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but it is a mere temporary inconvenience, which will easily be overcome by publicity and open courts. The Tanzimat, or Charter of Gulkhane, which in 1839 promised a better judicial administration, must now be followed by a code of civil procedure. In considering the actual condition of the central administration in the Othoman Empire, we ought not to forget its original constitution. In comparing the immense changes which it has already undergone with the improvements which are now desired, we cannot entertain a doubt concerning the ultimate success of any wellconsidered plans of reform. The original foundation of the Othoman Empire was force, and for two centuries it derived its whole strength from conquest. Its army was recruited with Christian children, and its treasury was filled by a capitation-tax on the Christians. Force was the basis of the government, and expediency, not justice, the guiding principle of its legislation. Never did any other great empire proclaim the same indifference for the restraints of morality and the rules of equity. A single example of this contempt for justice may be cited. The expediency of removing the chances of civil war was deemed sufficient to authorise murder, by an organic law of the empire. Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constantinople, after citing in his Kanunname the opinion of the Ulema that the Koran authorises murder to avoid great political dangers, adds this injunction to all his successors on the throne, "Let my children and grandchildren be dealt with accordingly." Now, so long as such principles guided the legislation of Turkey, it is evident that every attempt to dispense justice equally to all ranks of society was impossible. But no power can so completely defy the progress of modern civilisation as to maintain its place in Europe by the laws of force and expediency, as the Emperor Nicholas will soon learn. We have seen acts of murder and intolerance committed by Christian princes, and praised by Christian priests, in past ages, quite as infamons as any that can be cited from Othoman history. Mohammedan intolerance has yielded to the progress of modern civilisation

more rapidly than bigotry in the Russo-Greek Church. Even Turkey has felt the influence of the humane principles inculcated by the civilisation of Western Europe; and perhaps greater difficulty will be found at Constantinople in drawing up a code of civil procedure applicable to all ranks of society, than in carrying it into effect when it is published.

An erroneous idea has always prevailed concerning the extent of Othoman bigotry. In every age of the empire, the Turks have availed themselves of the service of their Christian subjects in their armies; and it was the unwarlike habits of the Greeks, far more than the bigotry of the Turks, which excluded them from military service. Indeed, whenever the Greeks were found fit to bear arms, they were employed. Not to speak of the numerous bodies of Christian auxiliaries which the Turks drew from Transylvania, Vallachia, and Moldavia, during their long wars with Austria, they have, in their more recent wars, drawn contingents of Christian troops from Servia and Albania; and a Christian gendarmerie, called Armatoloi, composed in part of Greeks, was long maintained in the mountains of Macedonia, Epirus, and Greece.

There is no doubt that the military administration in Turkey is far superior at present to the civil. Yet even in the conduct of the war, particularly on the Asiatic frontier, the public attention has been drawn to the venality and corruption of several officials holding high rank in the army. The alarming extent to which venality, corruption, and fraud are engrafted in the whole administrative system of the Othoman Empire, cannot be denied by any person who has ever transacted business with the finance department in Turkey. The Seljouk aga may be a disinterested gentleman, but the Othoman official is generally an incarnation of avarice and rapacity. Since the time of Rustem Pasha, the celebrated grand vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent, every pashalic, and indeed every government office in the Sultan's dominions, has been annually put up to sale. The best ministers of the sultans have been satisfied to sell the public charges at a fixed price; but far the greater number

