Chapter XXXVII: Appendix: E (4)

"The first letter was written, it will be remembered, under the reign of Abd el Aziz, the suicided and 'forbicated' Vitellius, when the troubles began at Podgorizza. In those days (1875-76) the general reader knew nothing of Dalmatia, Servia, and the Herzegovina, beyond what he had learnt from our late friends Gardner Wilkinson, Alexander Paton, Miss Muir Mackenzie (the late Lady Sebright), and from the present Viscountess Strangford. Mr. Arthur Evans had not published either his brilliant book or his still more brilliant letters in the _Manchester Examiner_. The older writers did indeed bring out the fact, afterwards ignored by a host of 'Our Correspondents,' that the Turk of the Slav Provinces has not one drop of Turkish blood in his veins, that he cannot speak a word of Turkish, and that he detests the Turk, especially the Effendi from Constantinople, with the bitterest hate; witness the murdering of two Pashas, Mehemet Ali and Sa'ad ed Din, by the Albanians in September, 1878. Even the dress of the Slav 'Turk,' his big turban, his tight jacket, and his bag breeches, are those of old Slavonia, and contrast strongly with the flowing robes of the Osmanli, whom you insult by calling a 'Toork,' _i.e._ a wild wanderer, a nomad. He is by blood a cousin of the Russian Slavo-Finn, an element which peoples nearly half of the great Empire, which forms thirty-four out of seventy-one millions. In creed he is simply a renegade Christian, an Islamized Paulicean or Bogomil, with all the malignant animosity of a renegade, with a horror and an abomination of the creed which he abandoned. Hence the tenacity and fury which he displayed at Plevna and the Balkan Passes, where Russian met Russian, where heretical Jugo-Slav struggled with orthodox Slavo-Finn. This is the true history of the 'gentle and gallant Turk,' as far as the Bosniac element is concerned. And that element supplied Turkey with one hundred thousand of her best Regulars.

"Like most outsiders, I cannot see the difficulty of settling the Eastern Question (_malè pereat!_), but I thoroughly see the danger of leaving it, as at present, half settled. Of course, the distribution of the spoil and the Turkish debt favour the conservation of Turkey. But although the _haute politique_ makes all kinds of delays, ambiguities, considerations, and mysteries, the eye of common sense can detect none. As regards matters of finance, if the Powers that profit by annexation will only guarantee, as in fairness they should, the liabilities of Turkey, one prop of the rotten old pile is at once knocked away. And even total loss is better than this chronic state of irritation now afflicting the European system; this disturbance of trade and industry; this fool's paradise of the gaming-table; this armed peace, which has many of the evils and little of the good that war brings.

"Our great diplomatic triumph in the second half of the nineteenth century has removed from us the fatal necessity of propping up 'Turkism' in Europe. The late occupation of Bosnia by the Austrians shows what are the Bosniacs and their Beys. Savage and brutal as Krevosjes or Cimariots, they have all the Moslem vices, none of the simple and noble virtues which distinguish their peasant co-religionists in Caramania, Anatolia, and other parts of Asia Minor, where the Faithful number three to one. Their bullying tyranny was exasperated for many a generation by the conviction that, despite numerical inferiority of one to three (3,380,000 to 9,500,000), theirs was the ruling class; and that the _Mudir_, the _Wali_, the Ministry, and the Sultan himself would invariably support their iniquities, unless compelled by the Great Powers of Europe to do simple justice under threat of war. His temper was not improved by the aggravating presence of the Kafir; and his habit of carrying weapons enabled him to gratify every whim by a stab of the ready yataghan. He had never heard of the classical policy embodied in Sultan Selim's will--_Farriku baynhumá wa Sallitu alayhumá_ ('Breed dissensions between them both, Moslems and Christians, and rule them both'). Selim El-Fátih (the conqueror) left a will, you see, like Peter Velika, and their merits were, being the expressions of hereditary racial thoughts, like Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers. Yet he recognized the working of this obsolete Machiavelism as it still prevails throughout the Turkish Empire. Whenever a dispute arises between the rival religions about a field, a woman, or a boy whose face has been slapped, the Nazarene applies officially to the Pasha. The Pasha lends an attentive ear to the complaint, quotes all the Hatts Sheríf, Humayoon, and so forth, and exhorts the petitioner to remember that under a Constitutional Government (Heaven save the mark!) men of all faiths are equal. When the Mussulman proffers his counter-complaint, the same Pasha swears by his beard that no earthly power can make the Infidel take rank with True Believers. This was the tactic that caused the Syrian massacre of 1860. My theory stands proved by the fact that in the outlying villages and hamlets, where no Turks were, the Mohammedan peasants fought against the emissaries from Damascus, in defence of their Christian neighbours.

