed to grow.

The folly of the narrow boundary given to the new state was soon shown in a marked way. Greece had as yet no settled form of government, and things were in a most confused and disorderly state. Servia had been more lucky; for her struggle had given her a prince of her own, who, though he did some evil deeds, was a man of energy and knew how to rule. But Count Capo d’Istria, who was now at the head of affairs in Greece, though a better man than Milosh, was less able to rule over a newly freed people. The great powers now settled that Greece should have a king, and a king of some foreign reigning family. Prince Leopold, afterwards King of the Belgians, accepted the crown; but he presently resigned it, because he saw that no Greek state could flourish which was pent up in such a narrow frontier. Above all, he saw no good in a Greek kingdom which did not take in Crete. But no; Crete was on no account to be free, and Greece thus lost the services of a prince who, as his reign in Belgium showed, was the wisest prince of his time. Capo d’Istria was murdered in 1831, and the confusions in Greece got worse. At last in 1833 the powers sent a young Bavarian prince, Otho by name, as king, with a Bavarian regency. The regents did not know how to manage matters, and by their centralizing schemes they rooted out such traces of the old institutions of the country as had lived through years of Turkish bondage. Otho reigned as an absolute sovereign till 1845, when the kingdom became constitutional. In 1862 Otho was deposed, and was presently succeeded by another young foreign prince, George of Denmark. In 1864 the Ionian Islands, hitherto a nominal commonwealth under the protectorate of England, became part of the Greek kingdom.

It is the fashion to say that the experiment of Greek freedom has failed, and that its failure proves something against setting free other lands which are under the Turk. In a certain sense, it is true that free Greece has failed. That is, it has failed to answer the extravagant hopes which were formed by some Greeks and some friends of Greece when the War of Independence began. Some people thought that Greece was to be again all that Greece had been in days when Greece was in truth the whole of the civilized world. The history of the world never goes back in that kind of way. It is also perfectly true that the kingdom of Greece has not flourished so much as even more reasonable people hoped. Still Greece has gained greatly, and has advanced greatly, since she was set free. She is again a nation. She is tree from the brutal and bloody yoke of the Turk. She is under civilized instead of barbarian rule. And her difficulties have been great, difficulties which were partly inherent in the case, partly the fault of the European powers. Greece might have succeeded better, if she had had no memories of days of past greatness, and if she had been less in sight of modern European civilization. She might then have grown steadily and healthily from the point which she had already reached. As it is, she has, in the very nature of the case, had unsuitable models set before her. Then again, in those parts of the world, those states seem to succeed best which are most left to them­selves. Servia has succeeded better than Greece, because Servia has been less meddled with than Greece; Montenegro has succeeded better than Servia, because Montenegro has not been meddled with at all. But a great part of the failure of Greece, so far as Greece has failed, has been the fault of the European powers. She has been half cockered, half snubbed, neither of which are healthy ways of treating a young nation. The powers gave her an absurd frontier, and sent a prince instead of a man to rule her. If we look below the surface of modern affairs in Greece, we shall see that whatever is good in the state of Greece has been the work of the Greek people themselves, that whatever is bad is the work of foreigners, or of Greeks who have aped the ways of foreigners. Greece has done much and has gained much. At all events, no Greek could wish to exchange the present place of his country for the place of any province of the Turk. If the promising child has done less as a grown man than might have been hoped, it is largely because foolish nurses insisted on keeping him in swaddling clothes throughout the days of his youth.

After the final establishment of the Greek kingdom came a time of more than twenty years, an epoch in which men’s minds changed in a wonderful way with regard to South-eastern Europe. Sultan Mahmoud, who had shown himself one of the bloodiest tyrants in history, set up in his later days for a reformer. The man who had the blood of Chios on his hands put forth beautiful proclamations, as his successors have done since, promising all kinds of good govern­ment to his subjects of all religions. This kind of talk has taken many people in; but no Turkish reform has been ever carried out; no Turkish reform was ever meant to be carried out. The object is always simply to throw dust in the eyes of Europe. For the Turk is cunning, and he knows that he can always deceive some people, especially diplomatists and others who look to names instead of things. The only real reform that Mahmoud or any of his successors ever made is doubtless a reform from the point of view of the Turk, but it is no reform from the point of view of the nations which the Turk holds in bondage. That is, Mahmoud and his successors, while they have broken all their promises of good government to the subject nations, have improved and strengthened their army in order the better to keep the subject nations in bondage. And in this work officers of several European nations, to their everlasting shame, have not blushed to help them.

Then again, besides this foolish belief in Turkish reforms, a foolish fear of Russia grew up in men’s minds during this time. No doubt it is wise for any power to be on its guard against any other power; but it is not wise to treat any power with unworthy suspicion, and to try to thwart the objects of that power, simply because they are the objects of that power. Gradually a strange notion has sprung up that, because Russia was thought to be dangerous, therefore Russia is to be thwarted in every way, and the Turk is to be patched and bolstered up in every way. For fear lest Russia should get too much power, Englishmen became ready to support the Turk, and to give him greater power of oppression. Nothing could be more foolish. If we are afraid of Russia taking the South-eastern lands or gaining an exclusive influence in those lands, the true way to hinder it is for ourselves to gain influence in those lands, by showing ourselves the friends of the subject nations and helping them in every way to throw off the yoke. In all their struggles, in the Greek War of Independence and in every other, the hearts of the subject nations turned first to England. They turned to England, because they wished to be free, and they held that England, as a free country, would help them better than any other. For one moment under Canning, England acted a wise, a righteous, and a generous part. She made herself the protector of the oppressed, and the oppressed gave her their love and thankfulness. Since then we have gone back. We have thrust away the nations which asked our protection ; we have done all that we could to prop up the wicked power of their oppressors. In our foolish fear of Russia, we have done all that Russia could most wish us to do. We have taught the subject nations, whose impulse was to look to England for help, to look to Russia for help instead. And when we have done all this, we turn round and blame, sometimes Russia, sometimes the subject nations, for a state of things which is simply the result of our own foolish fears.

In the latter days of Mahmoud, while his pretended reforms did little good to the Christians, they set his Mahometan subjects against him. There were Mahometan revolts in Bosnia, Albania, and other parts, and Mahomet Ali of Egypt, the same who had helped Mahmoud against the Greeks, began to found a dominion of his own. He founded a dominion at the expense of the Ottoman Turks, just as the first Ottomans had founded a dominion at the expense of the Seljuk Turks. He held Egypt and Crete, and presently conquered Syria. As usual, the rule of the new despot was not so bad as that of the old one. Mahomet was a tyrant of that kind which will not endure smaller tyrants; so, like Ali of Joannina, he established, if not really good government, at least something of stern order in his dominions. It was clearly the natural course of things for the new power to grow at the expense of the old; and it was clearly the policy of the European powers to let the two bar­barians struggle against one another, and only to keep them from doing any further wrong to any Christian people. But by this time men had begun to think that English interests called for the support of the Turk. So the power of England was used to take Syria from Mahomet, and to give it back to the Turk. That meant to take both Mahometans and Christians in Syria from a rule which was comparatively good, and to put them under the worst rule of all. Since then the Lurk has had his way in Syria; he has done his Damascus massacres and the like. Happily for once England did interfere to get a better government for Lebanon Here again what was gained was gained by energy, by acts and not by words. It marks the difference between Lord Dufferin’s interference and later cases of interference, that, instead of idle talk and compliments, a Turkish Pasha was hanged, and a large measure of freedom was given to his Christian victims.

These Asiatic affairs concern our subject only indirectly, nor have I told them at all at length. Nor need we here to go at length through the provisions of the several treaties which were made between the liberation of Greece and Servia and the beginning of the Crimean war. Nor yet is it needful to go through the history of that war. But it must be remem­bered that the disputes which led to that war arose, not with Russia, but with Louis-Napoleon Buonaparte. It was Buonaparte’s evident policy to pick quarrels in succession with the great military powers of the continent, and each time to give his doings a respectable look, by getting some free nation to help him. He began with Russia, and altogether deceived England into a war with Russia, though Russia had done England no harm. He next attacked Austria, under pretence of helping Italy. But Italy was not deceived as England was; she was able to make use of Buonaparte against her enemy, and then to estab­lish her own freedom in defiance of Buonaparte himself. Lastly, he attacked Prussia, expecting that he would deceive South Germany ; but South Germany, as all the world knows, would not listen to him, and this third time he and his power were got rid of altogether. But the first time England was the dupe of his schemes, and plunged into a war with Russia on behalf of the Turk. Buonaparte be­gan by getting up a quarrel about the Holy Places at Jerusalem on behalf of the Latins against the Orthodox. Then the Emperor Nicolas of Russia demanded a fuller acknowledgement of his rights as protector of the  Orthodox, and he, on the Turks refusal, occupied the Principalities. The Turk then declared war and was, after a while, helped by France and England, and, later again, by Sardinia. Few Englishmen perhaps now remember the noble appeals of the Russian Emperor to his subjects when he was thus attacked by two Christian powers who drew the sword to hinder the nations of South-eastern Europe from having the protection of a sovereign of their own faith against their oppressor. The English declaration of war spoke of “coming forwards in the defence of an ally whose territory is invaded, and whose dignity and independence are assailed”. It went on to speak of an ally, “the integrity and independence of whose empire had been recognized as essential to the peace of Europe.” It even spoke of “the sympathies of the English people with right against wrong.” The Turk then, whose opwer England had helped to crush in 1827, had in 1854 become the ally of England. To be the ally of the Turk could only mean to become the enemy of the Turk’s enemies, that is, the enemy, not only of Russia, but of the nations which the Turk holds in bondage. It was declared that the “independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire”—that is, the continuance of the bondage of those nations—was essential to the peace of Europe. It was declared that right was on the side of the barbarian (tower which existed only by tramp­ling every form of right under foot We went to war to maintain the dignity and independence of the common enemy of Christendom and humanity. It is hard to understand what was meant by the “dignity” of the chief of a barbarian horde encamped on the lands of other nations. This “independence,” at any rate, could mean nothing but the uncontrolled power of doing evil at his own will.

In all these dealings with the Turk, it is most important to remember that the ordinary phrases of law and politics do not apply. There is no question of international right in any matter that touches the Turk; for the existence of the Turkish power is itself a breach of all international right. He exists only by the denial of all national rights to the nations which he keeps in bondage. The Russian Emperor was not interfering between a lawful government and its subjects; for the rule of the Turk is not a government, but a mere system of brigandage; and those whom the Turk calls his subjects are not his subjects but his victims. And if there was danger to Europe from Russia gaining an exclusive influence over the South-eastern nations, England had no one but herself to blame for that. It was the policy of England which had driven those nations to seek for a protector in Russia, when they would much rather have found a protector in England. In such a cause as this, in the cause of the independence of the Turk, that is, on behalf of his right to hold Christian nations in bondage, three Chris­tian powers made war upon Russia. The armies of England, France, and Sardinia appeared as allies of the armies of the Turk. Free Greece was held down by force, lest she should give what help she could against the common enemy. And, as if to throw mockery upon titles and badges which once had a meaning, the Sultan, the successor of Mahomet, was admitted to the Order of the Garter, the Order of Saint George, and the Grand Cross of the Bath was given to Omar Pasha, a renegade of Slavonic birth, who had forsaken his nation and his religion for the pay of the Turk. This man had done the Turk's work against his countrymen in Montenegro and other Christian lands, and he was now commander of the barbarian army against Russia.

The war was ended by the treaty of Paris in 1856. The terms of that treaty arc well worth studying. By its seventh article, the powers which signed it, France, Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and Sardinia, declared that the Sublime Porte—that is, the Turk—was admitted to partake in the advan­tages of public law and the European concert. That is to say, the barbarian was, by a kind of legal fiction, to be treated as a civilized man.                                                    He was to be outwardly admitted to an European concert in which it was utterly impossible that he  could have any real share. To admit the Turk to the advan­tages of public law is like giving the protection of the law to the robber and refusing it to those whom he robs. As applied to the Turk, the word law has no meaning; for the very existence of his power implies the wiping out of all law. To admit the Turk to the European concert was to give an Euro­pean recognition to a power which is not and never can be European. It was to give the sanction of Europe to the position of the Turk; it was to give an European approval to the bondage of European nations held down under a barbarian yoke. Things had indeed strangely gone luck since earlier times. It was a step in advance when the pride of the Turk was humbled at Carlowitz. It was a further step in advance when his pride was further humbled at Kainardji. Now the work of a century and a half was undone, when the barbarian was solemnly ad­mitted into the fellowship of European and Christian powers. To admit the Turk to the advantages of public law and of European concert was in effect to declare that the South-eastern nations were shut out from the advantages of that law and that concert. The nations themselves, and the power which de­barred those nations from the rights of nations, could not both enjoy them at the same time.

In the same spirit the powers further engaged to respect the “independence and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire” and they guaranteed the strict observation of this engagement. It is worth while to stop and see what these words mean. To guarantee the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire could only mean that the powers would hinder any part of the lands which were under the yoke of the Turk from being set free from his yoke, whether by be­coming independent states or by annexation to any other power. It meant, for instance, that Thessaly, Epeiros, and Crete might not be joined to Greece. It meant that Bosnia, Herzegovina, or Bulgaria might not become independent states as Greece had become. It meant that no part of these lands might be added to Montenegro, or even put under the power of Austria. It was declared to be a matter of European interest that the Turk should keep what he had got. And it was further declared to be matter of European interest that the Turk should be allowed to treat all that he had got as he thought good. For the powers guaranteed the independence of the Ottoman Empire, which could only mean the right of the Sultan to do what he pleased; that is of course, to commit any oppression that he pleased. And this was made clearer still by the ninth clause. Sultan Abd-ul-Medjid had at the time of the treaty just put forth one of the usual papers of lying promises, talking about his con­cern for all his subjects, and promising to do this and that without distinction of race or religion. Reason and experience should by this time have taught men that all promises of the kind were good for nothing. But this empty talk of the Turk was treated by the powers as if it had been something serious. The treaty speaks respectfully of the firman which had spon­taneously emanated from the sovereign will of the Sultan. The powers go on to say—one might almost think that it was in irony—that they accept the value of this communication; and they go on to disclaim any right collectively or separately to interfere with the relations between the Sultan and his subjects, or in the internal administration of his empire. That is to say, if words have any meaning, the powers pledged themselves to let the Turk do what he would with the nations under his yoke, and promised that they would do nothing to help them The relations between the Sultan and his subjects could only mean the usual relations between the op­pressor and the oppressed, between the murderer and the murdered, between the robber and the robbed, between the doer of every kind of outrage and the sufferer of every kind of outrage. Those relations had been for ages, as the powers must have known, the re­lations between the Sultan and those whom he called his subjects. There was no guaranty, only the word of a Turk, to make any one think that things were likely to change. As a matter of fact, they have not changed; things have gone on since Abd-ul Medjid’s paper of false promiscs exactly as they went on before, or, if anything, they have been worse still. The rela­tions between the Sultan and his subjects, that is the relations between the tyrant and his victims, have gone on just as they went on before; or, if anything, they have become worse still. And with those relations the Christian powers pledged themselves not to interfere.

There is of course no need to believe that the European powers deliberately meant to do all this. They may have really put faith in the false promises of the Turk. To be sure the Turk had even then broken his word so often that no wise man ought to have trusted him; still he had not then broken his word so often as he has now. Or they may have been simply led away by the misuse of names and phrases. They may really not have fully taken in what the “independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire” meant. They may not have seen how dif­ferent a meaning is conveyed by the words “relations between the Sultan add his subjects” from the mean­ing which those words bear when they are applied to any European sovereign. They might not have taken in the great distinction that, though the relations be­tween any European sovereign and his subjects or part of his subjects may happen to be bad and oppressive, still the evil is incidental and may be reformed, but that with regard to the Sultan and his subjects the relation is essentially evil in itself and never can be reformed. Diplomatists are so much governed by words and names, they are so used to think so much of sovereigns and courts, or at most of governments and states, and so little of nations, that they may really not have understood what it was to which they were pledging themselves. But, whatever they meant to pledge themselves to, what they did pledge themselves to was this, that the Turk might do what he would with the nations of South-eastern Europe, and that the Christian powers would do nothing to hinder him.

The paper of false promises which was now put forth by Abd-ul-Medjid was not the first paper of the kind, neither was it the last. Sultan after Sultan has put forth paper after paper of the same kind. These papers have been full of promises which, if they had been carried out, would have made as good a system of government as a despotic government can be. Only they never have been carried out; they have never been meant to be carried out; they never can be carried out. The object of the Turk in making these promises is to go on working his wicked will on the subject nations, and at the same time to deceive the European powers who ought to step in and deliver them. The Turk promises anything, but he does nothing. His tyranny gets worse and worse, because it has become the tyranny, not so much of the Sultans themselves as of a gang of men about them. We have seen that in the time of the great Sultans the oppres­sion of the subject people was not so great as it became afterwards. And when, in later times, the Pashas of the several provinces became hereditary and nearly independent, a Pasha would sometimes take a certain care and feel a certain pride in the well-being of his province, and would therefore not push oppression to the uttermost. It has been in the days of pretended reform that the last stage of oppression has been reached. Every chance, every hope, has passed away from the oppressed people since all power has come in our own day into the hands of a corrupt Ring—as the Americans call it—at Con­stantinople. These men have carried centralization to its extreme point, and with centralization, corrup­tion, oppression, evil of every kind, have reached their height. A gang of men who in any other land would find their way to the gaol or the gallows rule the Ottoman Empire. It is worth while to see who these men are. A man who inherits power from his fore­fathers, if he has the faults, will also commonly have some of the virtues, of high birth; he will understand the feelings which are expressed in the phrase “noblesse oblige”. A man who has risen from a low estate to a great one by his own merits is the noblest sight on earth. But the men who form the Ring at Constantinople belong to neither of these classes. The man who has risen from a low estate to a great one by vile means, the man who has bought his place by bribes, the slave who has risen by craft and cringing, the wretch who has risen by that viler path which Christian tongues are forbidden to speak of, but which is the Turk’s surest path to power, in such men as these the lowest and basest form of human nature is reached. And such men as these rule at pleasure over South-eastern Europe. Barba­rians at heart, false, cruel, foul, as any of the old Turks, but without any of the higher qualities of the old Turks, these men have picked up just enough of the outward show of civilization to deceive those who do not look below the surface. They meet the Ministers of civilized powers on equal terms; they wear European clothes; they talk an European tongue, and are spoken of as “Excellency” and “ Highness.” The wretched beings called Sultans are thrust aside as may be thought good at the moment; but the relations between the Sultan and his subjects, the relations with which at the treaty of Paris the Christian powers bound themselves not to interfere, go on everywhere in full force. There is no barbarian so dangerous as the barbarian who is cunning enough to pass himself off for a civilized man.