have habitually put them up to auction. The evil consequences of this system have been lamented by every eminent native historian since the time of the great Suleiman, and they are considered by them to have been the principal cause of the decline of the Othoman Empire. On the other hand, the enemies of the Sultan and the Christian subjects of the Porte appeal to this deep-seated corruption as a proof that the regeneration of Othoman society is hopeless, and that any addition to the resources of the empire would only increase the fortunes of individual ministers, without augmenting the strength of the government. There can be no doubt that, unless the venality which now prevails among the officials of the central administration be extirpated, all endeavours to improve the collection of the land-tax, and introduce equitable tribunals, would be ineffectual; but we do not despair of rooting out the existing corruption by summary process. The present Sultan has power to do it; the people would applaud any arbitrary act of despotism by which it could be effected. Publicity would soon enable the Sultan to punish evil-doers, if he called in the interests of the agricultural classes to aid him in his reforms. Several measures might be suggested which would immediately restrain the evil, but it is a waste of time to discuss petty measures of reform when the safety of the empire can only be secured by a series of measures which would make twenty millions of the Sultan's subjects aid him in the execution of his plans. We cannot feel certain that the successful termination of the present war, even though the pride of the Czar be so tamed that he consent to every article of a peace dictated by Great Britain and France, will secure the permanent tranquillity of the East, until we see the Mohammedans and Christians who own and till the land in the Sultan's dominions prospering under an improved fiscal system, and united under an equitable administration of justice. Nor will it be easy to persuade us that these results have been attained, unless we see cargoes of wheat arriving at London and Liverpool from the plains of Thrace and Asia Minor, and Greek ships

crowding the Turkish ports instead of the Russian. When this happens, there will no longer be any difficulty in resisting the progress of Russia towards the south; and unless this happen speedily, it will be a hard task, even for the united power of Great Britain and France, to maintain the integrity of the Othoman Empire.

There is still one subject on which we desire to say a few words, and this is, the extent to which the relics of communal institutions among the Asiatic Turks may be rendered available in reinvigorating the frame of society. But we are warned, by the dry nature of the minute details to which it would be necessary to refer, to abstain from entering on the subject. We assert, however, with confidence, that, both among the Mohammedans and the Christians, the existing local institutions would be found of great importance in facilitating all the reforms to which we have alluded. The central power of the Sultan may be strong enough to introduce the necessary change; but it will require the influence of communal institutions to protect the people from becoming a prey to venality and corruption under the new system, even more than under the old. We might here insist on the necessity of communal institutions to guard against that concentration of dissatisfaction which has so often, in our times, overthrown the most powerful central governments in Christendom. would be a reason for creating them in Turkey, even if they had no existence; but, fortunately, they not only exist, but possess considerable influence on society. In some cases these institutions are limited by the religious faith of the members, in others by the fiscal obligations they impose. The fact of their existence, however, adds greatly to the facilities of the Sultan's government at present, and it would relieve him from some of the most difficult details in his fiscal reforms.

This

Great as the administrative difficulties of the Sultan's government are, they are by no means so great as Europeans generally consider them. We have seen that the Christian subjects of the Porte are more disposed to wait for reforms at home, than to

trust their hopes of bettering their condition to the orthodox mercies of the Czar. The Mussulmans are still a comparatively docile body. There is certainly no other country in Europe in which the government has so many auxiliaries for effecting great changes as in Turkey. Compare the internal organisation and the political burdens of the various races of the population of the Austrian empire with those of the Sultan's subjects, and we see immediately that the danger of insurrection and independent political action are much less. Turn to examine the fiscal burdens and commercial system of France, and we find that the very imperfections of the Turkish system increase the facilities of reform, and insure to the greatest changes a freedom from opposition which private interests offer to many useful reforms elsewhere.

Some of the warmest friends of Turkey assert that the condition of the Christian subjects of the Porte is already so favourable that Turkish oppression has no existence, and no further reforms are required.

The

Greeks and their friends, nevertheless, declare that the insupportable tyranny of the Sultan's administration is the sole cause of the revolutionary spirit which prevails among the Greek population, and generally among the orthodox clergy. Both assertions are incorrect. The well-attested diminution of the productions of the soil and of the population, both in European and Asiatic Turkey, for the last six generations, proves that the oppression of the central government has destroyed the capital vested in land by a slow but sure process of consumption. We hope we have made the primary causes of the evil evident to our readers, and demonstrated by what general measures these causes may be soon removed. The Othoman Empire presents us with a living example of the governmental policy by which imperial Rome depopulated and impoverished her provinces, and rendered them thinly peopled and heavily taxed countries before they were invaded by the Goths and Vandals. Even the small armies of Alaric and Genseric found few to oppose their progress, while fiscal oppression and social stagnation