"Austria has at length adopted the course prescribed to her many years ago. Prince Eugène was the first name of note that advised the Holy Roman Empire to abandon her worse than useless Italian conquests, and to bring her weight to bear upon the Ottoman. Bosnia and the Herzegovina are in these days political necessaries to her; and the visit of the Emperor to Dalmatia was the beginning of the present policy. It would have been carried out two years ago, only circumstances then tied the hands of Count Andrassy, who throughout the affair has shown himself a statesman. Without the inner regions the stout Dalmatian kingdom cannot hold in the world the rank which it deserves to hold. The country of Diocletian, the mother of Emperors, was the narrowest realm of Europe, a mere masque, a face without a head. She had the finest ports in the Mediterranean and the noblest maritime population, while she had nothing to import, nothing to export, nothing to transport. Meanwhile the barbarous and exclusive policy of the Porte cut off the interior from the outer world. The precious metals, the 'Dalmatic gold,' famed by the Romans, silver, copper, iron, and coal remained undug, and the timber, the cattle, and the wool never saw the sea. Building was confined to forts; entrenchments took the place of roads, and whenever a traveller passed through the country he carried his life in his hand.

"But things are now changed. After an occupation which has been a campaign costing some four thousand lives, Austria, by the mandate of Europe, has pacified Bosnia and the Herzegovina. She has taken the first step towards becoming a great Slav power. These modern Sarmatians and Scythians are divided by ethnologists into a multitude of races, Slovaks, Slovenes, and so forth. I know only two halves. The majority would be the Northern (Russo-Orthodox), the minority the Southern (Jugo-Slavs) and Catholics. Here religion, not race, draws a hard-and-fast line. Dual empire has now become virtually a _Triregno_, as she would have been but for Count Beust, so much more distinguished as an Ambassador than a Minister. The conquest of Bosnia, for such it is, puts an end to Dualism; the Slav will now have his rights. Austria may lose her 'better half,' Hungary, which threatens to renew the scandals of 1849. The land of the Magyar, once the _Antemurale Christianitatis_, the outlying bulwark of Christendom, has now become a country of white Turks, of 'Ogres,' as Mr. Freeman calls them, of Ugro-Altaics, more Turkish than the Turks. There is nothing to prevent her becoming a great Jugo-Slav power, ever extending herself to the south-eastward till she meets the Greek. Thus she will halve with Russia the Slav world. By cultivating the Christian populations on the Lower Danube, and by a league with Old Bulgaria (Servia, Roumania, Roumelia, etc.), added to Bosnia, she would invest the Muscovite rival to the south and the south-west, while Germany hems it in to the west and north-west. Indeed, Russia declares that such a union, forming a state of siege impossible to endure, would be a calamity second only to the restoration of the Polish kingdom.

"Here, then, has begun the distribution of the Dying Man's estate. The characteristic of the situation is its purely provisional nature. No one is satisfied as matters now stand. All are, without exception, claimants, and urgent claimants, for something more than 'administrative autonomy,' either municipal or provincial. The 'rebellious principalities,' Montenegro and Servia, have enlarged their boundaries at the expense of Bulgaria; but both want more, and will have more. The new 'tributary principality' of Bulgaria Proper, as I suppose we must call her, will not be satisfied with quasi-independence. As soon as she is strong enough she will fight again, and, unless amalgamated with the 'Servian accession,' she will insist upon becoming Russian. Meanwhile the Russians have not withdrawn their armies, and they are justified in not doing so as long as Austria holds Bosnia and England holds Cyprus. Eastern Roumelia, which is Southern Bulgaria, will obtain her freedom only by uniting with Bulgaria Proper and Russia.

"By the way, I must notice the notable injustice of the European Press, that expects the wretched Bulgarians, who have been treated like wild beasts for the last five hundred years, to show all the virtues of freemen. There is an old prejudice against them since Pushkin sang--

'Be a Pole, or be a Russian,
Frenchman, Austrian, or Hungarian,
Englishman, or Dane, or Prussian,
Anything but base Bulgarian.'