Under such a rule as this it naturally follows that sheer falsehood governs everything. Lying promises have been made over and over again, whenever it has been wished to make a fair show in the eyes of Europeans. But of course no promise is ever kept. The Turk professes to abolish slavery; but slavery and the slave-trade go on. In truth the peculiar institutions of Turkish society could not go on without them. The Turk promises that Christians shall be allowed freely to own and buy land. But when the Christian buys land, his Mussulman neighbour comes and takes the fruits, or perhaps turns him out of the land altogether. The Turk promises that Christians shall have scats in local councils. That is to say, in a district where the Christians are a great majority, one or two Christians are admitted to the local council, simply to make a show. They are afraid to oppose their Mussulman colleagues, and their Mussulman colleagues are able to say that the Christian members have consented to the acts of the council. The Turk promises that men of all religions shall be equal before the law. But it is certain that in most parts of die Turkish dominions no redress can be had for any wrong done by a Mussulman to a Christian, except by bribing both judge and witnesses. Christians are put to death without trial simply for resisting Musulmans in committing the foulest outrages. In short no Christian under the Turkish rule can feel that his life, his property, the honour of his wife and children, are safe for a moment. The land is ruined by heavy taxes, wrung from the people by every kind of cruelty, in order to keep up the luxuries and wickedness of their tyrants. Such, under the rule of the Ring, are the ordinary relations between the Sultan and his sub­jects. To keep on those relations untouched is one of those “sovereign rights” of the Sultan about which diplomatists are very tender. To meddle with his exercise of those rights—that is with the way in which the Ring exercises them for him—would be to touch his honour, his dignity, his susceptibility; it would be to interfere with the independence of the Ottoman Empire. To lessen the area within which those rights are exercised would be to interfere with its integrity. And the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire are, we all know, sacred things. They, and all that they imply, all that comes of them, are in some mysterious way essential to the welfare of Europe. They are cheaply purchased, we are bound to believe, by the desolation of wide and fertile kingdoms, and by the life-long wretchedness of their people.

One thing is always specially to be borne in mind, that oppression and wrong of every kind are not merely the occasional, but the constant, state of things under the rule of the Turk. We are apt to think of some sudden and special outburst, like the doings of the Turk in Bulgaria last year, as if it stood by itself. In truth those doings in no way stand by themselves. The kind of deeds which were done then, and at which all mankind shuddered, were nothing new, nothing rare, nothing strange. They were the ordinary relations between the Sultan and his subjects, the ordinary exercise of his sovereign rights. They were the necessary and immediate results of the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Deeds of the same kind which were done then arc always doing wherever the Turk has power. The only difference between the Bulga­rian atrocities and the ordinary state of things under the Turk is that certain deeds which are always being done now and then were done, in much greater num­bers than usual, in particular places at a particular time. Atrocities were going on before; they have been going on since; the only difference is that in those particular places, at that particular time, they were thicker on the ground than usual. It is the same kind of difference as if a police magistrate, who is used to deal every day with some half-dozen charges of drunkenness, should some day find that he had to deal with hundreds or thousands of charges. In both cases, there is nothing new or strange in the thing itself; only there is more of it than usual. This is a plain truth which must never pass out of mind. The ordinary state of things under Turkish rule, those relations between the Sultan and his subjects with which the powers of Europe pledged themselves not to meddle, are simply a lasting state of Bulgarian atrocities. Only it is not often that so many are done at one time or in one place, as were done in particular times and places last year.

There is something very strange in the way in which the European powers, and England to our shame more than any other, have lent themselves to prop up this wicked dominion of the Turk. We have done for the Turk things that we do not do for any other power. We have treated him as if we had some special call to prop up his dominion, as if it was some special business of ours to persuade ourselves and to persuade others that bitter was sweet and that evil was good. Every thing that one power could do for another has been done for the Turk, although everything that is done for the Turk is done against the enslaved nations. It has been thought a great point to give the Turk every help in providing himself with a strong army and navy. The strong army and navy are of course among the means by which he holds the subject nations in bondage. Officers of Christian nations, Englishmen among them, have not been ashamed to take service under the barbarian and to help in his work of oppression. Christian governments have not been ashamed to lend officers to discipline the armies by which the oppressor holds down his victims. Christian men have not been ashamed to lend their money to the Turk, and Christian governments have not been ashamed to encourage them in lending it, well knowing that the money would be spent on the follies and cruelty of a barbarian court, and knowing that the interest on the money could be paid only by practising every form of oppression on the people of the subject nations. The subject nations themselves look meanwhile with somewhat different eyes on the sovereign rights of the Sultan and on the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire. To them those rights, that independence and integrity, simply mean subjection to strangers in their own land, subjection which in­volves every kind of wrong that one human being can do to another. In their eyes the Sultan who calls himself their sovereign is not their sovereign, nor do they hold that he has any rights over them. By them the foreign tyrant at whose bidding they are daily robbed, murdered, and dishonoured, is known, not as their sovereign, but as “the Blood-sucker”. And to throw off the yoke of the Blood-sucker, they deem it their duty to strive in every way, and to strive with arms in their hands whenever they have the chance.

We have seen that by the treaty of 1856 the Turk promised to do this and that which he never did, and that the European powers declared that they had no right to interfere between him and those whom he called his subjects. Since that day the enslaved nations have had no hope but in their own swords. Servia and Greece had more or less of help from the European powers ; but in the later revolts against the Turk the Christians have never had any help from the European powers, and in most cases the influence of the European answers has been used against them and in favour of their masters.

Since 1856 there have been several revolts of the subject nations, and several wars have been waged by the Turks against the independent state of Monte­negro. When the treaty of Paris was made, when there was so much care to guarantee the independence and integrity of the Turk, no one thought of guaranteeing the independence and integrity of Montenegro against the Turk. By the terms of the treaty it was lawful for the Turk to enslave any part of Montenegro; it was not lawful lor Montenegro to set free any part of Turkey. But in all struggles the free people of the Black Mountain have always helped their enslaved brethren, and their enslaved brethren have always helped them. And both have always been helped by the brave men of the Bocche di Cattaro, who themselves not so long back revolted against their Austrian rulers. But, though late events have led us to think more of the Slavonic nations than of the Greeks, we must remember that the Greeks have suffered equally, and that they have more than once revolted as well as the Slavs. And, when they have revolted, they have of course been helped by their free countrymen in the kingdom of Greece, just as the Slavs have been helped by their brethren in Montenegro and Dalmatia. To people who go wholly by words and names, it seems something strange and wicked that these free Greeks and Slavs should help their oppressed kinsfolk. They talk about “foreign aggression, “foreign intrigues,” “secret societies,” and every other kind of nonsense, sometimes of falsehood. Yet these men who help the oppressed are simply doing what brave and generous men would do and have ‘done in every time and place. They are simply doing what every Englishman would do in the like case. If we could fancy a state of things in which one English county was free and the next county in Turkish bondage, it is quite certain that the men of the free county would help their enslaved neighbours when they revolted. It is quite certain that they would plan schemes of revolt with them, and would point out to them fitting times and places for revolt. To do this, which is simply what every good man would do everywhere, is, when it is done by Greeks or Slaves, called “foreign intrigue,” “foreign agitation,” and the like. So, if we could conceive Yorkshire being free and Lancashire being in bondage, and if the men of York­shire did anything to help the men of Lancashire, they ought to be called “foreign intriguers” too. For there is no greater difference between the men of Monte­negro and the men of Herzegovina, between the men of Aitolia and the men of Thessaly, than there is between the men of Yorkshire and the men of Lancashire. No reason can be given why one part of either nation should be free and the other part in bondage. At least, if there is any reason, it is a reason that can be seen only by diplomatists or by sentimental lovers of Turks. The reason is not seen by those who are most concerned in the matter, and it never will be seen by them.

Of the Greek revolts one was actually going on in Epeiros at the time of the Crimean war. It was of course thought very wrong both for the men of Epeiros to try and set themselves free, and for the men of free Greece to try and help them. They were said to be stirred up by Russia and the like. If they were stirred up by Russia, it is not easy to see what there was to blame either on their part or on the part of Russia. But another Greek revolt, ten years after the treaty of Paris, is of more importance. The wisdom of King Leopold, when he said that Crete ought to be joined to the Greek kingdom, and the folly of those who would not let it be joined, were now proved indeed. In 1866 the people of Crete rose against their tyrants, and they kept up a gallant struggle till 1868. In this war the way in which the en­slaved people were treated by the western powers, and especially by England, comes out very strongly. In many parts of the Turkish dominions English consuls seem to be sent there only to cook reports in favour of the Turk ; but in Crete the English consul, Mr. Dickson, was a humane man, who did all that he could to save women, children, and other helpless people from the cruelty of the Turks. Some of these poor people were carried off in safety to Greece in ships of several European nations, amongst others in the English ship Assurance under the command of Captain Pym. But the English Foreign Secretary, Lord Stanley, now Earl of Derby, forbad that any such act of humanity should be done again. It does not appear that the governments of any other European nation acted in the same way. England alone, or rather the minister of England—for few Englishmen knew much about it—must bear the shame of having in cold blood forbidden that old men and women and children and helpless persons of all kinds should be saved from the jaws of the barbarians. The thing is beyond doubt; it is written in a Blue Book; no man can deny the fact; no good man can justify it. No blacker page in the history of England, no blacker page in the history of human nature, can be found than the deed of the man who, for fear of being misconstrued in this way or that—for that seems to have been the real motive—could write letters for­bidding any further help to be given to those who were simply seeking to save their lives from their destroyers. No doubt what was going on in Crete was the ordinary relation between the Sultan and his subjects; no doubt the powers had pledged them­selves not to interfere between the Sultan and his subjects ; still it is hard to believe that the treaty of Paris itself meant that no help should be given in such a case as this. But if it did, then the morality which can talk of the faith of treaties in such a case is the morality of Herod. If any one holds that Lord Derby did right in deliberately ordering that the Cretan refugees should not be saved from their murderers, because of the treaty of Paris, he need only go one step further to hold that Herod did right in ordering John the Baptist to be beheaded, because his oath had bound him to do so. The faith of treaties and the sanctity of an oath are much the same in the two cases. No treaty, no oath, can bind a man himself to do a crime: nor can it bind him, when he has the power of hindering a crime, to allow it to be done.

Crete was in the end conquered; and, again to the shame of England, it was largely conquered by means of an Englishman. This was an English naval officer, Hobart by name, who was not ashamed to enter into the service of the barbarian, to take his pay, and to help him to bring Christian nations under his yoke. In the old days of the crusades, there was one Englishman, Robert the son of Godwine, who went to the holy war, who saved the life of King Baldwin in battle, who was at last taken prisoner by the Mussulmans, and who, rather than deny his faith, was shot to death with arrows in the market-place of Cairo. Somewhat later there was another Englishman, Robert of Saint Alban’s, a knight of the Temple, who betrayed his order, his country, and his faith, who took service under Saladin, and mocked the last agonies of the Christians when Jerusalem was taken. We have had such men as both of these in our own day. The glory of Robert son of Godwine has its like in the glory of Hast­ings. The shame of Robert of Saint Alban's has its like in the shame of Hoabrt. Of all the deeds done in naval warfare surely the most glorious was when Hastings went forth in his Kartería to free Greece from the barbarian. The basest was surely when Hobart abused English naval skill to bring back Greeks under the Turkish yoke. Crete was conquered; the Turk again, after his manner, made false promises, and set up a sham constitution. Under this constitution the island has of course been as much oppressed as ever, and it is now as ready as ever to seek deliverance from the yoke and union with its free brethren. So it always has been; so it always will be; men who feel the yoke on their own necks will always strive to cast it off. Men who see their brethren under the yoke will always come to help them to shake off the yoke. And they will do this, even though diplomatists tell them that, for some reason which they at least cannot see, the yoke must still be pressed upon them.

Among the other nations which are subject or tributary to the Turk, the Romanian lands north of the Danube have made great advances towards freedom since the treaty of Paris. By that treaty Wallachia and Moldavia were to remain distinct principalities under the supremacy of the Turk. The territory of Moldavia was somewhat increased by the cession of a small part of Bessarabia which Russia had by the treaty to give up, in order to keep her frontier away from the Danube. In 1858 the relations of these lands were more definitely settled. The two principalities were united for some purposes; but they were still to have separate native princes. The princes were to be chosen by the assemblies of each principality, and to be invested by the Sultan, to whom each principality was to pay a tribute. But the Romanian people were eager for a more perfect union. In 1859 the two principalities elected the same prince, Alexander Cusa. As the union of the two principalities made the Romanian nation stronger, the Turk and the friends of the Turk grumbled; but the Turk had to acknowledge the new state of things under protest. In 1866 Prince Alexander was deposed, and a prince of a reigning family, Charles of Hohenzollem-Sigmaringen, was chosen. The Turk again grumbled, and made show of fight­ing; but again he had to give way. And now Romania, under a prince who is a kinsman of the German Emperor, may be looked on as practically independent of the Turk.

But the main interest of these later times gathers round the Slavonic subjects of the Turk and their free brethren in Montenegro. It will be seen at once by the map that the principalities of Servia and Montenegro come at one point very near to each other. They thus leave the lands of Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Turkish Croatia almost cut off from the mass of the Turkish dominion. These are the lands where oppression has been even worse than elsewhere. It has been so above all in Bosnia, where the Mussulmans arc not Turks but descendants of renegade Slaves. And mark further that, while the oppression in these lands is even greater than else­where, their people have more to stir up hopes of freedom than in most other parts of the Turkish dominion. Enslaved Bosnia naturally envies free Servia; enslaved Herzegovina naturally envies free Montenegro. Add to this that a great part of these lands consists of wild mountains, where a few brave men can easily hold out against a much greater force. In these lands therefore revolts have been common. In Bosnia one might say that there is always some revolt of some kind going on, for in that land there is a treble discontent. The Christians are discontented, alike with their imme­diate oppressors, the Mussulmans of the country and with the Sultans who promise reforms and do not carry them out. The Mussulmans, on the other hand, who, though oppressors of Christians, are themselves for the most part very lax Mussulmans, are almost equally discontented with the Sultans, because, under the centralizing system at Constan­tinople, they have lost a good deal of their power. It seems strange that the part of the whole Turkish dominion which is in the worst bondage of all should be a land which is furthest away of any in Europe from the seat of the Turk’s own power, a land which borders close on a Christian kingdom, to which part of it was actually joined by the peace of Passarowitz. But though there have always been disturbances of one kind or another in Bosnia, the great centre of real national revolt has rather been in Herzegovina. There men see the free heights of Montenegro rising above them, and they ask why they should not be as free as their brethren. It is no wonder then that the Turk has given his main efforts to subdue the valiant principality. A short sketch of its later history will therefore be needful in order fully to understand the relations between the Turks, the Montenegrins, and those neighbours of Montenegro who are, some under Turkish and some under Austrian rule.

Not very long before the Crimean war, the constitution of Montenegro was altogether changed. The line of prince-bishops came to an end. The bishopric, with the civil and military government attached to it, had been as nearly hereditary as a bishopric could lie. That is, it commonly passed from uncle to nephew. In 1851 the last Vladika or Prince-Bishop, Peter the Second, died. His nephew Daniel, who, according to rule, would have succeeded him, felt no call to become a Bishop; so it was agreed between him and the Senate that the spiritual and temporal powers should be separated, that Daniel should reign as an hereditary prince, and that the new Metropolitan should be simply Bishop without any temporal power. The Russian Emperor, the one protector of Montenegro, approved; but the Turk sought a ground of quarrel out of this change in the constitution of a perfectly independent state. The Prince and people of Montenegro had a clear right to make what changes in their own government they thought fit; but it must be remembered that the Sultans have always claimed a supremacy over Montenegro, which they have never been able to establish and which the Montenegrins have never acknowledged. In 1852 Sultan Albd-ul-Medjid sent the Slavonic renegade Omar to try to subdue the free Slavonic and Christian state. The people of Herze­govina, as usual, helped their brethren, and the renegade was beaten in several fights. In 185, by the intervention of Russia and Austria, the Turk sus­pended hostilities with Montenegro; the insurgents of Herzegovina had been already cajoled by the usual promises to lay down their arms.

During the Russian war Montenegro, as a state, took no share in the struggle. But, on the one hand, Prince Daniel found it impossible wholly to keep his people from action against the Turk, and, on the other hand, his efforts to remain neutral only raised up disaffection and revolt in his own dominions. At the Congress of Paris, the Prince strove to get the assem­bled powers to acknowledge his independence, and to allow an extension of the Montenegrin frontier to the sea. But the powers were just then too busy provid­ing for the interests of barbarian intruders to give any heed to the claims of the heroic people who had for so many ages formed the outpost of Christendom against them. He made the same appeal the next year, when part of the people of Herzegovina asked for annexation to Montenegro. But all that he got was a recommendation to acknowledge the supremacy of the Turk, on which condition some small increase of territory might be allowed to him. All this time war was going on, and in 1858 the Turks were utterly routed by the Montenegrins in the battle of Grahovo. Two years later Daniel was murdered. His rule had been harsh and stern; but he had done much to establish the reign of law and order in his principality. The same work has been carried on more peacefully and gently under the present Prince Nicolas, under whom the country has made perhaps greater advances than any other part of Europe has in the same short time. No land is now safer for the traveller, and the chief objects of the Prince have been peaceful objects enough, making roads and establishing schools. The death of Daniel raised the spirit of the Turks, and the spirit of the Turks showed itself in the usual fashion by increased cruelties in Herzegovina. The land was given up to the rule of bashi-bazouks. Again the people rose against their tyrants, and though the Prince did what he could to remain neutral, it was of course impossible to keep Monte­negrin volunteers from going to help their brethren. The Turk then again attacked the principality. The renegade Omar was again sent to do a renegade’s work against the faith and the nation which he had betrayed. Adorned by this time with the highest knighthood of an English order, our Grand Cross of the Bath went forth to do the errand of the barbarian to whom he had sold himself. This time unluckily he was more successful; Montenegro had now in 1862 to consent to an humiliating treaty. The claim of supremacy on the part of the Turk was not brought forward. But the Turk claimed to keep a road across the principality with Turkish garrisons and block­houses along it. The Turk also, with a mean spite, demanded the banishment of Mirko, the Prince’s father, who had been the Montenegrin commander in the war. But neither of these conditions was carried out; the demand for them was simply a piece of Turkish brag, which did little real harm. In diplomatic language a concession was made to the honour, the dignity, the susceptibility, and all the other fine and delicate feelings of the Sublime Porte. The treaty was doubtless humiliating; but it was little more. The effects of Montenegrin victory in 1858 were far more deep and lasting than the effects of Montenegrin ill-success in 1862. Seven years later, the Prince had a yet more difficult part to play, when in 1869 a revolt arose, not against the Turk, but against the Austrian. The brave men of the rose against certain regulations which they deemed to be breaches of their privileges, and they stood their ground so manfully that at last they submitted only on very favourable terms. Fourteen years of peace did much for the principality; but, as was presently shown, those fourteen years of peace did nothing to weaken the warlike strength of the unconquered race which had kept its freedom for so many ages.

And now we have at last come to the great events of the last two years, those events which all generous hearts trust may be the beginning of the end, the death-blow struck to the wicked dominion of the Turk. The oppressed nations have risen over and over again; they have been over and over again cajoled or overcome. But this time they rose with the full determination never to be again cajoled, but either to win their freedom or to perish. And they have kept their words. Wherever the Turk rules within the lands which really rose against him, he rules only over the wilderness that he has made. The people of the land are either still holding their land in arms against him, or else they have fled from his rage to seek shelter in other lands where he cannot reach them. The present movement has been the result of a general stir through all the South-Slavonic lands. The minds of the Slave people throughout the peninsula were much moved on the occasion of a visit made by Francis Joseph of Austria to his Dalmatian kingdom. It was a visit of reconciliation, and it suggested the thought that the King of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia—such are among the titles of the prince who is also King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria—was likely to take up a policy favourable to the Slavonic part of his subjects. A vigorous hand at such a moment might perhaps have gone far to carry out the dreams of Charles the Sixth. A King or Slavonia who also ruled at Vienna might have done more than the work of Bulgarian Samuel or of Servian Stephen.

