And no class of men more ardently desire the spread and final success of the insurrection than the Roman Catholics of Bosina. They would be delighted at the idea of passing under the political rule of Orthodox Servia; for they know, as their bishop assured us, that Servia would secure to them not only justice, but perfect religious freedom — a blessing which they certainly do not enjoy under the Ottoman government. The massacres of the Lebanon are a specimen of the toleration granted to the Roman Catholics in the Turkish empire. The simple truth is that the Mussulman has no idea of what toleration means in the case of non-Mussulmans; and if he sometimes oppresses one class of non-Mussulmans somewhat less than another, it is because his hatred and scorn are not so much whetted by cupidity, or jealousy, or fear. The Temps is a paper which has taken the side of Turkey throughout this business, and its testimony may therefore be accepted as unprejudiced. It has a correspondent travelling in the provinces of Turkey, and reporting on the condition of the population, and the relations of the various races and creeds to each other; and what he says is that the Mussulmans draw no distinction, but treat Orthodox and Catholic alike with impartial and indiscriminate barbarity.[1]
Nor is it the Christian subjects of the Porte alone who are thus dealt with. The Jews fare but slightly better; and this slight amelioration in their condition they owe to their comparative paucity and political unimportance. They are not cultivators of the soil. They are engaged for the most part in trade, and that fact alone relieves them from numberless cruelties and hardships to which the rayah is daily exposed. Mr. Glückstein, himself a Jew, resident in England, has lately published a pamphlet, in which he proves that the Turkish authorities, when the occasion offers, treat the Jews in much the same way in which they are accustomed to treat the Christians. Mr. Glückstein is therefore naturally surprised at the "Judaic sympathies" which the Turkish cause has evoked both here and on the Continent; yet all sort of insinuations have been made against Mr. Gladstone because, in courteously acknowledging a letter from Mr. Glückstein, he ventured to say that he shared Mr. Glückstein's regret.
But surely, it may be urged, the Hatt-i-Humayoun which the sultan published at the close of the Crimean war changed all this. Yes, as many other hatts had done before it — on paper. But the Hatt-i-Humayoun has never been proclaimed to this day through the Turkish empire. Within a certain narrow radius from Constantinople some of its provisions are feebly and fitfully carried out. But in the provinces it has remained a dead letter. It is probable that most of the judges have never heard of it; but certainly there never has been any attempt to enforce any one of its provisions. And, next to the incurable perfidy of the Ottoman government, the person, no longer amenable to human praise or censure, who must be held chiefly responsible for this lame and impotent conclusion to the Crimean war, is the late Lord Palmerston. It was proposed in the Congress of Paris that the provisions of the Hatt-i-Humayoun of 1856 should be incorporated into the treaty. The Turkish minister, however, objected, and pleaded that the Congress should spare the dignity of the Porte and trust to the honor of the sultan. The government of Lord Palmerston supported the Turkish minister, and the eight millions of Christians in Turkey, to say nothing of the blood and treasure spent in the Crimean war, were sacrificed by a stroke of the pen in order not to wound the delicate susceptibilities of the sultan and his ministers. The latter, however, were thinking of something more substantial than
- ↑ The following extract is a specimen. It is from a letter written from Albania on the 20th of last September: —
"Un des premiers actes des bachi-bouzouks qui arrivent ici et qu'anime, il faut bien s'en rendre compte, le véritable esprit des populations musulmanes, est d'insulter et de piller les églises chrétiennes. Ils l'ont fait et à différentes reprises: à Dulcigno, à Antivari, à Scutari et à Podgoritza; puis les troupes régulières se sont mises de la partie et un bataillon d'infanterie, débarqué à l'embouchure de la Boiana, à San Nicolo, a debute par s'attaquer à l'église catholique de ce petit bourg, par y briser les croix et y voler tout ce qu'elle contenait. Tout y a passé, depuis un calice et un ostensoir en vermeil, présents de feu l'archiduc, plus tard empereur du Mexique, jusqu'aux vases, aux flambeaux et à tous les vêtements ecclésiastiques du pauvre curé qui, n'ayant pu obtenir protection ni justice de la part du chef de la troupe, est accouru a Scutari implorer son archevèque et la consul general d'Autriche, cette puissance étant ici chargée, comme la France l'est dans presque tout le reste de l'empire ottoman, de la protection du culte catholique.
"A Podgoritza, les fameux zeybeks de Smyrne n'ont laissé que les murs nus de l'église grecque. C'étaient les memes gens qui avaient, peu de jours auparavant, brisé les croix et souillé les murs des églises grecques et catholiques d'un faubourg de Scutari. . . . Et savez-vous comment la généralité de la population musulmane accueille ces excès? Elle les admire et les trouve coniormes à la tradition de l'islam.
"'Ces Chretiens,' disent-ils, 'devraient-ils avoir le droit d'elever de si belles églises (celle de Scutari est fort grande et se voit de loin), et de sonner les cloches!' Cette sonnerie des cloches est particulièrement odieuse aux bons musulmans. Vous le voyez, le vieil esprit d'hostilité, de domination, se réveille à la première circonstance, aussi entier, aussi vivace qu'aux jours mêmes de la conquête."