Nothing can palliate their 'atrocities;' but what horrors have they not to revenge? We all remember Lord Macaulay's answer when the Jews were taunted with preferring low and immoral callings. But fair play in English politics threatens to be a thing of the past. At least, the Bulgarians have as yet enjoyed very little of our boasted national quality. And Bulgaria literally has been what Turkey will be, broken up, distributed into Roumania, Servia, and Roumelia. She is in the world (without knowing it), a Southern Poland.

"Another sturdy claimant is Greece, not including her neighbour and old congener Albania. The writings of Messrs. Gladstone and Freeman have told the public of Turco-Græcia's wrongs. Since 1872, when her independence was recognized, she has been shut up in the barren Morea and the rocky deserts north of the financial world as a turf-defaulter; and the massacre of Marathon is better known to our generation than the battle of Marathon. But she now begins to see the error of her ways. She makes roads, she proposes to pay her debt, and she puts down brigandage. She behaved with exemplary patience during the Russo-Turkish War; and we must excuse the irritability which presses for the proposed concession--a miserable slice. But her turn will come. Her manifest destiny is to divide with Austria the broad lands between Albania and the Despoto Dagh, the Rhodope range. Meanwhile, Albania--classic land of ruffians, hemmed in by Montenegro, Servia, and Greece--clamours for self-rule. Let her take it and supply bath-men to Byzantium.

"So much for Turkey in Europe. In Asia, Turkey has lost her most valuable possessions: Kars, the great base of military operations; and Batoum, the port which commands the Bosphorus. The Russians intend to run their fine harbour against Trebizond, and to divert as much as they can of the caravan-trade that enriches the latter. Hence their obstinacy in the matter of that 'interesting tribe,' the Lazes. The Muscovite wants nothing more at present in Western Asia, and it was a second masterly stroke of policy, our pledging ourselves to defend that which needs no defence. The Russian has nothing to do with the bleak and barren mountains of Armenia, which must also count amongst the rebellious provinces; and they are sturdy fellows, the men of Adana, of Old Cilicia. Nor is she tempted by the rocky wastes of Kurdistan, where every brigand 'subject' would want waiting upon by a soldier. She may assist and laugh till she cries at the pleasant spectacle of Mrs. Britannia performing the part of 'Reform by Moral Force,' and proposing an honest gendarmerie, just tribunals, and tax-gathering publicans turned to saints. If England were 'doctrinary' she would either let the task severely alone or she would appoint to every _wilayat_ (province) a 'Resident,' after the fashion of British India. But compromise is her specific, her panacea for home use. She will do neither this nor that; she will use _mezzi termini_ (half-measures), rely on the rule of thumb, and in fact meddle and muddle her position between the two stools. Liberal measures of reform have been freely promised, but that stale trick now deceives nobody. It is very well to command, but what is the use where none obey? Europe has had so much dust of this kind thrown into her eyes, that she now endures the process without writhing. And the Turk virtually says, 'Pay us, and we will give ear to you; no loan, no reforms.' Which means, if you do not pay him he won't reform; and if you do pay him, he will do ditto. The truth is, he can't reform, and if he could he wouldn't. When Turkey assented to the proceedings of the Berlin Congress, the credulous dreamed that she intended to keep her treaty engagements. Not she! When Turkey promises, suspect a lie; when she swears, be sure of a lie. What to her are treaties, save things to be broken? Talk of a treaty between a dog and its fleas!

"Our beloved Syria and Palestine must also be drawn from the vampire claws of Turkey--this daughter of chaos. The Holy Land for many past centuries has not enjoyed a gleam of prosperity, except when connected with, or, rather, when placed under, Egypt. It was a miserable and mistaken policy of Lord Palmerston in 1840, which, arresting the progress of Mohammed Ali Pasha, made England the cat's-paw of Russia. The old Bāsh-Buzzuk of Cavala, as Sultan of Turkey, would have given fresh life to the obsolete and effete, the battered and broken empire of the barbarian; and his ambition was, naturally enough, dreaded by the northern pretenders to Constantinople. Let one sentence suffice to show the difference of development between the two Pashaliks. Syria has not one made port, Egypt has three; Egypt has a dozen railways, Syria boasts of only one carriageable road--the Beyrout-Damascus--and that one French. Of late years many efforts have been made to restore the Israelites to their own; and there is, I believe, a project of the kind--financial, not sentimental--actually in hand. The idea is to obtain the consent and the subscriptions of the Jews in every part of the world, and to purchase the tract between Dan and Beersheba by means of a loan to the Porte. Jerusalem cannot, in the present state of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any one European Power. But already the land has been almost all bought up by the Jews, and the City--like its holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet--now virtually belongs to them.