The revolt began in the summer of 1875. Like most of the great events of history, its causes and its immediate occasions must be distinguished. Its one abiding cause was the abiding oppression of the Turk. Men’s minds were further stirred by the King’s visit to Dalmatia, and some special outrages of the Turks caused the flame to burst forth. The immediate occa­sion was a specially brutal outrage of the barbarians towards two Christian women. Then the sword of the Lord was drawn, as it was drawn of old by Gideon against the tyrant of Midian, by the Mac­cabees against the tyrant of Syria. And from that day to this the sword of the Lord has not been sheathed. With the praises of God in their mouth and a two-edged sword in their hands, the champions of their faith and freedom have stood forth to be avenged of the heathen and to rebuke the people. On many a bleak hill-side the men of those rugged lands have waxed valiant in fight and turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Twice in the pass of Muratovizza have the hosts of the barbarian turned and fled, smitten down before a handful of patriots, as the Persian turned and fled at Marathon, as the Austrian turned and fled at Morgarten. And the men who won those fights arc still unconquered. Neither the arms nor the promises of the Turk have overcome them. The Bloodsucker sent his armies against them, and they cut his armies in pieces, he sent his emissaries with lying words to beguile them, and they cast his lying words back in his teeth.

As the first immediate occasion of the war was the visit of King Francis Joseph to Dalmatia, it seemed for a while as if the Austrian policy was not wholly unfavourable to the Christian cause. That the strongest sympathy for the revolt was felt through all the Slavonic lands under Austrian rule might be taken for granted. As many volunteers from Montenegro joined the insurgents, so did many—in some cases the full force of whole districts—of the fighting men from the Bocche. Under her governor, General Rodich, Dalmatia was a good neighbour to the kindred land of Herzegovina. The insurgents practically got every help that they could have without what is called, in diplomatic language a breach of neutrality—that is without Austria openly taking the part of the patriots against the Turks. It was only much later, when the Magyar feeling in Hungary had shown itself strongly against the Slavs, that the Austrian govern­ment took any strong steps the other way. The strongest step of all was the kidnapping and imprisonment of the insurgent leader Ljubibratich, who was seized in May 1876 on Herzegovinian ground, and kept in ward till March 1877. The jealousy felt by the Magyars towards any thing like Slavonic inde­pendence has been one of the most striking things throughout the whole story. Their own land was delivered from the Turk by Slavonic swords; yet now they grudge any hope of deliverance to the Slavonic subjects of the Turk.

I need not here go in any detail through the his­tory, either military or diplomatic, of the year 1876. The leading facts are in everybody’s memory; the time for them to be written in detail as a matter of past history has not yet come. I will only point out some or those features of the story which have been specially misunderstood, and which, by throwing light on the real nature of Turkish rule, give us practical lessons as to the course which Europe ought to take at the present moment. The main facts of the tale are easily told. The war had gone on for nearly a year in Herzegovina and Bosnia, when an attempt at a rising took place in Bulgaria also. The Bulgarian people are a quiet, industrious, race, who had been making advances in civilization which seemed quite wonderful for people who had to bear such a yoke as they had. There can be little doubt that this advance of a subject nation aroused the envy of the Turks, and that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and, if pos­sible, to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means that they took to this end was to plant colonics of savage Circassians in Bulgaria, who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage against their Christian neighbours. Thus Bulgaria had its own special grievance. The ingenuity of the Highnesses and Excellencies at Constantinople had lighted on a new thing; they had found out a third scourge, worse than the Turk himself, worse than the renegade Slav in Bosnia or the renegade Greek in Crete. Thus it was no wonder that, when the Bulgarians saw the success of their brethren to the North-west, they tried to rise also. But Bulgaria is not a land fitted for irregular fighting, nor are its people men of war like the Slavs of the mountain lands. Thus the Bulgarian revolt was a feeble revolt, compared with revolts in the other two lands. While the Turks could not put down the revolt in Bosnia and Herze­govina, they easily put it down in Bulgaria. How they put it down all the world knows. They put it down in the usual Turkish fashion; the wild beast simply did according to his kind; only a great part of the world then learned for the first time what the kind of the wild beast really was. There can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the facts that they honoured and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while that they neglected, and sometimes punished, those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day, in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacre remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians, sometimes being punished, sometimes being amnestied, for their share in the attempt to free their country. It is plain that the Ring do not dare to punish men who acted by their own orders, for fear lest their own share in what was done should come to light. Two things should be always borne in mind, first, that the doings of last May are still unpunished; secondly, that doings of the same kind, though doubtless not so thick on the ground, have been going on ever since.

By the time that the Bulgarian massacres happened, the patience of the two principalities of Servia and Montenegro was worn out Volunteers had joined all along, but now the strain was too great; the govern­ments could no longer keep in the national impulse, and both states declared war against the Turk. On the part of Montenegro, it must be borne in mind that that war has been thoroughly successful. The bar­barians have been, as they have so often been before, utterly routed by the valiant men of the Black Moun­tain. In negotiating with the Turk, the Prince of Montenegro has every right to negotiate as a conqueror with a conquered enemy. With Servia the case has been different Its small force valiantly withstood the barbarians for a long while, but, even with the help of Russian volunteers, their strength was not equal to that of their enemies. The Turk was thus able to occupy part of Servia, and in the part which he occu­pied he did after his wont; he did as he had done in Bulgaria. Then came an armistice; then came the European conference. At the moment when I write Servia, has made peace, things being put much as they were before the war. Victorious Montenegro is still negotiating, and of course demands the fruits of victory from the vanquished Turk. In the greater part of Bosnia and Herzegovina the Turk rules over a wilderness. In one corner of Bosnia the Christians still hold their own. The barbarians have been utterly driven out; men are already beginning to speak of that corner of land as Free Bosnia. May it ever remain so.

Meanwhile, while both Christians and Turks alike have been acting in their several ways. the powers of Europe have been talking. A great deal of paper and ink, a great deal of human breath, has been wasted on matters where paper and ink and talk of any kind were simply useless. The note which was drawn up in December 1875 by the Austro-Hungarian minister Count Andrassy, and to which the other powers, England somewhat reluctantly, agreed, was a document such as has not often been presented to a power which calls itself independent. It set forth in very strong words, flavoured in some parts with very strong sarcasm, the wickedness of Turkish rule and the constant breach of Turkish promises. As a sermon preached to the Turk to enlighten his conscience and to bring him to better ways, nothing could have been better. Only Europe ought by that time to have known that it is no use preaching sermons to the Turk, that no amount of preaching will ever enlighten his conscience or bring him to better ways. Five hundred years ago, when the Turk and his doings were something new, such a document would not have been out of place, and either the first or the second Amurath would have been more likely to listen to good advice than the corrupt Ring who now bear rule at Constantinople. To the Andrassy note, a good sermon and no more, England, so far as England is represented by Lord Derby, agreed. In May a stronger paper, called the Berlin Memorandum, was drawn up, which was some­what more practical. It contained, among other things, proposals that the Christians should be allowed to be armed as well as the Mussulmans, and that the Turkish troops should be concentrated in certain particular places. Here was at least something de­finite, some approach towards doing something. It was indeed quite impossible that these proposals could be carried out without doing a great deal more; still it was a proposal to do something, as opposed to mere talk. But, as the Berlin Memo­randum was a proposal to do something, England, as far as England is represented by Lord Derby, refused to join in it. Later in the year, when the heart of the people of England was thoroughly stirred up, Lord Derby himself wrote letters which also were very good sermons for the instruction of the Turk, but which served no practical purpose. Lastly, in December the Conference of the six great powers met at Constantinople. Strange to say, two Turks were allowed to sit along with the representatives of Europe, and one of them was allowed to be the President of the Conference. So to do was according to diplomatic traditions. That is to say, if the Conference had been held in London or Paris, an English or French minister would have had the Presidency. But, putting diplomatic traditions aside, in the eye of common sense, to allow Turks to sit with European ministers was allowing the criminal to sit with his judge, and to settle the verdict and sentence upon himself. Of such a Conference nothing could come. The powers made certain proposals to the Turk, which, if they could have been carried out, would have been a real reform. The one fatal thing was that they never could have been carried out, as long as the Turk was allowed to remain in power. The Turks who were admitted to sit with the European ministers of course objected to every proposal which would have lessened their own power of doing evil. The European ministers yielded point after point, till the proposals were pared down to nothing, and then the Turks refused to accept even the wretched rem­nant that was left. Europe, in short, came together to see what was to be done with the Turk. The Turk snapped his fingers in the face of Europe, and Europe has up to this time sat down quietly under the insult.

While these greater matters have been going on, it might be easy to forget that the Sultan has been changed more than once. The truth is that now that the rule of the Turkish dominions has changed from a corrupt despotism to a more corrupt oligarchy, it matters very little who bears the title of Sultan. The Sultan, heir of Othman and Caliph of the Pro­phet as he is, is now set aside as suits the convenience of the governing Ring. The decay which has fallen upon the whole Ottoman power has specially fallen on Othman’s own house. As no house once pro­duced so many mighty men in succession, so now no house has fallen so low. The race of Mahomet and Suleiman, the face which produced men of energy so lately as the last Selim and the last Mahmoud, has sunk into a line of sots and idiots. This or that sot or idiot is set aside by the governing Ring, and another sot or idiot is drawn out of the harem in his stead as may be convenient. Abd-ul-Aziz was set aside, and presently died. Those who believe that Edward the Second of England and Peter the Third of Russia died of their own free will may perhaps believe the same of Abd-ul-Aziz. Then came Murad, and wonderful things were to be done in his reign; but presently the Ring set him aside too. Then wonderful things were to come of Abd­ul-Hamid. But as yet Abd-ul-Hamid has done no more than Murad. These modem Sultans at least gain one thing by their degradation. No one would think of blaming Murad or Abd-ul-Hamid personally for any of the crimes that have been done in their names.

For, any purpose of practical politics, it is hardly worth mentioning that another way of relieving the Sultans from any responsibility for the deeds that are done in their names has been thought of within the last few months. Just as the Conference was meeting a Turk named Midhat, who was for the moment in power, but who has since, after the manner of Eastern ministers, fallen from power, put forth what he called a constitution for the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan was no longer to be a despot, but was to reign, like an European King, with a Ministry and a Parliament. The object of the trick was plain; it was simply to throw more dust in the eyes of Europe, just at the time of the meeting of the Conference. The Turks who sat at the Conference were able to say, “We are going to make greater reforms out of our own heads than any that you bid us to make." Again they could say. “The Sultan is now a constitutional King, and cannot do this and that without consulting his Parliament”. Any plain man could see through so transparent a trick; yet some people in Western Europe have been so blind as to argue that time should be given to the Turk to work his new constitution and give his new reforms a chance. That is, the Turk is to be allowed so much time longer to go on doing his wickedness unchecked. For, as no Turkish promise has ever been kept, as none of the pretended Turkish reforms have ever been made, there is no reason to suppose that Midhat or any other Turk really meant any reform this time any more than any other time. And, supposing the con­stitution were to be carried out, it would, if it be possible, make things worse, it could not possibly make them better. For, first of all. the constitution is a mere sham. It is a copy of the sham constitu­tion of France under the tyranny of Louis-Napoleon Buonaparte. It would leave all real power in the hands of the Sultan, or rather of the Ring, and the Ring would be able to carry on their oppression and corruption with some pretence of the approval of a constitutional assembly. And again, if the pretended Parliament had any real power, nothing would be gained. It would be simply the sham of admitting Christians to local councils done over again on a greater scale. Midhat took care that in his sham Par­liament the Mussulmans should greatly outnumber the Christians. Again, the constitution would put the final stroke to the system of centralization, and would wipe out any traces that are still left of communities keeping any kind of separate being.

But a greater political truth than all this lies be­hind this pretence of a Turkish constitution. Setting aside the absurdity of putting the representatives of civilized European nations alongside of representa­tives of this or that barbarous Asiatic tribe, expe­rience shows that a common Parliament is not a good form of government for several nations which have little in common, or which, from any cause, are strongly hostile to one another. A King who rules despotically over several nations will often rule them better than if he ruled with a common Parliament for all of them. For a well-disposed despot may deal equal justice to all the nations under his rule, and may not rule in the interest of any one nation in par­ticular. But in a common Parliament of two or more nations which have no interests in common, or which have a mutual dislike, that nation which has the greatest numbers will outvote the others, and all legislation will be done in the interest of the domi­nant nation only. This is shown by several cases in our own time, even among civilized and kindred nations. To take one instance only, the Germans who were under the rule of the Danish Kings complained much less while the Danish Kings ruled despotically than they did after Denmark had a free constitution. And now that things are turned about, now that some Danes are under German rule, they have still less chance of being heard than the Germans had who were under Danish rule. Now, if nations like Danes and Germans, Christian, civilized, and kindred nations, cannot get on together with a common Parliament, how much less should Greeks, Slaves, Turks, and all manner of savages from Asia? The Parliament of the Turkish Empire, even if it really and freely represented all races and creeds in the Turkish dominions, would certainly vote every thing wholly in the interest of the Turks. All therefore that would come of it would be that the same oppression and corruption which now goes on in the name of the Sultan would go on with a fairer show in the name of the Parliament. Alongside of this, one might almost forget a piece of barbarian insolence on the part of Midhat, who decreed in his constitution that all subjects of the Sultan were to take the name of Ottomans. Greeks and Slaves, sharers in the civilization of Euro|>e, inheritors of the traditions of European history, were to be branded with the name of a gang of Asiatic robbers.

The sham constitution was of a piece with another sham, that of trying to get the chiefs of the different Christian communities to join the Turks in a so-called patriotic declaration, that is, a declaration on behalf of the Turk. But this trick failed; for several of those who were summoned refused to betray their country in this way. And, so far as one can yet see, no real elections have been held under the sham constitution. In some places, naturally enough, no one seems to know what it means; in others the people, of whatever creed, refuse to elect at all; in others the Pasha names the members himself, or perhaps names the Mussulmans himself and orders the Bishop and the Rabbi to name the Christians and the Jews. We may be sure that those members of all three creeds will be named who will be the most ready to do the work of the Ring.

And now for some comments on those events of the last two years which we have thus so briefly run through. To those who had been watching these matters for many years, it seemed strange, and yet it did not seem strange, that, for a long time after the revolt began, it was the hardest thing in the world to get people in general to take any heed to it. People in the West really knew very little of the real state of things in the East If they thought about them at all, they had a kind of notion that the Turk had been an ally both of England and of France, and that he had joined with England and France to win victories over Russia. Then too people had been brought up, so far as they thought about the Eastern Christians at all, in a kind of prejudice against them. It was a very old prejudice, a prejudice which dated from the times of the old disputes between the Eastern and Western Empires and between the Eastern and Western Churches. And this traditional prejudice has worked in the minds of many who have never heard of the disputes between the Empires or the Churches. Again, among those who knew a little more, there was a theological prejudice against the Orthodox Church in the minds both of Catholics and of Protestants. The Catholics have a feeling against the Orthodox, because they have never submitted to the Pope. On the other hand, Protestants are often taught to believe that the Orthodox are something worse than if they did believe in the Pope. Then there have been all kinds of foolish talk about the Turk being a “gentleman” and the like, and about his subjects being “degraded.” Those who talked in this way did not stop to think who it was who had degraded them; they did not stop to think that it is very hard for men to improve so long as they are in bondage, and that the only way to make them improve is to set them free. Thus it came about that most people knew and cared very little about the matter, and that the prejudices of those who knew a little about the matter went largely the wrong way. Those who really knew what was going on, those who had looked at these matters all their lives, knew that a very great work had begun in South-eastern Europe. They knew in short that one of the great crises of the world’s history had come. Of course those who could see were mocked at by those who could not see. It has always been so since the beginning of the world. Altogether it was very hard to make people really know or care anything about the great events that were going on, till the doings of the Turk in Bulgaria opened their eyes. Those who had been carefully watching the course of events saw nothing strange in those doings. But to the mass of people in England those doings seemed as strange as they were horrible. Till then they had never known what the Turk was. Now at last the Turk himself taught them what he was; he showed himself in his true colours, and when the English people saw him in his true colours, then natural values of right and wrong overcame all their traditional prejudices, and they declared that they would no more have anything to do with the doers of such deeds.

An opportunity was thus offered to the English Government to play a great and noble part, if they had known how to play it. Had the Government listened to the voice of the people, England might have done as great a work for right as she did fifty years before. But the English Government had no feeling for right, no understanding of the great events that were going on. And mere party men, men who thought it of more importance that this or that man should be for a year or two minister in England than that the wrongs of ages should be redressed, began to utter every kind of calumny against those who spoke for right, to misquote their words, to misrepresent their motives. It really seems that there are those who cannot understand that men do sometimes act from a feeling of right and wrong, and that everybody is not always thinking only about keeping this man in power or turning that man out of power. As the English Government refused to listen to the voice of the English people, the partizans of that Government set themselves to oppose the great and righteous national feeling. The noblest emotion that ever stirred any nation was checked by a paltry party-spirit. The truth is that political party ought to have had nothing to do with the matter. Conservatives and Liberals in England had sinned equally, they had often joined together in sinning, against the oppressed nations of the East. They might have joined together to repent, and to undo their misdeeds. The Liberal party repented; but it repented, not as a party, but as that part of the nation which thought right higher than party. The Conservative party did not repent, because the Conservative Government did not repent, and its followers did not know how to repent without orders from the heads of their party. Thus, what with mere political partizans, what with sentimental lovers of Turks, what with people whose whole notion of foreign politics is a foolish fear of Russia, England was hindered from doing as reason and the expe­rience of the past would have led her to do. But reason and experience did something. The general feeling of the nation made it quite impossible for any minister, even the most reckless, to go to war with Russia on behalf of the Turk.

There is something which seems very strange in the utter blindness of the English Government and their partisans to the great events which were going on. The very day that I am writing this, I took up a newspaper dated in November 1875, and I there found it said that the insurrection in Herze­govina had been “unexpectedly prolonged” till the winter. In that word “unexpectedly” we see the key to the whole state of mind of Lord Derby and of men like Lord Derby The things which are perfectly plain to men who use their eyes and their reason were “unexpected” to them. Any one who knew the nature of the country, the firm determination of the patriots, the utter corrup­tion and demoralization of the barbarians, knew perfectly well that the revolt was not a thing that could be put down. But Lord Derby and people like Lord Derby were in the same state of mind in which such people commonly are at the beginning of any of the great events of the world’s history. To men of this stamp the success of every great move­ment in every age has been “unexpected.” They are in the same frame of mind as the Persian King when he asked who the Athenians were, or as Leo the Tenth when he thought that nothing could come of a movement begun by so small a person as Martin Luther. Just in the same way, Lord Derby thought that the revolt was something which could be very easily suppressed, something which could be easily put out of the way and got rid of, so as to give no more trouble. He pooh-poohed the insurrection, be­cause, like most great things, it looked little in its beginning. He pooh-poohed it too, because it arose from those great and generous feelings of men’s hearts which some men feel so little themselves that they do not understand that other men can feel them. Lord Derby, Foreign Minister of England in the nineteenth century, pooh-poohed the movement in Herzegovina, just as, if he had been Foreign Minister of Rome or Persia in the seventh century, he would have pooh-poohed the movement of the camel­-driver of Mecca and his first handful of followers. He pooh-poohed it, as, if he had lived in the thir­teenth century, he would have pooh-poohed the little band which came to help the Seljuk Sultan against the Mogul,—as, a few years later, he would have pooh-poohed the rash resolve of the three little lands among the mountains to match themselves with the power of the Austrian Duke. All these things seemed in their beginnings as if they might be easily suppressed and got rid of. The Derbies of those several ages doubtless thought that they might easily be suppressed and got rid of. But in each case the little cloud like a man’s hand soon grew into a mighty storm. The small beginnings that men mocked at grew into powers which, for good or for evil, made their mark upon the history of the world.