had so entirely annihilated the feelings of patriotism in the breasts of the few Roman citizens who still inhabited the provinces, that they welcomed the arrival of the northern barbarians as a deliverance, and, like Boethius and Cassiodorus, sought honour in their service. Now, at this moment there is a considerable similarity between the Greeks of the nineteenth century and the Italians of the fifth. The Roman provincials often invited the Goths, the Greek rayahs are eager to hail the Russians, and we have seen the senators of the Hellenic kingdom as eager to become the tools of the Emperor Nicholas as the old Italian senators were to become the servants of Theodoric. Nor will this feeling be removed as long as the Christian who tills a few acres in the plains of Macedonia and Thrace sees square miles of the richest land uncultivated around him; and while he listens to the insinuations of his Greek priest, that all this land would be cultivated, and that he would be a rich landlord, exporting cargoes of wheat, if the Czar was the ruler of the country. What argument can political science offer that is likely to counteract the effect of such orthodox doctrine on the minds of the Bulgarian and Sclavonian peasants?

With regard to the assertion of the Greeks that the tyranny of the Sultan's government is the sole cause of their discontent, their conduct in the Ionian Islands and in the kingdom of Greece proves it to be false. In the Ionian Islands the greatest improvements in the administration of justice, and the establishment of a degree of protection for life and property previously unknown to the Greek race, appear to have done nothing to allay discontent, nor diminish the inherent love of calumny which seems to be a Hellenic idiosyncracy. The late events in the Greek kingdom have shown that no sense of justice and no treaties can bind them, when they believe they can gratify their passions by an appeal to force. Their political sagacity, it is true, was on this occasion sadly at fault. The rashness and presumption which for two thousand years have characterised the Romaiko-Hellenic people, combining with individual selfishness, royal am

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bition, national incapacity, and Russian guidance, misled them to appeal their destinies to the sword, which they were unable to use with any effect, even when they took their Of the Greeks, enemy by surprise.

therefore, we may assert that no measures of equity can secure their cordial support to any institutions. They have now had the government of liberated Greece entirely in their own hands for ten years, with the exercise of universal suffrage, and the fullest liberty of the press, and yet they have made no progress in their internal improvements. They cultivate their lands like medieval serfs; they manufacture wine with a mixture of resin into a composition that would make Bacchus himself abjure paganism; they grow bad fruit, make bad oil, and drive commerce from their coasts by preposterous restrictions on their own coasting-trade, and by their piracies and acts of barratry. The friends of Greece had expected that she would have served as a beacon for the nations of the East to

steer towards political liberty and Christian civilisation; but they have been most grievously disappointed. Even the native merchants of Greece, who have conducted their commercial affairs on a liberal scale, have found themselves compelled, by the meanness of the court and government at Athens, to transport their domicile to other lands; and, accordingly, the merchants who do honour to the national character are all settled abroad, and very many are nationalised in France, Italy, and Austriasome few even in England-while political intriguers form the leaders of the nation in the Ionian Islands and in Greece.

We have now given a faithful picture of some features which have generally been neglected, in judging of the final destinies of the Othoman Empire. We have endeavoured to weigh candidly all the evidence in favour of the regeneration of the Sultan's government, and we have not concealed either its defects or its difficulties. It is for our own Government to decide how far it would be prudent for the allies of Turkey to urge the immediate adoption of those measures which are neces

sary to secure the support of the
whole agricultural population of the
Sultan's dominions, whether Christian
or Mohammedan, in opposing every
At all events, we
foreign enemy.
may assume that we have convinced
all impartial readers that the project
of maintaining the integrity of Turkey
is far more practicable than that of re-
establishing a Greek or new Byzantine
empire at Constantinople. The Bul-
garians of Macedonia have lately
given a proof of the impossibility of
forming a Greek empire by closing
the Hellenic schools in several cities,
and opposing by every means in their
power the appointment of Greeks to
high ecclesiastical offices. The pro-
gress of knowledge is daily rendering
the Albanians and Vallachians more
proud of their national distinctions.
They boast of being descended from
the Macedonians and Romans who
conquered the descendants of Pericles.
A Greek government would certainly
require a much larger military force
to keep the Christian population in
European Turkey in subjection than
the Othoman. The petulant Greek
is at present a worse master to the
Albanian peasantry of Attica and
Argolis, than the phlegmatic Turk is
to the Sclavonian in Macedonia and
Thrace. To create a Greek or Byzan-
tine empire would be to deliver Con-
stantinople to the Czar of Russia, with
guarantees for his maintaining per-
manent possession of it which he
could never acquire by the sword.