"Moreover, Syria is fated to become in a few years most important to England. The Euphrates Valley Line, under the surveillance of the Duke of Sutherland, has at last fallen into shape. Instead of a Levantine port, Alexandretta, Tripoli, or Tyre, and the great river for termini, it will set out from Constantinople and pass, _viâ_ Baghdad, to Persia and India. This great highway--the only means of consolidating Turkey in Asia Minor--has hitherto been delayed only by the activity of Muscovite agents, and by the systematic self-effacement of our own. Before many years are past a branch of the main trunk-line will connect it with the Syrian coast opposite Cyprus. Baalbak and Palmyra are not yet 'played out.' These main stations, on the first and best of the many 'overlands,' will presently hear the whistle of the railway, and in the evening of their days they will again be made happy. The Euphrates Valley system will be to the Suez Canal what the 'Egyptian Bosphorus' has been to the Cape of Good Hope.

"And then we shall recognize the full value of Cyprus. After the melancholy policy of the pedagogue-demagogue in 1862, that restored the ruined Corfu, where some few years ago there was a popular tumult in favour of bringing back the old masters, England must secure ports and stations for her ironclads. The marvellous excitement caused by our last scrap of annexation shows the way the popular wind blows. Such a cackling over such a very small egg! We do not wish to make the Mediterranean an English lake, but we object to its being a French lake or a Russian lake, like the Black and Caspian Seas. Candia and Mitylene would certainly not oppose the hoisting of the Union Jack. Of course, those possessions will at first be unpopular--they will cost money, soldiers will die of fever, and officers will grumble. The Turks, after making the noble islands howling wildernesses, will propose to raise loans upon their 'surplus revenues.' But British gold will drain these homes of fever, ports will be laid out, and population will be introduced. We are not justified in failing where the Crusaders and the Knights succeeded so grandly.

"The destiny of Turkey in Africa is equally manifest. France, who has by no means abandoned her claim to 'hegemony,' would add, if she pleased, to her Algerine provinces the fair lands of Tunis as far east as the plains of Jafara, where the southern bend of the coast ends in the Gulf of Sidra. The limits are roughly east long. (G.) 8° to 12°, a linear length of two hundred and forty direct geographical miles. Already there is a report that the offer has been made to her, despite the active opposition of Italy. This latter might be contented with Tripoli, as far as the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sidra. But, since her emancipation, she has shown a turbulent spirit, which threatens the peace of Europe. I lately met a young Italian diplomatist, who would hardly speak to an Englishman because we hold Malta as our _haupt-piquet_. The occupation of Cyprus was a severe blow: the three standards in St. Mark's Square, Venice, represent Cyprus, Candia, and the Morea. 'Unredeemed Italy' means an Italy 'free from Etna to Trieste.' It represents, I have shown, amongst the moderates, the annexation of the Trentino, the duchy of Gorizia, and the peninsula of Istria. The immoderates add the whole of Dalmatia and part of Albania; in fact, wherever the Roman '_regiones_' reached.

"I say 'Tripoli as far as East Sidra,' the knob projecting into the Mediterranean eastward of Sidra, and including Barca and the Cyrenaic, should be added to Egypt, which would thus be prolonged from east long. (G.) 24° to 20°, also about two hundred and forty direct geographical miles. Grennah, of Old Cyrene, has a noble port, lying at a short distance south-east of Malta, and this will be the terminus of a future railway, connecting the glorious lands lying along the Mediterranean with the Nile Valley. By this line passenger-traffic shall escape the sea-voyage between Malta and Egypt, whilst the Cairo-Sioot, prolonged to Cosseir, will save the mortification of the Suez Gulf.

"As regards Egypt, we were only beginning to take into consideration the grand results brought about by the great Mohammed Ali Pasha and his family. We want from her nothing but the free right of transit and transport; we are resolved that the highway of the nations shall not be barricaded. We may eventually be compelled to annex her, but that measure is still distant, although lately advocated in England, and feared in France. Meanwhile, we might be a little kinder to her. Whilst the Turks are allowed freely to repudiate their debts, poor Egypt must pay her usurious Christian creditors the uttermost farthing. The Powers of Europe unwisely and wickedly compelled her to take part in the last Russo-Turkish campaign. We have hitherto refused to set her free from the immense 'benevolences' and other douceurs, heavier than any tribute, which perpetually find their way into the Seraglio, and into the ministerial pockets at Stamboul; and now that all the family income is mortgaged, the head of the house will still be obliged to hold his position by bribery. Surely the absolute independence or annexation of Egypt has now become a necessity.