But Lord Derby did something more than merely think that the revolt could be suppressed; he did something more than merely wish it to suppressed. He, a civilized man, a Christian, an Englishman, an English minister, was not ashamed to write letters urging the Turk to suppress the insurrection. He was not ashamed to write letters by which he hoped that the people of Dalmatia and Montenegro might be hindered from taking any part in the struggle. It is worth while to stop and think, though seemingly Lord Derby did not stop and think, what was the meaning of his own words when he spoke of the Turks suppressing the insurrection It is to be supposed that Lord Derby had learned something of the history of the century in which he lived, a century in whose history he was himself called on to be an actor. It is to be supposed that he had heard for instance of the massacre of Chios, of the massacre of Damascus, of any other of the doings of the Turks, he must surely have known the fate to which he had condemned his own victims in Crete. What the Turkish suppression of an in­surrection meant the world in general did not know till the doings in Bulgaria became known But it is to be supposed that a Foreign Minister, whose business it is to know something of the history and condition of foreign countries, must have known what every one knew who had given the matter a moment’s serious thought. To advise the lurk to suppress the insurrection was in other word to advise him to do as he had done in Chios and Damascus, as he was to do in Bulgaria. It is not to be supposed that any man calling himself an Englishman and a Christian really wished such things to be done; but that was the plain meaning of the words of the de­spatch. The Turk was counselled to suppress the insurrection, the Turk would understand, and doubt­less did understand, that England would stand by him while he suppressed the insurrection in his usual way of suppressing insurrections. The Turk did what he could in Bosnia and Herzegovina to carry out the advice which he had received from England. He carried it out more fully in Bulgaria. There he did thoroughly according to the advice contained in the English despatch. He did suppress the insurrection by his own forces. It is not to be thought that Lord Derby really wished the Turk to do what he in effect told him to do. But he told him none the less. A dull man brought face to face with great events, great movements, great stirrings of men’s hearts which he cannot understand, will be simply puzzled and fright­ened, and will hardly know what he says or writes. But the fact that Lord Derby was puzzled and frightened will not wipe the blood of Crete and Bulgaria from his hands. The one notion of Lord Derby, as of most of the professional diplomatists, was to try to avoid trouble by getting rid of the thing as soon as they could. Let it be suppressed out of hand, never mind at what cost, so that it be sup­pressed and got rid of. But the thing could not be got rid of. Lord Derby and the Turk and all the diplomatists together could no more suppress that mighty movement of men who had made up their minds to win their rights or to perish than the king in the legend could hinder the waves of the sea from flowing up to the foot of his throne.

The whole correspondence published in the Blue Book shows the same spirit. There is no feeling of the greatness of the movement; there is no sympathy with the righteousness of the movement. One reads for instance of the news being more or less “satis­factory.” “Satisfactory” news, in the language of the Blue Book, means news by which it seems likely that the Turk will succeed in again bringing his victims into bondage. The triumph of evil, the handing over of Christian nations to their oppressors, the doing of all the deeds which the Turk docs when he gets back any piece of Christian soil into his power—this was what was called “satisfactory” in English consulates, in English embassies, in the English Foreign Office. When Servia was about to strike her gallant blow for right, Sir Henry Elliot was not ashamed to tell the Servian agent that he hoped that Servia would be beaten. The deeds of Bulgaria had then been done; yet an Englishman, a representative of England, could tell the representative of a Christian people arming themselves for the freedom of their brethren, that he wished that they might be beaten by the Turk. That is, he said that he wished that Servia might be dealt with as the Turk always deals with beaten nations, as the Turk had just before dealt with Bulgaria, as he presently did deal with so much of Servia as came within his clutches When Lord Derby called on the Turk to suppress the insurrection, he said in effect “Go and do your will; slay, lob, burn, torture, ravish, force the flesh of the roasted child into his parent’s mouth, do all in short that you do when you suppress insurrections. When Sir Henry Elliot wished Servia to be beaten, he wished in effect that all these things should fall on Servia, or rather that they should fall on the whole of Servia, as they did fall on a part. No one believes that either Lord Derby or Sir Henry Elliot really wished for anything of the kind. But men who had either heads or hearts, men who were capable of understanding and facing the great events in which they found themselves actors, would have spoken in another way. There are no despatches of Canning exhorting Ibrahim to suppress the insurrection in Peloponnesus.

One trick of the favourers of the Turk through the whole business has been, first to try to represent the insurrection as something quite insignificant, and when they found that this would not do, then, to represent it as wholly the work of foreign intriguers, foreign agitators, and the like. What is really meant by foreign intriguers and foreign agitators I have already shewn. ’They are foreign intriguers and foreign agitators in the same sense in which Sir Philip Sidney was a foreign intriguer when he died at Zutphen for the freedom of the Netherlands. As Englishmen then fought and died for the freedom of a, kindred land, so now many men from Montenegro and from Russia, and from Italy too, fought and died the same glorious death for the freedom of the op­pressed Slavonic lands. But the belief which was carefully spread abroad by the Turkish party in Eng­land, the belief that the revolt was no real revolt, that it was but a thing got up by men from other lands, is altogether false. It would seem as if those who talked in this way really could not understand that men could ever rise and fight for their own freedom.

That men should do so seemed so strange to them that they cast about for some other cause, and in­vented this talk about foreign intriguers. Monte­negrins fought in Herzegovina; Russians fought in Servia; and in both cases, as was not wonderful, the people who knew less of the art of warfare were glad to accept commanders from the people who knew more. But it is a great mistake, if it is not something worse than a mistake, to say that the great mass, or even any considerable part, of the Herze­govinian army consisted of Montenegrins, or that the great mass, or any considerable part, of the Servian army consisted of Russians. In both cases the war was strictly national; volunteers came, volunteers were welcomed; but they were welcomed by men who had already risen to do the work for them­selves. A moment’s thought will show how foolish this talk is about foreign intriguers and agitators. Men who arc under the yoke of the Turk do not need to be told what oppressions they are suffering under; they do not need to be told that there is no way of getting rid of those oppressions but by drawing the sword for freedom. They know all that very well, without any foreign intriguers to tell them. If there are foreign intriguers, and if they get listened to, that of itself is proof enough that there is something which greatly needs redress in the land where they do get listened to. If foreign intriguers came into any well governed country and tried to persuade the people to revolt, no one would listen to them. If foreign intriguers stir up a people to revolt, and if that people listen to them, it is the surest of all signs that there is something to revolt about.

Perhaps the most daring case of all of saying “the thing that is not,” was that which was made by Lord Beaconsfield at Aylesbury. He there—to be sure it was after dinner—ventured to say that, when Servia began the war, it was the “secret societies of Europe which made war on Turkey.” Now in truth Servia did not make war on Turkey; Servia made war on the Turk on behalf of Turkey. But of all the untrue things that ever were said the most untrue was that the Servian war was got up by secret societies. No doubt much help has been given by societies in Russia and in other Slavonic lands. But those societies are no more secret than our Anti-Corn-Law League was, or any other of our political or religious societies. Lord Beaconsfield also ventured to talk about Servia being “ungrateful” to the Turk. He called the Ser­vian war an act of  “treachery.” All this was simply using words without any meaning. Whatever an open declaration of war may be, it is at least not treacherous, and it would certainly be very hard to find any reason that the Servians had to be grateful to the Turk. Centuries of bondage, followed by hideous breaches of faith, the impaling of their grandfathers in 1815, the bombarding of their capital in 1862, the violation of their frontier in 1876, would seem to be the things for which, according to Lord Beaconsfield, Servia ought to be thankful.

Another trick was to enlarge on and blacken to the uttermost everything that was done, or said to be done, on the patriot side which was not exactly according to the laws of civilized warfare. The most was made of anything amiss that was done, or said to be done, by any insurgent, while anything that was done by a Turk was slurred over or hushed up altogether. Most of these stories were mere lies. For instance, the Turks, Safvet and the rest of them, tried to make the world believe that they were inno­cent lambs cruelly set upon by Bulgarian lions. There is no doubt that the mass of the stories which were got up by the Turks and their friends against the Christian insurgents were mere falsehoods. But suppose, as is quite possible, that some of them were true. Is it very wonderful if men who rise up to free themselves from the most cruel yoke that man ever was under, men who have been goaded to revolt by every wrong that a human being could endure, should not always behave like the soldiers of civilized armies, whose nations or governments may have a dispute, but who have no personal wrongs to embitter them against one another? In the most civilized and best disciplined armies there will always be some men who do wrong things. In an insurgent and irregular army the proportion of men who do such things will always be greater. In strict morality, we must condemn men who commit any kind of excess, even in avenging the bitterest of wrongs. But we cannot wonder at them; we ought not harshly to condemn them. They are doing as we ourselves should doubtless do in the same case. In no case can the excesses of the insurgent who is avenging his wrongs to put on the same level of moral guilt as the excesses of the oppressor who is wantonly inflicting wrongs. Men do not get letter by dealings cither with barbarian masters or with barbarian enemies. The way to make them letter is, I must say once more, to set them free from their bondage.

This is the fair way of looking at any particular excesses which may have been here and dune by the insurgents, whether in Herzegovina or in Bulgaria, or anywhere else. But most of the tales arc simply false, and, in any case, what they may have done in revenge, was nothing compared with what the Turks did in wantonness. The same kind of falsehoods were told of the Servians. So they were of the Montenegrins. At a time when no Montenegrin prisoner was ever spared by the Turks, but when Turkish prisoners, a Pasha among them, were living quite comfortably in Montenegro, we were told of the horrible atrocities of the Montenegrins. The old custom, which the Montenegrins had learned of the Turks, was to bring home the heads of slain enemies as trophies. The Princes of Montenegro have long tried to stop this practice, and it is not now done by any troops who are under regular Montenegrin discipline. But the custom of cutting off the dead enemy’s nose, as a kind of substitute for his head, has still been sometimes kept up both by the irregular insurgent bands and by the Albanians who have joined the Montenegrins. It seems that, in one or two cases, a man who was thought to be dead was wakened up by the loss of his nose. And this has been made the ground of tales of wholesale mutilation, torture, and the like. Nobody defends any such doings; they simply come of the fact that men whose whole life has for so many ages been one long strife against a barbarous enemy have, as is not very wonderful, sometimes picked up a little of his barbarism. Take the Turk and his bad example away, and they will mend. And after all, though to cut off a dead man’s nose is a brutal thing, it is hardly so brutal as roasting, torturing, and impaling living people; it is not so brutal as the things which the Turks always do when they suppress insurrections, and sometimes when there are no insurrections to suppress.

So again, a great many falsehoods were told about the Servians, how they mutilated themselves rather than fight, how they shot Russian officers in the back, how they refused to carry wounded men to the rear, and the like. Now it is certain that the Servians and their Russian helpers did not always agree. The truth is this. No men in any war ever behaved more nobly in the way of risking and sacrificing themselves than the Russian officers did in Servia. But their habits in their own army did not fit them to command a free citizen militia like that of Servia. Disputes and ill will therefore arose in many cases. Those who know the Servian army, and who know other armies as well, say that in every army there will always be found some black sheep who will now and then do some of the things with which the Servian army is charged. But they add that to say that such things were the rule, or that they were at all common, in the Servian army is as great a slander as to say the same of any other army. Nor is it at all true to say that the Servians are mote cowards. It is true that their militia, men who have come, one from his farm and another from his merchandise, are not born fighters like the men of the Black Mountain. Neither would an army of Englishmen be, if it was brought together in the same way. But no mere cowards would have held out so long as the Servians did with smaller numbers than their enemies, and with interior arms.

Such arc some of the mistakes and falsehoods which have been going about ever since the beginning of this great and righteous struggle. And it may also be well to notice that, while the diplomatists were wondering and pottering and asking to have the insurrection suppressed, the one rational way of dealing with the whole matter was many times set before them. Only they were too blind to see it. Experience shows that, wherever a land is set free from the direct rule of the Turk, it gains greatly by its deliverance. But experience also shows that the separation need not be complete and sudden; it shows that the tributary relation through which most of the nations passed on their road towards perfect bondage forms an useful intermediate stage on their road towards perfect freedom. So long as the Turk has no share in the internal government of the country, there is no great harm in the formal relation of tribute and vassalage. Indeed, as long as the Turk exists at all, the tributary relation to a common over-lord has one ad­vantage. It helps to bind the several nations together; it helps to prepare the way for the time when the Turk can be got rid of altogether, and when the tributary relation may be exchanged for a federal relation. On the other hand, experience shows that the Turk’s promises go for nothing, that his constitu­tions go for nothing. Experience shows that, wherever the Turk is allowed to keep troops or to have any share in the nomination of rulers of any kind, oppression goes on just the same as if no promises had ever been made. Experience further shows that Christians and Mahometans cannot live together—ex­cept as oppressor and oppressed—under a Mahometan government, but that they can live perfectly well together under a Christian government. From all this it follows that the only way to secure good government for the revolted lands is to put an end to the direct rule of the Turk over those lands. The only way is to establish some state of things in which, whatever may be the form of government, the Turk shall have no voice or authority in any internal matter. Nor must he be allowed to keep garrisons in any of the lands which are to be set free. Any form of govern­ment which compassed these two objects, will be so far a real gain. One kind of government may be better than another; but by gaining these two points the first essentials of good government will be secured. Reason and experience taught this, and reason and experience further taught that, if there was any difficulty in creating absolutely independent states, any difficulty in annexing the revolting lands to any of the neighbouring states, there was the tributary rela­tion to fall back upon. It had been tried, and it had answered. The obvious immediate remedy therefore was to enlarge the old tributary states or to make new ones, in short to put the revolted lands in the same position as Servia and Rumania. The lands would be free, and the Sultan would still get ail that lie wants out of them, some money, that is, to squander as Sultans do squander money. But Lord Derby said that the formation of tributary states lay. in a phrase which has become a kind of proverb, out of the range of practical politics. The truth is that it was the one thing which did lie within the range of practical politics, while everything that Lord Derby did lay altogether without that range. Lord Derby’s one idea seemed to be a sentimental notion that the Turk might be got to mend by preaching to him. And just like the Andrassy note, so some of L.ord Derby’s sermons had they been preached to hearers who were the least likely to listen to them, were very good sermons indeed. They got better still as soon as Lord Derby found out that the people of England were really in earnest about the matter. Still Lord Derby's whole course was sentimental and not practical. He refused the remedy which reason and experience had shown would answer, and which lay within the range of practical politics. Instead of that, he tried the remedy which reason and experience had shewn would not answer, and which therefore lay without the range of practical politics. So of course nothing has been done. If, instead of Lord Derby’s sentimental way of managing affairs, we had had Canning’s practical way, things would have been very different

Here then is the end of our history and of our comments upon it. In the last chapter we must see what the practical guides, reason and experience, tell us ought to be done to get us out of the difficulty int* which we have been brought by a long and vigorous course of doing nothing.

 

 

CHAPTER VII.

THE PRACTICAL QUESTION.

 

And now at last we come to the great practical question, What is to be done ? What is the duty of England and of Europe in this great crisis of the world’s history ? I assume that England and Europe have a duty in the matter. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that there are such things as right and wrong, and to believe that right is to be followed, and that wrong is to be avoided, in the affairs of nations as well as in the affairs of private men. I assume that nations as well as individuals owe a duty alike to God above and to man below. It would seem that there are some who think otherwise. It would seem that there are some to whom any mention of right or wrong as having anything to do with the matter is ground enough for an outburst of wrath or of scorn. There are some who shamelessly put forth in the face of day the doctrine that interest alone is to be thought of, that it matters not what wrongs are done, what sufferings are borne, if some fancied interest of England is supposed to be jeoparded by doing right I will quote, as an example of the spirit in which the affairs of the nation ought not to be carried on, the following passage from a letter in one of the published Blue Books addressed by Sir Henry Elliot to the Earl of Derby, dated Therapia, September 4th, i8₇6:-

“An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, and this being tenfold the case in oriental countries, where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races, the responsibility and sin of those who incite a peaceful Province to rise becomes doubly heavy, and they now endeavour to throw them upon others.

“To the accusation of being a blind partisan of the Turks, I will only answer that my conduct here has never been guided by any senti­mental affection for them but by a firm determination to uphold the interests of Great Britain to the utmost of my power, and that those interests are deeply engaged in preventing the disruption of the Turkish Empire is a conviction which I share in common with the most eminent statesmen who have directed our foreign policy, but which appears now to be abandoned by shallow politicians or persons who have allowed their feelings of revolted humanity to make them forget the capital interests involved in the question.

“We may, and must, feel indignant at the needless and monstrous severity with which the Bulgarian insurrection was put down, but the necessity which exists for England to prevent changes from occurring here which woud be most detrimental to ourselves, is not affected by the question whether it was 10,000 or 20,000 persons who perished in the suppression.

“We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful excesses ; but the fact of this having just now been strikingly thought home to us all cannot lie a sufficient reason for abandoning a policy which is the only one that can be followed with due regard to our interests."

One’s breath is taken away on reading such words as these. The only excuse or palliation for them can be that the writer, quartered so long among Turks, has caught some of the spirit of the Turk.

Or perhaps s0 to speak is injustice to the Turk. When the Turk is suppressing an insurrection—I speak not of the Ring at Constantinople, but of the actual doers of the deeds—he may, in his fierce fanaticism, believe that he is doing good service to Allah and his Prophet. The motives confessed by Sir Henry Elliot are lower than this. Of right and wrong, of duty, there is not a word. The one avowed motive is interest, from one end to the other. It is not merely that the blind partisanship, the affection, whether sentimental or otherwise, which the writer shows for the Turk, comes out in the difference of tone between the first paragraph that I have quoted and the third. It is not merely that the devilish doings of the Turk are gently spoken of as “needless and monstrous severity,” while the high moral tope about “responsibility” and “sin” is taken towards those who strove, however vainly, in the noble cause of Bul­garian freedom. This is not new. We can fancy Philip of Spain feeling the same holy indignation at the sin of William of Orange. We can fancy that there were milder moments when Philip himself deemed that the Fury at Antwerp was severity carried a little too far. But what is new, not perhaps altogether new, but characteristic of the dealings of the last generation or two with this particular subject, is the calm avowal that interest is to be the one guide of public action, and that to interest humanity and every other nobler feeling must give way. Whether the disruption of the Turkish Empire would be good or bad for the nations that live under it is not even thought of. All that matters is that the interests of Great Britain are deeply engaged in preventing that disruption. We are graciously allowed to be indignant at Turkish severity; but even revolted humanity must not allow us to forget the higher claims of “capital interest.”