It is, however, in the nature of things that defeat in the present attempt to strangle Turkey should only excite the Russian government to redouble its eagerness to discover new means for renewing her struggle for supremacy in the south-eastern part of Europe. For the contest with the Sultan is in Russia regarded as a national and religious warfare. As far as the mere separate interests of Great Britain are concerned, the present war has shown that we have nothing to fear from the power of the Czar. Instead of Russia being in a condition to attempt the invasion of our possessions in India, it is evident that it is in our power not only to conquer, but also to colonise Kamtschatka and Ochotsk, to endow these countries with local governments, nay,

even to make them independent states, and thus put an end to the authority of the Czar in all the countries east of Siberia, and exclude the Russians for ever from the Pacific and the Chinese seas. The ambition of the Emperor Nicholas to extend his power and influence in Eastern Europe may cause the loss of his dominions in Eastern Asia.

A hatti-sherif of the Sultan, and a law of the Greek kingdom, would be sufficient to change the social condition and future prospects of more than twenty millions of mankind engaged in agricultural pursuits, to enable this mass of human beings to better their condition and augment their numbers. These measures would raise up a bar

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rier against the further progress of could break through; and these meaRussia, which no power of the Czar sures, unlike most theoretical reforms, may be commenced to-morrow morning, when the Divan meets at Constantinople, and the council of ministers is held at Athens. Both the Sultan and the Greek chambers have pression that now prevents their subonly to withdraw the weight of opjects from replenishing the face of the earth. This being the case, we do not think that our own Government has embarked in a desperate undertaking, when it engaged in alliance with France to uphold the integrity of the Othoman Empire.

CIVILISATION. THE CENSUS.

DID my last letter, dear Eusebius, open to your intellectual sight a glimpse of the real nature of Civilisation? Not that I would presume to imagine I could unfold so great a mystery, or to have reached the kernel of the nut which had broken the teeth of philosophers. Truth is as a ball of thread which, cast upon the ground, as it rolls unfolds itself, it is a lucky catch to have your fingers upon the outer thread: a careful following may unravel the whole, and the inner substance become clear and visible, however obscured in its involutions. Paint your phantasmagoria; let it represent a universal tournament, with queens of beauty the prizes, and every action be of honour, generosity, and love. Imagine a romance that shall embrace a nation, wise and reverenced age, heroic and lovely youth! Why, you are laughing doubtless at the rhapsody-the dream. Well, is it not a dream of civilisation? Honest hands were they of the trades in their several guilds that glorified the general grace with their proud handiwork, emulous of mastership and fair renown. Maiden-embroidery and horsemillinery were of the true materials; no shams, no adulterated and knavish substitutes. All work was honest; there was an additional worth in it of the labour of love. Fast asleep and dreaming again will you deem me? So much the worse, if it be so very

VOL. LXXVI.-NO. CCCCLXIX.

unlike the world we wake into, where both romance and honesty are faded like old tapestry, and equally derided for their out-of-time and seeming unEusebius, what "the ever-whirling natural quaintnesses. Yet who knows, wheel" of mutability may throw off for our allotment. Old things may bright as all the virtues ! come round again, tricked anew, and

"Redeant Saturnia regna." Is this but a peevish humour? Are we not, after all, "better than we and among us? Truly we have. We seem?" Have we not greatness in us are on the stage of a serious drama, of which the low underplots and the interludes are somewhat ridiculous; but it is a grand piece that is being acted that may justify a "plaudite," ere the curtain drops. Who shall dare honesty is dead? because knavery to say that heroism is dead - that miscalculating economists are troublehappens to be just now thriving, and the higher virtues are in the scale. some with their false weights when

I emblematised civilisation, in the Chinese lady in japan-gilt frame, like a rose in garden enclosure,-the feminine excellence, that even you might occasionally and for a moment prenot, with an Anglo-Saxon conceit that dominates in us all, arrogate to this Empress, or Ladye-they are all one your England all that is good. Queen, and the same-was she once, in the

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