IV
The Turkish Question
Leader, N. Y. T., April 19, 1853
Ir is only of late that people in the west of Europe and in America have been enabled to form anything like a correct judgment of Turkish affairs. Up to the Greek insurrection Turkey was, to all intents and purposes, a terra incognita, and the common notions floating about among the public were based more upon the Arabian Nights' Entertainment than upon any historical facts. Official diplomatic functionaries, having been on the spot, boasted a more accurate knowledge; but this, too, amounted to nothing, as none of these officials ever troubled himself to learn Turkish, South Slavonian, or modern Greek, and they were one and all dependent upon the interested accounts of Greek interpreters and Frank merchants. Besides, intrigues of every sort were always on hand to occupy the time of these lounging diplomatists, among whom Joseph von Hammer, the German historian of Turkey, forms the only honourable exception. The business of these gentle-men was not with the people, the institutions, the social state of the country: it was exclusively with the Court, and especially with the Fanariote Greeks, wily mediators between two parties, either of which was equally ignorant of the real condition, power, and resources of the other. The traditional notions and opinions, founded upon such paltry information, formed for a long while, and, strange to say, form to a great extent even now, the groundwork