It matters not who may perish, 10,000 or 20,000, if their perishing will hinder changes that will be most detrimental to ourselves. We must prevent those changes. We uphold a semi-civilized nation, and the nature of the power that we uphold has just now been strikingly brought home to us. But if the upholding of that power is the only policy which can be followed with a due regard to our own interests, nothing that that semi-civilized power may do can be a sufficient reason for abandoning it. Such is the morality, such is the doctrine, such, it seems, is the practice, of a repre­sentative of England in the nineteenth century. One feels, in reading Sir Henry Elliot’s words, as Chatham felt when he burst forth in that strain of righteous eloquence which would hardly sound parliamentary in the delicate cars of a modern House of Lords. He called on Judges and Bishops to “interpose the purity of their ermine and of their lawn” to “save his country from pollution." He could not rest his head on his pillow till he had poured forth “his eternal abhorrence of principles preposterous and enormous, equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian”. In his day to profess humanity and Christianity as motives for public conduct had not yet become matter for scorn. In the moral code of Sir Henry Elliot Christianity seems to have no place. Humanity appears only as an offering of small account, which may be wisely offered up at the shrine of all-ruling interest.

I take this passage merely as a specimen. Coming as it docs from an official person, couched in all the calmness of official language, it proves more than the wild outpourings which are sent forth daily and weekly by a certain section of the English press, a section for which the name “Mahometan press” is far too honourable. Their sneers, their revilings, are in truth the most honourable tribute which can be paid to the “shallow politicians” of Sir Henry Elliot’s attempted sarcasm. With men to whom every noble sentiment, every generous feeling, seems simply mat­ter of mockery, with men who by their sneers at “humanity” and “philanthropism” seem to proclaim their hatred of their own species, it is in vain to argue. One’s labour would not be more utterly lost, if one argued with a tiger or a Turk. It is indeed sad and shameful that such men are; but the only thought that we need give to them is the thought that their jeers and slander make the noblest wreath of honour that an honest man can twine around his brow.

I assume then the opposite doctrine. I assume, in opposition to Sir Henry Elliot, but in company with the Chatham of one age and the Gladstone of another, that there is such a thing as right and wrong in public affairs, and that nations have their duty before God and man as well as individuals. Sir Henry Elliot himself would perhaps allow the existence of duty in the case of private men. I cannot believe that he conducts his private affairs on the principles on which he would have us conduct the affairs of the nation. I cannot believe that, in his everyday dealings with his fellow-men, he would look on his own interest as plea enough for any breach of the laws of justice and humanity. Yet, if interest is not to be everything, if right and wrong are to count for something, in the dealings of this and that man with his fellow, it is hard to see why interest is to be every thing and right and wrong to go for nothing, in the dealings of those aggregates of men which we call powers and nations. For it must not be forgotten that powers and nations are simply aggregates of men, that every act of national right or wrong doing is really an act of personal right or wrong doing on the part of those men, few or many, whose will determines the na­tional action. And, if interest is to be the only rule in national affairs, if it is to be a rule to which humanity is to give way, it is hard to see what acts of national perfidy and national cruelty may not be justified. A morality which holds that Bulgarian massacres are no ground for ceasing to uphold the power which is guilty of Bulgarian massacres, has little right to blame that power for “needless and monstrous severity” in the Bulgarian massacres them­selves. If the Turk deemed the Bulgarian massacres to be for his interest, he did right, in Sir Henry Elliot’s morality, in not allowing feelings of humanity to hinder him in following the course which interest dictated. If he was mistaken in thinking that the massacres were for his interest, that would be, in Sir Henry Elliot’s morality, at most an error of judgement, and not a moral crime.

I make then one assumption. I make it as the geometer makes those few assumptions with which he starts, assumptions which lie cannot prove, but which he deems can abundantly prove themselves. With those who deny that things which are equal to the same arc equal to one another the geometer does not argue. With such an one he has no common ground for argument. So neither can the moralist argue with one who says either that there is no right and wrong, or that right or wrong concern private conduct only. With such an one he has no common ground for argument. I must nuke my assumption as the geometer makes his. But having made the assumption at starting, I trust that I may, like the geometer, go on for the future, not with assumption, but with argument. I trust to show, not indeed by geometrical proof, but by such proof as the nature of the subject allows, first that England has a duty in this matter, and secondly, that, in this matter interest and duty do not clash.

The duty of England and Europe towards the nations which are under the Turk is simply the duty of redressing a wrong which England and Europe have themselves done. Neither a man nor a nation is at all called upon to go all over the world seeking for wrongs to redress. If either a man or a nation undertook so to do, that man or that nation would soon find that there was very little time left to do anything else. Neither man nor nation is called upon to practise such mere knight-errantry as this. Nor does it necessarily follow that either a man or a nation is bound to go forth to redress wrongs, even when those who are suffering the wrongs call upon him to do so. It would be very hard to settle beforehand in what cases either a man or a nation is bound to give help to those who call upon him to give it. The duty of either man or nation in such matters must greatly depend on the circumstances of each particular case. But one thing no one will deny to be the duty of each particular man. If he has himself done a wrong, then it is his duty to redress that wrong. This will be denied by no one who professes any moral principle at all, by no one who believes that there are such things as right and wrong in the common dealings between man and man. And—to make our one assumption once for all—if there be such a thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if nations arc to be guided in their dealings with one another by the same moral rules by which private men ought to be guided in their dealings with one another, then it follows that, when a nation has done a wrong, it is the duty of that nation to redress that wrong. For a nation to say that it will not discharge this duty, because it is not for its interest to do so, is exactly as base as it would be for a private man to refuse to redress any wrong that he had done, because it would be against his interest to do so. Every kind of law, the law of honour, the law of the land, the law of morals, the law of religion, all say that a man who has done a wrong must redress that wrong. They all say he must redress it even if it be against his interest to redress it. And the higher forms of teaching would go on to tell him that it was in any case his real interest to redress it. They would tell him that the approbation of his own con­science, the esteem of other men the law of religion would add the approval of his Maker are worth more than any sacrifice that he might make by doing right. So, if we believe that right and wrong arc to be thought of in public affairs, if we do not think that a nation may do any cruelty, any perfidy, that it may fancy to be for its immediate interest, it follows that a nation is as much bound as a private man to redress any wrong that it has done. It must do right, even to the prejudice of its own interests. It may, if it pleases, comfort itself by thinking that, according to the true saying that honesty is the best policy, its interests will not suffer in the long run by doing its duty.

Now that England, and Europe in general, but England in a more marked way than any other nation of Europe, have done wrong to the subject nations of South-eastern Europe hardly needs proof. We need go no further than the passage which I quoted a few pages back from Sir Henry Elliot’s letter to Lord Derby. Sir Henry Elliot there says, in so many words, “We have been upholding what we know to be a semi-civilized nation, liable under certain circumstances to be carried into fearful ex­cesses.” In other words, we have been upholding the Turk in his wicked dominion over Bulgaria, Thessaly, Crete, and the other subject lands. It is not merely that we have left things in those lands to take their own course; it is not merely that we have not helped the oppressed; we have actively helped the oppressor. This Sir Henry Elliot confesses. We have upheld him, upheld him, knowing, as Sir Henry Elliot goes on to say, what manner of thing it was that we were upholding. Knowing that the rule of the Turk was a rule of the foulest oppression, we have not merely done nothing to put an end to that oppression, we have actively upheld the oppressor in his oppression. All the powers that signed the treaty of Paris have open more or less guilty on this score. England has been more constantly and glar­ingly guilty than any other. We have throughout, for more than forty years, upheld the Turk, because we thought that it was for our own interest. That is, we have done as a nation towards other nations in a way which any man among us, Sir Henry Elliot I doubt not as well as any other man, would blush to do in common every day dealings between one man and another.

Our great crime of all, the general crime of Europe, the great sin against the oppressed nations of the East, was the signing of the treaty of Paris. By that treaty, as I have before shown, England and the other powers bound themselves to let the Turk do what he would with his Christian victims, and to do nothing to hinder him. This was a very different matter from merely not doing anything to help them, or even from refusing to help them when they asked us. It was not a mere negative omission; it was a positive wrong. Before the Crimean war the Christians under the rule of the Turk had a protector, at least a power that claimed to be their protector, in Russia. It is no use here to dispute either how far the protectorate of Russia was formally acknowledged, or how far the protection of Russia was either sincere or effectual. Russia was at least a nominal and pro­fessed protector. Now it would have been perfectly fair to argue that it was not well that the protection of those nations should be left to Russia alone, but that it would be better that all the other powers, or some of them, should join with Russia in protecting them. It might have been argued that such a joint protectorate would be better for the general interests of Europe, better even for the interests of the subject nations themselves. To substitute such a protectorate as this for the sole protectorate of Russia might have been a wise and just measure. It might have been a step towards getting rid of the Turk altogether. But this was not what the treaty of Paris did. The treaty of Paris took away from the subject nations what little chance of protection they had and it gave them nothing instead. It took away the protectorate of Russia, whatever that might be worth, and it put nothing in its place. The powers pledged themselves not to interfere with the relations between the Sultan and his subjects, knowing what those relations were, what they always must be. They handed over the subject nations to the power of the Turk, with no better guaranty than the Turk’s paper of lying promises. That is, they left the lamb in the jaws of the wolf, with no safeguard except the wolf’s promise not to bite the lamb.

The fault in the matter of the treaty of Paris was no special fault of England. It was shared by England with the other powers which signed the treaty. But there is no other power which has so steadily shown itself the friend of the Turk and the enemy of the subjects of the Turk as England has done. There is no other power which has so steadily, in the happy phrase of Sir Henry Elliot, upheld the Turk. The best proof of this is to be found in the feelings of the Turks themselves. Through the whole of the doings of the last two years, the Turks have always taken for granted that England was their friend. It has been hard to persuade them that England was not ready to stand by them in any cause and against any enemy. One instance will do among many. At one point of the doings of last year, the English fleet was, as all the world knows, sent to Besika Bay. Why it was sent there was at the time not perfectly clear. As happened more than once in the events of last year, Lord Beaconsfield gave one reason and Lord Derby another. It matters little what the real reason was. The instructive point of the business is the way in which it was looked upon by every man, Turk or Christian, in the lands which were most concerned. Every man, in those lands, Turk or Christian, believed, rightly or wrongly, that the fleet was sent to encourage the Turks and to discourage the Christians. That such a belief could be general speaks more than any long argument as to the conduct of England in that part of the world, as to the reputation which the conduct of England has won for her in that part of the world. Turk and Christian, oppressor and oppressed, agreed in taking for granted that an English fleet could have come for no end except to carry on the usual work of England in upholding the oppressor. Nor was anything done to undeceive cither Turk or Christian. Though it was known what Turk and Christian alike believed to be the reason of the fleet’s coming, the fleet was still left there. That is, England, so far as England is repre­sented by those who then and now rule England, was not unwilling that England should be looked upon by Turk and Christian alike as the friend of the Turk and the enemy of the Christian.

It is hardly needful to pile together instances to show how truly Sir Henry Elliot speaks when he says that we have upheld the Turk. Our loans of money, our loans of men, our honours bestowed on the barbarian and the renegade, the Grand Cross of Omar, the Garter of Abd-ul-Medjid and Abf-ul-Aziz— the reception given to the last-named tyrant at the very moment when his hands were recking with the blood of Crete—the hideous crime of refusing the shelter of English vessels to the Cretan refugees that dark day of shame and sorrow when other nations did the work of humanity and Englishmen were forbidden to share in it—all the black doings of last year the letters hounding the Turk on the patriots of Herzegovina—the other  letters written to and fro to stir up Austria to depart from her wise and righteous policy during the first days of the war—the refusal of every note, of every proposition, from every other power which seemed likely to do any thing to lessen the sufferings of the oppressed nations—all these things, done by our rulers, uncensured by our Parliament, but branded in the movement of last autumn by the righteous and re­pentant voice of the English people—all these things form a black catalogue of wrong, a catalogue of deeds done to uphold the oppressor and to snatch away any shadow of hope that might arise in the breasts of his victims. The England of Canning and Codrington, the England of Byron and Hastings, has come to this, that the world knows us as the nation which upholds oppression for the sake of its own interests. We have indeed a national sin to redress and to atone for. We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear. Nay, our guilt is deeper still. We have not only refused to listen to our brother’s cry for help; we have not merely looked on and passed by on the other side; we have given our active help to the oppressors of our brother. We have “upheld” the foulest fabric of wrong that earth ever saw, because it was deemed that the in­terests of England were involved in “upholding” the wrong and trampling down the right.

Such a list as this might be made much longer. Perhaps one fact alone is a more speaking comment than all of the way in which England has “upheld “the Turk. The tale has often been told in full; all that I need do is to call it to remembrance. When Sir Henry Bulwer was British Ambassador at Constantinople, a circular was sent to the British consuls in the Turkish dominions, bidding them send in an account of the state of the country. Another letter went with the circular, bidding them make their report as favourable as they could to the Turks. One consul received the circular without the letter; he sat down and wrote a true account, a vivid pic­ture of the horrors of Turkish rule. Then came the Ambassador’s letter, and the consul sat down and wrote a humble apology for having spoken the truth. No means then, not even deliberate falsehood, are deemed too base, if they can anyhow help to “uphold” the Turk. We may believe that Sir Henry Bulwer would not have been guilty of falsehood, or of encouragement of falsehood, in any transaction between man and man. But in his public character, the great duty of upholding the Turk was held to override the dull rules of every-day morality. In his character as Ambassador, he was to carry out the old definition of an Ambassador; he was to act as “an honest man sent to be abroad for the good of his country ”

Our national crime then is that we have upheld the Turk for our own supposed interests. That is, for the sake of our own supposed interests, we have doomed the struggling nations to abide in their bondage. We have doomed them to stay under a rule under which the life and property of the Christian, the honour of his wife, the honour of his children of both sexes alike are at every moment at the feet of the savages whom our august and cherished ally honours and promotes in proportion to the blackness of their deeds. We have, for our own interest, upheld the power winch has done its foul and bloody work in Chios, at Hamassus, and in Bulgaria, which is still doing the same foul and bloody work wherever a victim is to be found. And, if we listen to Sir Henry Elliot, though we know all this, though we know it better than we ever did before, we are still to go on upholding the doers. We uphold the power whose daily work is massacre and worse than massacre. It matters not whether ten thousand or twenty thousand perish. We are still to uphold the slaughterer, for it is to our interest that he should not be shorn of his power of slaughtering.

Now, if there be any such thing as right and wrong in public affairs, if moral considerations are ever to come in to determine the actions of nations, it is hard to see how there can be deeper national guilt than this. Unjust wars, aggressions, conquests, are bad enough; but they are hardly so bad as the calm, un­blushing, upholding of wrong for our own interests. Men may be led into wars and aggressions by passion and excitement, by the fantasies of national honour and glory, even by generous feelings led astray. But here there is nothing to cloak the cold wickedness of a base and selfish policy. We look on, we count the cost, we see how the wrong-doer deals with his victim, and we determine to uphold the wrong-doer, because we think that to uphold him will suit some interest of our own. There is no question of national glory, no question of national honour, nothing which can stir up even a false enthusiasm. It is a calm mercan­tile calculation that the wrongs of millions of men will pay. This is the case as stated by Sir Henry Elliot; this is the case as it is set forth by Lord Derby, and by all who follow him in the ostentatious setting forth of interest as the one motive of national action. I do not believe that so base a code of national conduct will be approved by any large body of thinking Englishmen. It may indeed be approved by those who glory in their shame, who make their boast of putting justice and humanity out of sight, whose pride is that they never feel, or that, if they feel, they succeed in speedily stifling, all the higher and more generous feelings of man's nature. But I would fain believe that, beyond such circles as these, no deliberate approval would be given to the base doctrine of making interest our only rule. Some may be misled by mere party-blindness. Some may be misled by the mere traditional repetition of mean­ingless formula. But I do not believe that the bulk of the English people are ready to affirm that the conduct of the nation is to be systematically guided by principles on which any honest man would shrink from acting in the common affairs of daily life.

I assume then that wrong has been done, that we are, as a nation, guilty of the sufferings of our Eastern brethren. I assume that, by upholding the Turk, we have made ourselves, as a nation, partakers in his crimes. From this I infer that, where wrong has been done, redress must be made. I infer that we must not merely fold our hands and let events take their course, but that we must, as a nation, stand forth to undo the wrong which, as a nation, we have done. We must do as we did fifty years ago in those brighter days when the policy of England was guided by an Englishman with an English heart. We must do as Canning did. We must stand forth, in common, if it can be, with the other powers of Europe, or with as many of them as will join us, or if all fail, alone in the strength of a righteous cause, to undo the wrong that we have done, to wipe away the tears that we have made to flow, to burst asunder the chains that we ourselves have riveted. We must do it by peaceable means, if peaceable means can be made to serve our turn. But, if peaceable means will not serve our turn, then, we must do it by force. If we have to fight, we never can fight in a worthier cause. We have fought for this and that dream of national glory—we have fought for this and that doctrine of the balance of power—we have fought to maintain the rights of this and that claimant of foreign crowns—we have even fought to maintain the Turk in his dominion; let us now fight, if we must fight, as we fought fifty years back, for righteousness. No army could ever march forth with so sure a certainty that every blow that it dealt would count among the good works of him that dealt it, as the army that should go forth to free the Greek and Slavonic lands from Turkish bondage. Our thoughts go back to the days when crusades were still crusades, before the warriors of the cross had turned aside from their work to storm Zara and Constantinople, or to become the tools of papal ven­geance either on Emperors or on so-called heretics. We should go forth with the pure zeal of the great assembly of Clermont; we should put the cross upon our shoulders with the cry of “God wills it” on our lips and in our hearts.

For force then, for coercion in the euphemistic language of our times, that is, in plain words, for war, if war be needful—that is, not war on behalf of the oppressor, but on behalf of the oppressed—not war for the Turk as in 1854, but war against the Turk as in 1827—we must stand ready. But the readier we are for war, the more fully we have made up our mind for war if war be needed, the less likely it will be that war will be needed. A real union of the powers of Europe, a real and frank union between England and Russia, can do all that is needed without war. If England can once make up her mind to act cordially with other powers, if she will cease to reject every proposal, to put stones in every path, to put spokes in every wheel, the thing may be done. The one thing to be fully understood must be that, though it may be done without fighting, it cannot be done by mere talking. Those who know the Turk know how to deal with the Turk. They know how little his brag really goes for, if it is met as it ought to be met. The bully is at heart a coward. He will yield, if he once fully under­stands that nothing will be yielded to him. With the Turk it is as easy to gain a great point as a small one ; it is as easy to take the ell as to take the inch. To lucre talk he will never yield the inch; to real firmness he will al once yield the ell. All who have had practical dealings with the barbarians know this. When they have gained any point, they have gained it, not by talk, not by empty courtesy, but by strong words and strong deeds, by bringing to bear on the barbarian mind the one argument which the barbarian mind can understand, by cowing the wild beast by sheer fear. By a resolute mien and resolute words, unarmed Europeans have made parties of armed Turks tremble before them, and turn about and do their bidding like humble slaves. It is exactly so in dealings on a greater scale. The Turk brags as long as he thinks that there is anything to be gained by bragging. As soon as he finds that nothing can be gained by bragging, he knocks under to the power which he knows to be stronger than hid own.

The whole mistake lies in dealing with the Turk as the civilized nations of Europe deal with one another. He should be dealt with as we deal with any other barbarian. We have already seen that certain Turks have learned to talk European languages, and to dress themselves up in European clothes. It must always be remembered that this makes no difference. The men who ordered the massacres in Bulgaria wear tight coats and jabber French, and expect to be called Highnesses and Excellencies. But they ordered the massacres in Bulgaria all the same. They ought to be dealt with, not as Highnesses and Excellencies, but as the men who ordered the massacres in Bulgaria. Their tight coats and French ought not to save them from being treated as what they are, as wild beasts who have put themselves out of the pale of human fellowship. Above all, the Turk should be made to understand that his word goes for nothing. He has lied too often to be believed. Reason and experience tell us that, when a man has lied nine hundred and ninety-nine times, it is foolish to believe in the thousandth time. It is only the foolish sentimentalists, the people who talk about the Turk being a “gentle­man,” the people who think it proves something that he does not shake hands, who would have us trust the convicted liar once again. The Turk should be made to feel that his most solemn assertions, his most solemn promises, the pledges of this and that Excel­lency, of this and that Highness, or of his Imperial Majesty himself, are simply words without meaning. He should be told that his Irades and his Tanzimats, his Hatti-sheriffs and his Hatti-humayouns, are all so many names which the copiousness of the Turkish language has devised to express the single idea of waste paper. He must be told that his Midhat constitution is simply a mockery, a delusion, and a snare, a net spread in the sight of the birds who ought to be too wise to be caught by it. When the Turk feels that Europe knows what he is, and has made up its mind to treat him as what he is, there will be an end of his brag, an end of his lying. He will most likely crouch humbly and accept his fate at the hand of his masters. If he chooses to rush upon his doom, Europe is surely strong enough to do execution on the convicted criminal.

This is the way which reason and experience teach us to deal with the Turk. Any other way of dealing with him lies without the range of practical politics. To put trust in him, to accept his promises as going for anything, springs either from silly sentimentalism, which still puts faith in the “gentleman,” murderer and liar as he has shown himself, or else it springs from a guilty shrinking from the discharge of duty, or indeed from doing anything at all. Perhaps the very height of blindness, the highest point that could lie reached in the art of doing nothing, the art of cowardly shrinking from duty, is to be found in a short letter from Lord Derby to Lord Salisbury dated Decembr 22, 187t. Lord Derby there says “that Her Majesty’s Government have decided that England will not assent to or assist in coercive measures, military or naval, against the Porte.” He adds, “ the Porte must on the other hand be made to understand, as it has from the first been informed, that it can expect no assistance from England in the event of war.” That is to say. the Conference was to do nothing .It was settled beforehand that nothing was to come of it. It was absolutely certain, in any but the blinded eyes of a Foreign Secretary, that the Turk would do nothing except under coercion. Yet it is laid down as a rule that England will not join in coercion. Even if other powers do, England will not. The European concert is to be broken, the arm of justice is to be stayed, because Lord Derby either has a sentimental belief in the power of talk, or else because he is afraid to do anything at all. To do something for the Turk, to do something against the Turk, are courses of which one is wrong and the other right, but both of which come within the range of practical politics. To expect that the Turk will yield anything to talk, when he knows that it will be all talk and that no coercion will be used, is the very height of silly sentimentalism. The sim­plicity of what follows is indeed charming. “In the event of the Porte persisting in refusing and the Conference failing, your Excellency will of course come away.” What would the Porte do except per­sist in refusing when the Porte knew that it would gain everything by refusing and nothing by yielding ? How could the Conference do otherwise than fail, when it was agreed beforehand that nothing was to come of it ? The Conference failed, because it was doomed to failure before it met. It was doomed to failure, because the representatives of Europe, instead of calling up the convicted criminal to hear his sentence, admitted two of the Ring, two of the Highnesses and Excellencies who had ordered the Bulgarian massacres, to sit with them as equals, and one of them to take his place as president of an assembly of civilized men. We have already seen that the falsehoods with which Safvet opened the Conference were contradicted by both the English and the Russian ministers. But something more was needed than a contradiction. The liar should have been taught his place; he should have been made to understand that his talk went for nothing. He should have been told that Europe had come together, not to hear him talk, but to pronounce sentence upon him. Instead of this, point after point was yielded. When the first point was yielded, all was over. Indeed all was over before anything began; all was over when the barbarian criminal was allowed to take his place among his European judges.

The Conference then failed. It could not but fail. And, now that it has failed, one might appeal to a feeling which once was strong in the hearts of Eng­lishmen, a feeling not so high as the sense of duty, but at least higher than the mere base reckoning of interest. Is the honour of England dead ? Does no man among the rulers or the people of England feel his cheeks tingle at the insult that England and all Europe has received at barbarian hands? There were times when English swords would have leaped from their scabbards at far lighter ignominy than that which England and Europe bore then. Surely they never were greater shame than when their representatives were brought together simply to hear that a barbarian power which linger on only by their sufferance would have none of their counsels and none of their reproof .The Turk snapped his fingers in the face of England and of Europe; he showed England and Europe the way to the door ; and England and Europe have walked out quietly. There is, at least there was, such a feeling as national self-respect. In the Government, in the people, which can tamely endure such treatment as this from a power which needs our upholding, that feeling of self-respect would seem to be wholly dead. In the new code of conduct we are taught that right and humanity are to be offered up to the Moloch of interest. It would seem that the honest sense of shame, to say nothing of the feeling of knightly honour, are to be cast into the fire along with them.

We see then that, in the name of morality, there is something to be done, and that, in the name of com­mon sense, it must set about being done in some other quite different way than what was done at the late Conference. The proposals made at that Conference all lay out of the range of practical politics. They were all sentimental proposals, proposals which could never be carried out, because they all went on the supposition that the Turk might possibly do something without being forced to do it. Such a supposi­tion is belied by all experience it is therefore wholly unpractical. I must here insist more fully on a doctrine which I have already laid down, that in settling the affairs of the South-eastern lands two points must be laid down as principles, without which no lasting or satisfactory settlement can be made. In any land on which it is proposed to bestow freedom—I use the plain word freedom, not the silly word “autonomy,” invented by diplomatists, because it may mean anything or nothing—in any such land no Turkish soldier must be allowed to tread, and the Turk must have no voice in the ap­pointment of its rulers, magistrates, or officers, high or low. Every proposal which does not embody these principles lies without the range of practical politics. Any proposal which does not embody them can never lead to any lasting reform, because it leaves with the Turk the power of undoing whatever is done the moment the back of Europe is turned. There was talk of confining Turkish troops to particular spots, and of giving the Turk a voice along with the Euro­pean powers in the choice of Governors. It is curious to read how this very moderate form of restraint was met by a Turk, as shown in a letter of Sir Henry Elliot to Lord Derby, dated December 30, i876. He there describes a conversation which he had had with Midhat Pasha. Midhat, it should be remem­bered, besides being one of the Ring who ordered the great Bulgarian massacre, had already been Governor of Bulgaria. He had there undoubtedly made some improvements in the way of roads and the like, improvements of that kind which might be useful for the ruling powers. But his personal cruelties and excesses of other kinds are already written in the pages of Bulgarian history. With this man Sir Henry Elliot had “long been intimate”. The proposals of the European powers were thus commented on by the Turk talking to his “intimate” English friend.

 

“The project, as it now should, would be a step toward the certain realization of the Russian dream of creating small autonomic states in European Turkey

“We had only to look luck to what had occurred fifty years ago in Servia to become convinced that the compulsory confinement of the Ottoman troops to the fortresses and principal towns would shortly lead in the expulsion of the Turks from the Province, and the establishment of quasi independence”.

 

It would seem from this confession that the blessings of Ottoman rule, as set forth by Safvet at the beginning of the Conference, even the social blessings of the personal rule of Midhat, were not fully appreciated in Bulgaria. Bulgaria, like Servia, sought for indepen­dence. It had no love for the presence of Ottoman troops. But Midhat must have given his English “intimate” credit for a large amount of ignorance of Servian history. “What occurred fifty years ago in Servia,” to which this Turk ventures to appeal, was the brutal breach of faith on the part of the Turks, when they impaled men to whom their lives had been pro­mised. Midhat feared that even the mild proposals of the Conference would hinder himself or any other Turk in Bulgaria from doing the same again. He feared that the presence of foreign commissioners, of foreign troops, of foreign gendarmerie, would hinder him or any other Turk from bombarding any Christian city which they fancied to bombard, as they bombarded Belgrade only fifteen years back. The barbarian is wise in his generation. He will admit of no restraint on his power of doing evil. He will not endure that the barbarian troops should be confined to particular places, least of all to places like large towns, where numbers, and in some cases the presence of Europeans, may be some slight check. He and his fellows must have the whole land to range through unrestrained, and to do their pleasure on all whom they find in the land. Servia is free; the Turk has left her soil; life, property, family honour, are safe within her boundaries. Such an example is not lost upon Midhat. He will allow no step which shall look at all in the direction of extending these blessings to Bulgaria. One land has escaped from his clutches; he has learned to be all the more careful lest another land should escape from them also.

The example of Servia to which Midhat appeals in this conversation is indeed an instructive one. It proves the whole point. Servia is free, Servia flourishes, because the direct power of the Turk has wholly ceased within its borders. It is tributary and no more. Turkish soldiers are no longer quartered on any spot of the emancipated land. The Turk has no voice in the choice of prince or minister or magis­trate for any spot on Servian soil. As long as Servia was under Turkish rule, the land was as wretched as Bosnia or Bulgaria. The extinction of Turkish rule has made the change. Only ten years ago, while there were still Turkish garrisons in certain places, those places were still exposed to the crimes and outrages which are implied in the presence of Turkish garrisons. The Turkish garrisons are gone, and the people of Belgrade and the other towns which are delivered from their presence are as safe as any inha­bitants of other Christian towns elsewhere. In the eyes of Midhat this state of things naturally seems like the loss of a victim. For that very reason Europe should the more strongly insist on the deliverance of the other victims of Midhat and his fellows. Midhat’s objection to confining the garrisons to certain points proves that the confining them to certain points would be a gain. His fears that such confinement would lead to total expulsion may be read as a hope that it will lead to total expulsion. But the experience of Servia proves that the confining the enemy to certain spots is not enough. As long as there is a Turkish garrison in any Bulgarian town, that town may at any moment be dealt with as Belgrade was in 1862. There­fore no Turkish soldier must be allowed to set foot in any land which is supposed to be set free. The usual law comes in. It is as easy to get much out of the Turk as to get little. It will cost no more trouble to compel the Turk to take away his garrisons alto­gether than it will cost to compel him to confine them to certain places. The Turk will never submit to restriction without coercion; under coercion he will submit as easily to the greater restriction as to the less.

One practical lesson then is learned by the example of Servia; Turkish troops must be shut out of every land which it is designed to set free. The other great principle is that the Turk shall have no voice in the appointment of any one who is to bear rule or office in the liberated lands, be he a prince or be he a beadle. It is vain to stipulate that the governors or other officers to be appointed shall be natives, or that they shall be Christians. The Turk can always find Christians as ready to do his work as any Mussulman. He finds Greeks ready to do his work of falsehood at European courts; he has found at least one English­man ready to do his work of blood in Crete. The native who sells himself and his country for the pay of a foreign master will always be a worse ruler than the foreign master himself. In truth, one would rather be ruled by those worthy Mussulmans who refused to do the work of blood in Bulgaria than by any Christian who would take the pay of the Turk. Nor is it anything to say that these governors shall be appointed with the approval of European powers. Of all the proposals in the world this is one which is most sure to lead to what diplomatists so greatly fear by the names of “difficulties” and “complications.” Such a proposal is a very seed­plot of difficulties and complications. The Turk is cunning, and he will be sure to find some way of setting the powers together by the ears, and of get­ting his own way by the help of some of them. Once more, the appeal is to experience. Look at Rumania under the rule of princes who, though Christians, were nominees of the Turk. Look at Rumania now under the rule of an independent prince. Doubtless there are things to amend in the state of Rumania, as there are in the state of other lands. But it is perfectly certain that, whatever Rumania has still to mend, she has gained much since she attained a practical freedom, and that whatever still needs mend­ing in her will not be mended any the quicker by giving the Turk a voice in her affairs.

Two principles then are to be laid down, two princi­ples which are taught us by the witness of experience. Wherever it is meant to give any degree of freedom, to work any degree of reform, within those borders the presence of Turkish troops must be forbidden, and the Turk must be shut out from any voice in the internal affairs of those lands. These are the only guaranties which are really any guaranties at all. They are the only securities against a continuance or a revival of all the horrors of Turkish rule. Any proposals which do not start from those two principles lie without the range of practical politics. They may be dictated by a sentimental regard for the honour, the dignity, or the suscepti­bility of the Turk. They may be dictated by a desire to escape for the moment from the hard neces­sity of doing something. They are not dictated by a rational regard for the welfare of the lands that are to be benefited, or for the permanence of the reforms which it is sought to make. Lord Derby once sneeringly spoke of “the eternal Eastern Question”. He forgot perhaps that it was his own do-nothing policy which has done more than anything else to make the Eastern Question eternal. For, as long as attempts at settlement are made which are not founded on these two principles, the Eastern Question will remain eternal. It will always be cropping up again, because nothing practical will have been done to settle it. But these two provisions will secure, at least negatively, the freedom and good government of any land to which they are applied. That is, they will take away the great hindrance to freedom and good government, namely the power of the Turk. They may not settle the Eastern Question for ever, but they will settle one stage of it; they will make the way ready for a full and final settlement.

These two points, the shutting out of Turkish garrisons and the denial to the Turk of any voice in the appointment of governors, are matters of prin­ciple, matters of absolute necessity. Everything else is matter of detail, in settling which all manner of particular circumstances may rightly be taken into account. I felt no call here to bring forward any cut and dried scheme. To draw up any minute scheme would be impossible without going into minute in­quiries as to the condition and prospects of every province, almost of every district. It is necessary alike for Bosnia and for Thessaly that both those lands should be set free from Turkish soldiers and from rulers appointed by the Turk. It does not follow that the political state which would be best for Bosnia would be best for Thessaly. Shall the liberated lands become wholly independent states ? Shall they be united by any federal tie ? Shall they, or any of them, remain in an external vassalage to the Turk ? Shall any of them be annexed to exist­ing states, tributary or independent? Shall their constitutions be monarchic or republican ? Shall their princes be hereditary or elective ? All these are important, and some of them difficult, questions, questions which are not to be answered off hand, questions to which no single answer can be given, but which must be answered one by one, according to the particular circumstances of each district. The point is that, under any of these systems or forms of government, freedom and good government arc at least possible; under the direct rule of the Turk they are impossible. Let the liberated lands be as Greece, let them be as Montenegro, let them be as Servia, let them be as Dalmatia. In any of these cases, they will be better off than they can be if they remain as Bosnia and Bulgaria are now. In any of these cases, it is possible—it is enough to say “possible,” with­out going on to  “probable ” or “certain”—that the essentials of good government and civilized order may be had. Where the Turk either sends troops or appoints rulers, they never can be had.

The question will now naturally come, to what lands arc these advantages to be granted ? The answer doubtless is to as many lands as possible. The greater the number of human beings that arc set free from the yoke of the Turk, the greater the gain for mankind. But the Turk grew by degrees, and something may be said for letting him die out by degrees. The Roman world was once, in Gibbon’s words, confined to a corner of Thrace ; and it may be no unnatural stage in the course of events if for a while the Turkish world, as far as Europe is concerned, should be confined to the same corner of Thrace also. As a matter of feeling, as a matter of historic memory, the recovery of the Imperial City would be the foremost object of all. Before thoughts of Bosnia and Bulgaria, before thoughts of Thessaly and Crete, would come the cleansing of the New Rome, the chasing of the barbarian from the throne of the Caesars, the driving out of the misbeliever from the mighty temple of Justinian. But, in a calmer view, if the essential freedom of the Greek and Slavonic lands can be purchased by letting the barbarian still linger on a little while within the bounds of Constantinople, let that sacrifice be made. In Constantinople the Turk is less mischievous than he is anywhere else. He cannot, in the great city, under the eyes of Europeans, indulge the same frantic excesses of tyranny which form his daily sport in Bosnia and Bulgaria. Again, till Greek and Bulgarian have settled their differences and drawn their boundary line, till it is settled whether the next Caesar of the East shall be a successor of Basil or a successor of Samuel, it may be as well to keep the glittering prize out of the hands of either claimant. If then Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Epeiros, and Thessaly, Crete and every island of the Aegean, arc set free from the direct rule of the Turk, let him, if such is to be the price, still tarry for a while in New Rome. If it pleases Turkish susceptibility, or rather if it would better win the good will of any European power, let the Sultan still be over-lord; let him still take tribute from the lands which arc freed from his yoke; let him exercise a Sultan’s right of squander­ing that tribute as he will. The Highnesses and the Excellencies may lose; but the Imperial Majesty will not lose. The Highnesses and Excellencies will lose their power of mischief; the Imperial Majesty may still wallow in a marble sty and gorge itself out of a gilded trough. The lands would be set free; their people might be flourishing and happy. The sum of human happiness would be increased; the nations would be happier; the Sultan would not be less happy; the nations might again live the life of nations ; the Sultan might go on living the life of .a Sultan ; it is only the Ring and its tools, the Highnesses and the Excel­lencies, who would lose by such an arrangement, and all that they would lose would be the power of doing evil.

The plan of tributary states thus seems to be the least violent form of change, and yet to be change enough to secure all immediate practical objects. That plan is the one practical course, the course which experience dictates; there are none but sentimental objections to it. But there is one of those sentimental objections which takes a somewhat plausible shape. To those who have studied these questions all their lives it is amusing to see how certain writers in the weekly and daily press, who have just found out for the first time that there are such beings as Slavonic-speaking Mussulmans, arc suddenly kindled with a burning zeal for the welfare of these same Slavonic-speaking Mussulmans. The same men who think the slaughter and outrage of any number of Christians a mere joke, who sneer at humanity and philanthropy when Christians are their objects, who put atrocity in inverted commas when it is a Christian who suffers the atrocity, who put insurrection in inverted commas when it is a Christian who rises against his oppressor, these men are very eager, sometimes in sentences of wild screaming, sometimes in sentences of lumbering solemnity, to set forth the possible wrongs of the Bosnian Mahometans, in case Bosnia should ever be put under a Christian government. Those who sneer at philanthropy on behalf of a Christian victim can become wonderfully philanthropic on behalf of a Mussulman oppressor. Those who will not allow the “atrocity” of evil deeds when the Chris­tian is the sufferer, shriek with horror at the “atro­city” the moment the Christian is the possible doer. Those who will hardly bring themselves to believe that the Turk is other than a suffering lamb clutch at the faintest shadow of rumour to paint the revolted patriot as a wolf. Let this kind of folly pass. We might in­deed answer that no great wrong would be done in the long run, if the oppressing minority and the oppressed majority were to change places for a season. But a worthier answer may be given. The abolition of the direct rule of the Turk is as much needed in the interest of the peaceable and orderly Mussulman, who conscientiously follows his own law and is ready to leave his Christian neighbour to follow his, as it is in the interest of the Christian himself. Such Mussul­mans no one wishes to injure; no one wishes to make them the subjects or inferiors of the Christians, or to put them under any disability as compared with the Christians. To them the rule of the Sultan, that is in truth the rule of the corrupt and bloody gang at Constantinople, is almost as oppressive, though not quite in the same way, as it is to the Christian him­self. The disabilities of the Christian often wrong the peaceful Mussulman as well as the Christian. A wanton murder of Mussulman by Mussulman has been known to go unpunished when Christian wit­nesses only could prove the fact. Peaceable Mussulmans, who keep those virtues which are said to distinguish the private Turk from the official Turk, would have a far more favourable field for the prac­tice of those virtues under a Christian government Such a government could give equal justice to all its subjects, and to them among the rest Such equal justice they cannot find under a government which corrupts part of its subjects by giving them a power of oppressing the rest.

While the notion of good government for the Christian under Mussulman rule is purely dreamy and sentimental, to secure good government for the peaceable Mussulman by putting him under Christian rule is in every way practical. Those who know the Mussulman character best believe that the peaceable Mahometan imputation, where there is any, would sit down in perfect contentment under a government of any kind which would relieve them from the oppression of their present masters at Con­stantinople, and would respect their religion and customs. The Bulgarian beys with whom Mr. Calvert talked invited of their own accord the help of an European in the administration of the province. They complained of the ruling powers at Constanti­nople almost as strongly as the Christians did. On two points only would they support the powers at Constantinople; they would not be annexed by Russia; they would not have the Bulgarians put over their heads. Most certainly no one wishes to annex them to Russia, no one wishes to put the Bulgarians over their heads in the sense in which they have hitherto been put over the heads of the Bulgarians. Even in the land where oppression has been worst of all, the Bosnian beys, the descendants of renegades, still keeping up the old spite of the renegade, are described none the less as very lax votaries of Islam, as remembering their Christian descent, as treasuring up the patents of nobility which their forefathers received from the ancient Christian kings. Those who know them well think that, if they were put under a Christian government, their reconversion would not be hard; the bey would easily slide back into the baron. At this very mo­ment some of them are crying out for an Austrian occupation of their country; in other parts the native Mussulmans are rising against the corrupt rule of the Ring, against a constitution which is as great a mockery for them as it is for the Christians. In short, we have again only to make our old appeal to experi­ence. Both Greek and Slavonic experience teach that under a Mussulman government Mussulmans and men of other religions cannot live together on equal terms. English and Russian experience teaches that under a Christian government Mussulmans and men of other religions can live together on equal terms. In truth Greek and Slavonic experience proves the same also. There is a mosque at Chalcis and there is a mosque at Belgrade. In this war even Mussulman refugees have found a hospitable shelter in Montenegro. The few Mahometans at Chalcis suffer no wrong or disability. At Belgrade the case is still more instructive. When the Turkish garrison left Belgrade, the settled Mussul­man population went also. But why did they go ? Not by their own free will; not by the will of the Ser­vians, who wished them to stay. They went by orders from Constantinople, where the ruling powers wished to make a case again Servia, as if Servia had driven them out. But the mosque is there still; and its minister is paid by the Servian state for his services towards any Mussulman remnant that may be left, or towards any Mussulman travellers that may pass by. Here surely there can be no charge of intolerance ; there may be some ground for disestablishment.

In the particular case of Bosnia, if any special safeguard is needed, the safeguard is plain. I believe that either the Servian government in case of annexation, or a native Bosnian government in case of the foundation of a separate state, would be both able and willing to do justice to its Mussulman subjects. But, if it be thought otherwise, there is a neighbouring power which is quite able to do all that is needed. Let the King of Slavonia, Croatia, and Dalmatia become King of Bosnia also.

Another question may be raised, Are our thoughts in this matter to be directed only to Europe ? Is Asia to go for nothing ? It is undoubtedly a fact that Turkish rule has done its work yet more thoroughly in Asia than in Europe. It has been even more utterly desolating and blighting. It has more thoroughly turned the garden into a wilderness. We ask for the seats of Greek colonization, of Macedonian and Roman rule, for the cities famous in the early days of ecclesiastical lore and ecclesiastical contro­versy. A far greater proportion of them than in Europe have utterly perished; a far greater propor­tion, if they have not utterly perished, have ceased to be the abodes of Christian and civilized men. The territory of ancient commonwealths and kingdoms has become the pasture of a few wandering herds­men. To win those lands back again to civilized rule would indeed be a noble work. It would be a noble work too to free Syria, all its races, all its creeds, united in nothing else, but united in hatred towards the Ottoman master, from the yoke which equally weighs down all the representatives of all the older inhabitants of the land. Yet it is in Asia, in the Anatolian penin­sula and in the Anatolian peninsula only, that the Turk is really at home. The Ottoman is hardly at home even there but the Turk, the representative of the earlier and better Turkish races, is at home. There alone can we speak of a really Turkish nation or people, as distinguished from a mere Turkish army of occupation. Europe and Asia then stand on different grounds, and at all events the settlement of Europe is the nearer and the more pressing claim. In Europe the rule of the Turk must be wholly got rid of; in Asia the Turk may be left alone in those parts where he really forms the people of the land, provided full room for freedom and developement is given to that fringe of civilization which still, as of old, cleaves to the Euxine and Aegean coasts. The line of Othman is worn out; but a Seljuk Sultan at Ikonion need be the object of no more dislike or jealousy than a Shah of Persia.

Our argument then seems perfect. Granting our one assumption to start with, the stages follow on one another almost like a demonstration in Euclid. If there be such a thing as right and wrong in national affairs, then a nation which has done wrong to another nation is bound to make redress to that nation. England has done deep wrong to those nations of Europe which are under the rule of the Turk. Therefore England is bound to make redress to those nations. But no real redress can be made to them as long as they are left under the direct rule of the Turk. There­fore they must be set free from the direct rule of the Turk, and put in a relation at least not worse than the present relation of Rumania and Servia. And this can be done, most likely without fighting, if only the powers of Europe, or some of them, will agree to deal with the Turk in the only way in which it is any use trying to deal with him. And such an agreement with other powers may be made, if only England will leave off making objections to every scheme which seems likely to do the least good to the oppressed nations. Ina word our duty is plain, our duty is easy; we have nothing to do but to do it.

And it must be done at once. The tales which come day by day from every corner of the lands which still groan under Turkish tyranny might move the heart of a Turk ; they have moved the hearts of some Turks, of those good Turks whom the Ring punished for their goodness. One might almost think that they were enough to move the heart of an Am­bassador or a Foreign Secretary. Every day we hear the same tales of murder and robbery and burning, of insult and outrage of every kind, which show that those relations between the Sultan and his subjects of which the treaty of Paris was so tender have at least not changed for the better since the treaty of Paris. So it is, so it ever has been; so it ever will be as long as an inch of Christian soil is left under the wasting rule of the barbarian. There must be no delay, no shilly-shallying, no cowardly or sentimental chatter about a year of grace. It is enough to tell us what the year of grace means, that it was promised by the Turk himself through the voice of Midhat. It means that the Turk wants a little longer time to work his wicked will on Eastern Christendom, and that for that end, he wants a little more tune to throw dust in the eyes of Western Christendom. A year’s grace is asked to carry out reforms. What reason is there to think that these reforms would be any more carried out than the reforms which have been promised a hundred times before ? What reason is there to think that, if they were carried out, they would do the slightest good to the oppressed nations ? For they would not take away the rule of the Turk, and where the rule of the Turk is there can be no reform. The year of grace will be spent in putting on a little varnish and veneer in places where European eyes are likely to see it, while the back parts of the fabric of rottenness will remain untouched. It will be spent in whitening the sepulchre which will still be full within of dead men’s bones and of all uncleanness. It will be spent in setting things so as to make a fair show at Constantinople and Thessalonica and a few other places where deluded Europeans will see the show, while the relations between the Sultan and his subjects, the relations from which Midhat complains that Servia is set free, will go on as ever in the dark places of Bosnia and Bulgaria, of Thessaly and Crete. Yet it would seem that there are Englishmen, that there are English statesmen, who cannot or will not see through such a flimsy cheat as this. The net is set in vain in the sight of any bird, but it may be set openly enough in the eyes of an English Foreign Secretary. Or is it merely the shrinking from doing anything, the cowardly hope that, in the space of a year, something may happen to save the sad necessity of action and decision? “ The King may die, or the ass may die, or I may die myself." And this hand-to-mouth way of doing things, this helpless waiting on something—hardly on Providence—is what nowadays is called statesmanship. A statesman now is not the man who strives by the lessons of the present and the past to shape his course for the future; it is the man who can devise some petty momentary shift to save himself from the trouble and responsibility of taking any course at all. Rather than face the responsibility of making up his mind to do anything, the modern statesman will face the responsibility of condemning suffering nations to go on bearing their sufferings unhelped and unpitied. To such a statesman as this the notion of a year of grace, a year in which he may save himself from acting or thinking, is a Godsend indeed. Those who do not wilfully shut their eyes, those who walk by the light of reason and experience, would be inclined, instead of talking of a year of grace, to echo the cry, Now or never, now and for ever. Of all the schemes which lie beyond the range of practical politics, surely official weakness and cowardice never lighted on a scheme which lay further beyond that range than the scheme of giving the Turk a year of grace to work his sham reforms.

The main argument then stands thus ; but there are one or two by-points to which it may be well to give a word or two. We are told over and over again that, after all, the Turks are no worse than other people, that Christian governments and Chris­tian nations have done things just as bad, that the Turks and the Christians in the South-eastern lands arc troth very bad, that there is nothing to choose between them, and that we shall do best to leave them to themselves. Now most of these statements are quite false, and the arguments which arc founded on them arc the merest fallacies. Still there is just enough truth mixed with the falsehood to make the falsehood more dangerous. It may be therefore worthwhile to point out where the falsehood and fallacy lies.

One argument on behalf of the Turk, that which is drawn from the fact that Christians are said to have done things equally bad, has spread to the Turks themselves. At the Conference, when the Turks Safvet and Edhem were trying to deceive the European ministers by quibbles about the meaning of the word “Bulgaria,” they had the further impudence to speak of certain doings in France in past times, as the massacre of Saint Bartholomew and the dragonnades, as parallels to the doings which they had themselves ordered. The French ministers were naturally an­gry. The Turks doubtless thought that they were saying something clever, and showing their knowledge of European history. But what they said was very little to the purpose. If Turks do evil now, it does not make that evil any the less to say that Frenchmen do evil even now, much less to say that Frenchmen did evil a long time ago. Let it be proved that Charles the Ninth or Lewis the Fourteenth was as bad as Safvet himself, that does not make Safvet any the better. Comparisons of this kind prove nothing. But, if it can be proved that the government of Marshal MacMahon, even that the government of Louis- Napoleon Buonaparte, is much better than that of Charles the Ninth, but that the government of Midhat, Edhem, and Safvet is much worse than that of Sulei­man the Lawgiver, something is proved the other way. When we see that all the European govern­ments, whatever faults they may still have, have changed greatly for the better during the last three hundred years, while the rule of the Turk has simply got worse and worse, we are brought back to the distinctions which we drew in an earlier chapter. The worst form of misgovernment in an European state is after all only the corruption or perversion of a thing which is in itself good and which therefore may be reformed. The rule of the Turk is in itself evil, and cannot be reformed. It is perfectly true that European governments, therefore that Christian governments, have in past times done particular acts which were as bad, or nearly as bad, as the doings of the Turk. But the worst doings of Christian govern­ments have been in a manner incidental. They have been the crimes of particular men or of particular ages. They are not the necessary consequence of any form of the Christian religion, or of any form of government, from despotism to democracy, which has ever existed in any European state. Therefore Euro­pean governments have left off doing such things. All European governments have mended; some have mended more than others, but all have mended more or less. The very worst have mended so far as to be a great deal better than the rule of the Turk. Take the country which we commonly think has mended least of any in Western Europe. Take Spain. A Spanish Protestant a hundred years back was liable and likely to be burned alive. He would have been better off as a Christian subject of the lurk. But now, though the Spanish Protestant complains with good reason of vexatious restrictions on the public practice of his religion, yet his life and property are as safe as those of the Catholic. He would not now be better off by becoming a Christian subject of the Turk. Christian governments have done particular actsas bad as those of the Turk. But no Christian government has been evil in its very nature in the way in which the rule of the Turk is evil. No Christian government has gone on ruling so badly for so long a time as the Turk has done. For any European government is, in its idea, a government of men by rulers of their own nation, established for the general good of the nation. It may carry out that idea more or less perfectly; but the idea is in itself a good one, and, when it is departed from in practice, reforms may bring things nearer to what they ought to be. But the idea of the Turkish rule in Europe is a thing which is bad in itself. It is always and essentially, not now and then and in­cidentally, the rule of men of one religion over men of another religion, carried on in the interest of the men of the ruling religion only. Its very nature involves the subjugation and degradation of the mass of the people of the land; and subjugation and degradation are sure to grow into direct oppression and outrage of every kind. Therefore the worst European government is only misgovernment, the abuse of a good thing which may be reformed. The rule of the Turk is not government at all. It is a thing evil in itself, which cannot be reformed; but which, like other evil things, is sure to get worse and worse.

Let us take the things which, if they are true, are worst of all. Let us take the worst stories which have been told of the doings of Russia in Poland and in Turkestan. I need not enter into the truth of either; for argument’s sake, let us take them at the worst. If the worst stories are true, nay, even if we take off a good deal from the worst stories, no right-minded man will defend them. Still they are quite different from the doings of the Turk. The worst stories from Turkestan are after all not so bad as the doings in Bulgaria. The clement of brutal outrage and mockery, for the sake of outrage and mockery, is wanting. And in any case all these things are incidental. They are done towards enemies or revolters. The par­ticular doings in Bulgaria might also be said to be done to enemies and revolters. But then something of the same kind, though not so much of it at once, is always going on in the Turkish dominions, whether there are any revolts or not. The worst things that have been said, truly or falsely, of any Russian in Poland or Turkestan arc incidental evils which might be reformed. They are not always going on in all times and in all places under the Russian dominion. But doings of the same kind are always going on in all times and in all places under the Turkish dominion. For they are the direct con­sequence of the nature of the rule of the Turk, and therefore they cannot be reformed.

Perhaps the most striking way of showing the difference between governments which can improve and governments which can only get worse is to look at the signatures to the treaty of 1856, and to compare the history of the powers which signed it during the twenty-one years that have passed. That treaty was signed by England, France, Russia, Sardinia, and the Turk. In 1856 England still kept up traces of the days when the people of Ireland were bond men on their own soil, as the people of Thessaly and Bulgaria are still. In 1877 the dominion of the alien Church has passed away, and the soil of Ireland has been set free. In 1856 France was under a blood-stained tyranny, and her troops held Rome in bondage. In 1877 France is a commonwealth; Rome is the head of free Italy, and he who figures in that treaty as King of Sardinia is King of the whole ransomed land. In 1856 Nicolas of Russia reigned over a people of whom all but an exclusive class were bondmen. In 1877 Alexander the Liberator reigns over a people who are not yet politically free, but among whom every man’s personal chains are broken. He reigns over a land where the voice of a nation, strong in its renewed life, is heard for the first time as it bids its sovereign march forth to the relief of the oppressed. In all these lands reforms may be wrought and have been wrought. But all the change that one and twenty years have wrought for the lands under Turkish rule is that in 1877 the scorpions of Safvet and Midhat and Edhem, of Selim and Chefvet and Achmet, are felt to be yet harder to bear than the whips of Abd-ul-Medjid were in 1856.

As for the feeble cry that the Christians in those lands are as bad as the Turks, that I have dealt with already in more places than one. All that need be said here is one parting word of wonder and pity at the moral state of those who can rake up and gloat over every fault which long ages of wrong may have caused to stain the glorious uprising of our suffering brethren, while they catch with desperate zeal at every straw which they deem may be twisted to make out a case for their oppressors.

But now comes the last point which we have to argue. Is there after all any clashing in this matter between the duty of England and her interests ? Those who truly love their country, those to whom her honour is dear, those to whom her real well­being is dear, will say that, if duty and interest clash, it is interest that must give way. But it is only the feeblest and shallowest and most short-sighted view of English interests which can persuade men that any English interest will be jeoparded by England doing right If we can conceive a man from some distant land, able to understand and judge, but knowing nothing of the actual facts of European politics—if we can conceive such an one being told that it was for the interest of an island at one end of Europe that the people at the other end of Europe should go on bearing unutterable wrongs—if he were told that the people of that island had strained every nerve, that they had poured forth their treasure and their blood, to prolong the bondage of those nations—if he were told that it was handed down as the traditional policy of that island that the oppressors of those nations should at all hazards be upheld in their power of oppression—one is tempted to apply the words of the apostle ; Would he not say that ye are mad ? To such an one it would seem the paradox of paradoxes to be told that the wrongs of Bosnia and Crete could in any way promote the interest of England. And the paradox would seem greater still when he heard the way in which the dark saying was explained, when he was told in what way it was that England was supposed to find her interest in the plundered and outraged homes of South­eastern Europe. He would be told that there was another power, another nation, a nation which had never wronged us, but to which we had done deadly wrong, a nation whose advance we thought good to dread and which we thought ourselves specially called on for the sake of our own interest to keep back from winning influence over those lands. He would be told that these lands were struggling for freedom—that in every struggle for freedom they had first looked for help to the home of freedom—that, when they needed protection, it was English protection which they first sought—that, when they had a crown to bestow, it was to an English prince that they first offered it—but that England steadily refused help, steadily refused protection, for fear of increasing the strength of the rival power, and so drove those nations, against their will, to seek at the hands of that rival power for that help and protection which England refused to them.

This is in truth what we have been doing for many years. And to our supposed impartial observer it would indeed seem a strange way of strengthening ourselves and of checking the advance of that rival power, if the man from the distant land spoke his thoughts out openly, he would say, “fools and blind, you are working in the cause of the power which you wish to weaken. You are doing all that you can to tarnish your own fame, and to brighten the fame of the rival power. You are throwing away the allies who offer themselves to swell your strength, and driving them against their will to swell the strength of your rival.” He would perhaps even be tempted to go on and say, “Is this your own counsel? Is it not rather some device of the very power which you dread? You tell me that that power is a dark, subtle, intriguing power, a power which has its spies and emissaries everywhere, prying and thrusting themselves into every corner, and everywhere doing the work of that power in secret. Are you sure that you have no traitor in the camp? are you sure that the policy of which you boast your­selves is not in truth a suggestion of some spy or emissary of your rival? Has no such emissary cun­ningly found out the way to lure you into the path where your interests will be sacrificed to the interests of your rival, where your honour will be tarnished and his honour made to shine brighter?”

If we look the case fairly in the face, without troubling ourselves with oft repeated formulae, it does indeed seem like madness when we profess to dread the advance of Russia in South-eastern Europe, and then by way of checking that advance, do all that we can to make the nations of South-eastern Europe the friends of Russia, the enemies of England. We profess to fear that Russia may add the European dominions of the Turk to the empire which she has already. Our way to keep her from adding those lands to her empire is to drive those lands to seek for annexation to her empire, as the lesser evil in a choice of evils. Those lands have not the faintest wish for annexation to Russia. They are glad of the friendship of Russia, as they would be still more glad of the friendship of England. But there is not a man from the border of Croatia to the border of liberated Greece who wishes of his own free will to become a Russian subject. We drive them to wish for it; we bring about a state of things which leaves them no choice except the Russian or the Turk; and then we turn about, and wonder and cry out and deem ourselves wronged, and look on those nations as monsters of wickedness, if, in the sad choice which we ourselves have forced upon them, they choose the lesser and rather than the greater. If a day ever comes when those lands arc formally annexed to Russia, if a day ever comes when, without a King formally annexed to Russia, they are brought under such exclusive Russian influence as to become practically subjects of Russia, the men who have brought all this about will be the men who have held up the Russian hobgoblin before the eyes of England. Foremost among the truest friends of Russia is the man who, when the people of England and the people of Russia were stirred at the same moment by the same high and generous feelings, when the sovereign of Russia was offering us the right hand of fellowship in the noblest of works, had no answer to give in the name of England but brags of insolent defiance, sent forth, not from the council-chamber, but from the banquet. And a trusty, though unwit­ting, yoke-fellow he has found in the colleague who surpasses all men in stirring heaven and earth to find the means of doing nothing. If a Russian Emperor ever mounts the throne of the New Rome, the men who will have done most to guide him thither will be Benjamin Earl of Beaconsfield and Edward Henry Earl of Derby.

It does indeed seem to be a matter of simple com­mon sense that, if we are afraid of Russian encroach­ment, of Russian influence in those lands, we ought at once to seize every opportunity of making the people of those lands our friends, every opportunity of teach­ing them to look to us and not to Russia for help and for counsel in their need. Except during the short moment when the counsels of England were swayed by wisdom and generosity under the rule of Canning, we have done everything that we could to drive the people of those lands to look to Russia as their helper. This strange course is supposed in some mysterious way to be likely to check the advance of Russia and to lessen her influence. There is really some reason to suspect that we have here a result of a confusion which was spoken of in an earlier chapter. It really looks as if this kind of traditional policy largely sprang out of sheer inability to distinguish between Turkey and the Turks. Lord Palmerston, in words worthy to rank with the passage which I before quoted from Sir Henry Elliot, says: “We support Turkey for our own sake and for our own interests”.  The truth is that we do not support Turkey at all; we support the enemy of Turkey, namely the Turk. To support Turkey would be not only a generous policy; for those who deem it a matter of paramount importance to check the advance of Russia, it would be also a wise policy. To support Turkey ought to mean to support the people of Turkey, to support the nations which inhabit Turkey, to encourage every movement which can give them more strength and more freedom, and thereby to make them a stronger barrier against Russian encroachment, if Russian encroach­ment is dreaded. But to make Turkey free, strong, national, able to hold her own, able to withstand en­croachments from Russia or anywhere else, the only way is to free Turkey from the Turk. In supporting Turkey in this sense, we should be upholding a moral power. In upholding the Turk at the expense of Turkey, we are upholding a power of simple brute force. The power of the Turk can never get beyond brute force; it has no moral basis, no moral strength, and the lack of moral strength weakens its physical strength also. The Turk can never bring against Russia or against any other power the full resources of the lands over which he rules. The ruler of any other land can call into the field the full strength of the nation which inhabits the land. But the Turk can never call into the field the full strength of the nations which inhabit Turkey. At the outside, all that he can bring is the strength of the army of occu­pation which keeps the nations of Turkey down. But he cannot even bring the full strength of the army of occupation; for part of that army of occu­pation must be employed in keeping down, or rather in fighting against, the subject nations. Its full force therefore can never be brought to act against the invader from without

We are thus brought again to one of the dis­tinctions which we drew at the beginning. We here see the difference between a land which has a national government and a land which is held down by strangers. The national government is essentially strong; the domination of strangers is essentially weak. When France and Germany were at war, each side had to dread the efforts of the enemy abroad; neither side had any reason to dread the efforts of any enemy at home. Every man in France was ready to fight for France; every man in Germany was ready to fight for Germany. But if Russia went to war with the Turk, the vast majority of the people of European Turkey would at once spring to arms, not to fight for the Turk but to fight against him. The Turk would have to wage war in every corner, not only against the invading army, but against the people of the land which he calls his own. In trying then to support the Turk, we are supporting a thing which is not only wicked, but is in its own nature weak. If we hold that our interest leads us to support Turkey, as a check on Russia, or for any other reason, we must get rid of that which makes Turkey weak, namely the rule of the Turk. In short, duty and interest, if there be any interest in the matter, do not clash, but both lead us the same way. Duty bids us set free those suffering nations as an atone­ment for the wrongs which we have done to them. Interest, if there be any interest in the matter, leads us to set them free, in order that South-eastern Europe may become strong, and may be mistress of the whole of her own resources, which she never can be while she is under the foreign yoke of the Turk.

In saying this, I do not put out of sight the in­herent difficulties of the case. We cannot call up at a moment any single power which may at once take the place of the Turk. We shall have to face the difficulties which arise from the fact that so many separate nations dwell in those lands, and that some of them arc unhappily divided by grudges against one another. In such a case, it would be impossible to call into being any power which should have the full national unity and national strength as is pos­sessed by such a power, for instance, as France. Such a power has never been in those lands, and it never can be. That is the natural result of that permanent distinction of races in those lands which were spoken of in an earlier chapter. The utmost that can be thought of at all events for a long time to come, would be a number of states united by a close federal tie. And no one can hope that such a federation of states would have the strength of a single national power. But it would be stronger than the Turk. Jealousies between the several states would be likely enough, and they would undoubtedly be a source of weakness. But they would not be the source of such utter weakness as the necessity under which the Turk lies of fighting at once against his enemy without and against the great mass of those whom he calls his subjects within. But more import­ant still would be the moral power which such an union of states would have, as compared with the wicked rule of the Turk. If Russia, as those who call themselves her enemies say, cloaks all manner of evil designs under the pretext of helping the op­pressed, that pretext would be at once taken from her. She has always—I am again speaking the language of her professed enemies—a plausible ex­cuse for interfering in those lands as long as the Turk rules over them. She will have no longer any such pretext as soon as the rule of the Turk comes to an end. Any Russian attack on the Turk can now be coloured so as to have a fair show in the eyes of men; no such fair show could ever be given to an attack on the freedom of any Greek or Rumanian or Slavonic land. One favourite fallacy is that, because tributary Rumania and Servia and independent Montenegro have now to look to Russia, and largely to direct their policy by that of Russia, the whole of European Turkey, if it were set free, would in the same way look to Russia. But why are those states now driven to look to Russia? Simply because they have a dangerous neighbour in the Turk, and no helper but Russia offers himself. Take away the Turk, and there would be no longer any necessity for looking exclusively to Russia. Those lands might well look to Russia with a traditional friendship; but they would be released from all necessity of practical dependence upon her.

Again it does seem blindness indeed when those who take up the cause of the Turk strive to serve his cause by drawing the blackest picture of Russian rule that can be drawn, by heaping together every tale, true or false, that can be found to the disparagement of Russia. Of the real fallacy of some of these pictures I have spoken already. But take the doings of Russia in Poland and Turkestan at the very worst, Russia would not, for her own interest’s sake, deal in the same way with the people of Bosnia or Bulgaria. She would not deal with those whose affections it was her interest to win in the same way in which she deals, or at least is said to deal, with enemies and revolters. But set this aside; take the very blackest picture of Russia that can be drawn. We then ask, whose concern is it? It is the concern of those who are playing the game of Russia by letting Russia win moral influence. It is the concern of those who, by refusing all other help to the subject nations, are driving them to seek help from Russia. We who assert the rights of the subject nations have no wish to see them annexed by Russia. We have no wish to see them brought under exclusive Russian in­fluence. They do not themselves wish for such annexation or for such exclusive influence. Without believing all that is said against Russia, fully taking in the difference between Russia now and Russia twenty years back, neither we nor the people of those lands themselves believe that Russian annexation or exclusive Russian influence would be any gain for those lands. We therefore wish to strengthen those lands, to strengthen them, if needs be, against Russia, by freeing them from the Turk. But those who believe in the extreme blackness of Russia, those who make no distinction between the comparatively free Russia of today and the enslaved Russia of just times, are yet more called on to pause than we are before they give Russia the moral advantage of representing herself as the one refuge of the oppressed. All that we on the other hand say, all that the nations themselves say, is this. Let us have neither Turk nor Russian; but, if we must choose between Turk and Russian, then let us have Russian. It will be wholly the fault of those who cut off those nations from the hope of anything better than either, those whose blind policy first drives those nations into the arms of Russia, those who thus do the very work that Russia would have done, and who then turn round and tell us how very black a power it is for whose objects they are themselves steadily working.

If then Russian advance in the South-eastern lands is a thing to be dreaded, it is the party that is always crying out against Russia which is really playing the game of Russia. Our traditional policy, the policy of upholding the Turk against the people of Turkey, gives Russia even physical, and still more moral, advantages which otherwise she could not have. This strange notion of adapting means to ends is of a piece with the glaring inconsistency of many of those who now raise the cry of Poland. That cry is raised by many who never thought of Poland, whose sympathies were all with Russia against Poland, till they suddenly found out that Poland might be turned into a conve­nient cry on behalf of the Turk or the Turk’s friends. We have a right to talk of Poland, if we choose ; and we have a right to talk also of something nearer than Poland. If the Russian hobgoblin ever appears to me as a hobgoblin, it is when I look on the map and see how very closely Russian guns are pointed towards the capital of a people of our own race, our own faith almost our own language. It is not on behalf of the Turk, not even on behalf of the Pole, but on behalf of the noble kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, that Russia is really to be feared, if she is to be feared at all. We talk about Sebastopol and the Black Sea, about the danger of Russian fortresses on her own shore, about the danger of a Russian ship of war being seen in the Mediterranean. It would have been a worthier object of European policy to insist that Russia should withdraw from the isles of Aland. But the two glorious kingdoms of the North were never thought of till, in the days of the Crimean war, it was found for a moment that they too might be turned into a means for upholding the Turk. We who speak up for the victims of the Turk, as we have no special hatred for Russia, so we have no special love for her. All that we ask is that Russia may be dealt with on the same terms as any other European power. We ask that she may be treated as neither better nor worse than any other of the powers which make up the European concert. We do not ask that she should be treated with greater confidence than any other power; we do ask that she may not be suspected, thwarted, insulted, in a way in which we should not suspect, thwart, and insult any other power. We believe that Russians, like Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, or any other nation, arc neither angels nor devils, but men, capable alike of good and of evil. We have no great faith in governments, least of all in despotic governments. But we have a faith in nations; and we see in the great uprising of the Russian nation on behalf of its oppressed brethren one of the noblest movements of generous sympathy that the world ever saw. And though we have little faith in governments, we may now and then have faith in personal rulers. We cannot look wholly askance at the prince who has given freedom to his people. We have no love for despots; yet we can reverence a Marcus and an Akbar. And along with the names of Marcus and of Akbar the voice of truthful history will one day place the name of the second Alexander.

After all, when we come to shake off mere vague traditionary fears, it is not easy to see where the real danger to England from Russia lies. No one believes that Russia has any notion of annexing or invading the British Islands. The fear is always for India. Now in those vast lands of Asia the mission of Russia and the mission of England is really very much the same. Russia and England are the two European powers on whom the duty has fallen of carrying European rule into two different parts of the great Eastern continent. England is far more favoured in the lot which has fallen to her share; but the duty which is laid on both the powers is the same. I say the duty, for neither for England nor for Russia can Asiatic empire be thought either a gain or a glory, while for both it is a fearful responsibility. No right-minded man will justify all the acts either of Russia or of England in their Asiatic dominions; but both have the same general mission, the mission of keeping nations at peace which cannot be kept at peace, except under the rule of some power stronger than themselves. And both alike seem to be carried on by a kind of irresistible destiny, which makes each annexation lead to some further annexation. The dominions of the two powers may some day meet; and, when they do meet, it will be of the highest moment for the world that they should meet as friendly neighbours, and not as enemies. To be always stirring up ill blood between the two powers before that time comes is as foolish as it is wicked. As for the notion that a Russian occupation of Con­stantinople would interfere with our road to India, a glance at the map is enough to lay that hobgoblin. It is in Egypt, not at Constantinople, that our interest in that matter lies.

A more plausible ground of alarm is sought in the alleged danger from the Mahometans of India, or at least the Sunnite part of them, if we deal otherwise than very respectfully with their supposed spiritual head at Constantinople. But those who know the Indian Mussulmans best say that they really care very little for their supposed Caliph, that they most certainly will not revolt on his behalf. And one would really think that a devout Mussulman would have very little respect for the Ring which deals with Caliphs so lightly, and by whom the Successor of the Prophet may any morning be set aside. From the point of view of Mussulman orthodoxy, one would rather expect to see a non-juring schism arise on behalf of Murad, or to hear of miracles wrought at the tomb of the martyred Abd-ul-Aziz. One thing is certain, namely that, if the Indian Mahome­tans are likely to revolt on behalf of their Caliph, the way to show them that revolt is useless will be to show that their Caliph is no object of fear to us. Firm dealing with the Turks will have a good moral effect through the whole of Islam. Many Mussul­mans believe that the Sultan is really the lord of all European powers. It is time to undeceive them.

But after all it is only a very shallow way of looking at things which really believes that Russia has any thought of annexing Constantinople. To gain exclusive influence in the  South-eastern lands, even to place a Russian prince on the throne of Constantinople, are possible and rational objects of Russian policy. Not so the annexation of the Imperial city. Russian states­men are wise enough to know, if English statesmen are not, that the New Rome cannot change her nature. The Queen of Nations, seated at the junction of two worlds, can never give up her Imperial calling. Her empire may be shut up within her own walls; but she can never be subject. In the last agony of her Latin Emperor, in the last agony of her restored Greek Emperors, she was still the seat of rule, ready again to become the seat of wider rule under stronger masters. Constantinople cannot be ruled from Saint Petersburg, neither can Saint Petersburg be ruled from Constantinople. The Romanoff may reign in New Rome; the Russian cannot. For the Romanoff on the throne of New Rome would cease to be Russian. A cautious student of politics not long ago proposed to place on that throne a prince who might be said to be English, German, and Russian all at once. Once on that throne, he would not long remain either English, German, or Russian. The magic of the spot would assert its right. That magic has touched the Turk himself. What Abd-ul-Hamid may deem himself to be it is hardly worthwhile to ask; but Mahomet the Conqueror deemed himself to be Caesar as well as Sultan. An European prince on the throne of all the Constantines could not remain merely English, merely Russian; he would again be the Caesar of the Eastern Rome, and nothing less.

One word more. It may be doubted whether there is much to be said, from the point of view either of morals or of politics, for these excessively long-sighted views of things. The interests of England and the interests of Russia may possibly clash at some far distant day. Therefore, in order to make matters worse when that day does come, we are to spend all the time till it comes in making a sore and rubbing at it, in doing everything to stir up jealousy and ill will between the two countries. We are to suspect and thwart Russia in every way that we can think, to force her to become an enemy by treating her in all things as an enemy. This is an over-wisdom which is nearly allied to folly. It is really only because Russia is so far off that we can venture on such a course. We should soon feel the effect if we dealt with a nearer power, say France or Germany, in the same way. Diplo­matists themselves cannot tell the future for certain. On the eve of a great war or revolution they generally tell us that things are remarkably tranquil. When they do come face to face with a great movement, all that they can think of is to suppress it. In all this there is an odd mixture of a longsightedness which lays plans for generations to come, and a short­sightedness which cannot see the clearest facts of today and tomorrow. These very elaborate calcu­lations leave out two important elements in the reckoning; they leave out the will of God and the will of man. A single man, great whether for good or for evil, a Mahomet, a Buonaparte, a Garibaldi, is enough to upset all their reckonings. A really great man, one who is righteous as well as great, has a higher wisdom. Such an one knows that the truest prudence is to do the immediate duty of the moment, believing that so doing will clear the way for the duty of the next moment, whatever that duty may prove to be. We are sometimes twitted with proposing to drive out the Turk without having drawn out any exact schemes as to what is to take the place of the Turk. The answer is that, by taking the first steps, the steps which are our manifest duty, we shall learn what are to be the next steps. The greatest deeds that have ever been done, never would have been done, if their doers had waited till they had drawn out their journals beforehand for seventy or for seven years to come. If William the Silent had waited to strike for the freedom of the Netherlands till he had the Articles of Union of the Seven Provinces ready in his pocket, he would have waited for ever. If Washington had waited to strike for the freedom of the American colonies till the Federal Constitution had settled exactly what form of government was to be put in the place of King George the Third, he too would have waited for ever. But one thing we may foretell beforehand. In one case we may write our journals beforehand. If we make up our minds to bring no real force to bear upon the Turk, if we give him Midhat’s year of grace, or any kind of grace at all, then we may write our journals beforehand, and we may fill them beforehand with difficulties and complications, with atrocities and insurrections, with commissions and conferences, with notes and proto­cols, with all things which arise out of the Sultan's relations with his subjects, and out of the feebleness and blindness which refuses at once to strike the blow which shall put those relations to an end. To do nothing, to give a year of grace, may be a noble diplo­matic triumph; in the eye of common sense it simply means to leave every thing to be done over again.

We have thus seen what the Turk is, what he has done, how he has grown, how he has decayed, how his victims have risen up against him, and how we have dealt between him and his victims. We have seen what is our duty to the brethren whom we have wronged; we have seen that our interest and our duty do not clash. The policy of 1827 should be the policy of 1877. Peace and friendship, frank and cordial union, among all powers that will join to cleanse Europe from its foulest wrong, its blackest shame. But not peace where there is no peace—no partner­ship, no paltering, with evil—no year of grace which will only be another year of broken promises—but united action in the noblest of causes, united action to free the East from bondage, and to clear the West from dishonour. Let us once more remember what the enemy is. It is the common enemy of mankind. If he no longer sacks Otranto or bombards Vienna, it is not because he lacks the will, but merely because he lacks the power. Where he still holds power, his power is in no way better, it is rather in all things worse, than it was when he sacked Otranto and bom­barded Vienna. What the Turk, his Sultan arid his Sultan's following, then were, that they still abide, in all except the dazzling greatness which half leads us to forget that their greatness was wholly a greatness of evil. The Turk came into Europe as a stranger and an oppressor, and after five hundred years he is a stranger and an oppressor still. He has hin­dered the progress of every land where he has set his foot. He has brought down independent nations to bondage; by bringing them down to bondage, he has taught them the vices of bondmen. He has turned fertile lands into wilderness, he has turned fenced cities into ruinous heaps because under his rule no man can dwell in safety. Wherever his rule has spread, the inhabitants have dwindled away, and the land has day by day gone out of cultivation. While other conquerors, even other Mahometan conquerors, have done something for the lands which they conquered, the Ottoman Turk has done nothing for the lands which he has conquered; he has done everything against them. His dominion is perhaps the only case in history of a lasting and settled dominion, as distinguished from mere passing in­roads, which has been purely evil, without any one redeeming feature. The Saracen in South-western Europe has left behind him the memorials of a cultivation different from that of Europe, but still a real cultivation, which for a while surpassed the cultivation of most European nations at the same time. But the Turk in South-eastern Europe can show no memorials of cultivation; he can show only memorials of destruction. His history for the five hundred years during which he has been encamped on European soil is best summed up in the pro­verbial saying, “Where the Sultan’s horse-hoof treads, grass never grows again.”