"Remains the real 'bone of contention'--Constantinople. Europe has generally assumed that, with this queen of the Golden Horn added to her dominions, the great Muscovite power would become irresistible; men and statesmen have made it an article of faith. I am far from believing in such results; at the same time, it would be unwise to allow Russia the chance. The problem to be worked out is this: How, when the Eastern half of Europe is almost wholly Slav, to exclude the Slav from Stamboul--to create another island like Roumania, breaking the Slavonic flood? Practically it was solved many years ago. Volney narrowly escaped the Bastille for advocating a Franco-Russian coalition against Turkey. When the Emperor Joseph I. of Austria had shaken the equilibrium of Europe by his alliance with Catharine II., the great traveller saw the political necessity of his project, namely, a Christian State having command of the Bosphorus. The Duke of Wellington, as has been told, recommended it in the same words, and the Russians have never refused to accept the measure. What says the Turk himself? 'For Turkey, Roumelia is the Past, Anatolia is the Future.' Pleasant prospect, by-the-by, for poor Anatolia! And what say his serfs? 'Avoid the Turk if you can; for either he eats you out of very love, or in his rage he tears you to pieces.'

"I would abolish the very name of Constantinople, whose hateful sound reminds us of religious cruelty and hypocrisy. Let us substitute a kingdom or principality of Byzantium,--a Hanse town mediatized by Europe. Her territory would extend northwards, through Eastern Roumelia, to the Balkans, and westwards to Rhodope, a fair and fertile country, somewhat larger than increased Servia. Protected by the Great Powers, she would be governed by a prince chosen from amongst the ruling families of Europe. She would be neither Greek, nor Bulgarian, nor Jewish, nor Armenian, nor Roumelian, nor Frank, but something of all. The Hellene would make her illustrious by his political aptitude and literary gifts; the Israelite and the Armenian would enrich her by banking and commerce; the Bulgarian and the Roumelian would be her hewers of wood and drawers of water; and, finally, the Frank would connect her with the civilization of the West. I know nothing in Europe which shows a finer combination of intellect and labour than this would be. No stronger dyke could be opposed to the Muscovite flood.

"Turkey would thus be confined to Asia Minor proper, with Broussa or Koniah, the old Iconium, for a capital. Her new frontier, bordering on Russia and Persia, would remain untouched, and southwards she would be barred by a line drawn from Alexandretta, _viâ_ Aleppo, to the Euphrates. She would thus cease to be an incubus on Europe, especially on South-Eastern Europe, whose 'neutral armaments' must last till relieved of her hideous presence. Thus the evil effects of her extended influence, which exists by acting upon the hates and fears of her neighbours, would presently be abated, leaving behind them the battle and the wrack. Thus her hopeless misgovernment and her inveterate maladministration would at once be confined within comparatively narrow limits. The old and venerable kingdoms, the Syria of the Seleucidæ, for instance, which her iron heel has trodden and trampled into wastes and deserts; where ruins are the sole remnants of a glorious and memorious past; where even hope, man's last delusion, can hardly cheer the prospect of the future, would soon recover a prosperity now all but forgotten. Christendom would once more be free from the deadening presence of that Mohammedan Mongol, whose hateful boast it ever was that--

'Where once the Sultan's horse has trod,
Grass neither grows, nor shrub, nor tree.'

Ay, truly quoth Mazeppa--

'The year before
A Turkish army had marched o'er;
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,
The verdure flies the bloody sod.'

"'This is a mere spoliation of Turkey,' I hear some one cry. Well, yes; the Osmanli rose to empire by spoiling others, and it is now his turn to be spoiled. What he won by the sword he must keep by the sword, or the sword will snatch it from him. His presence in Europe is in these days an anachronism; it might be tolerated for good, certainly not for evil. He is fit only for Asia Minor, where, untrammelled by rival Plenipotentiaries and unscrupulous Ambassadors, he can throw off the tights that embarrass his limbs, and become once more the 'man on horseback.' There, at least, he can clean abolish his _Irádes_, his _Tanzimát_, and other bastard forms of constitutionalism, which, combined with so-called reforms, have destroyed the old forms without substituting anything new; which have weakened his material powers, spoiled his temper, and debased his character. There he can revert to those mediæval institutions that made the race what it was; to the eternal '_non possumus_,' to the 'Pacha of many Tales,' to the slave and the concubine, to the eunuch and the mute, to the bowstring, the bastinado, and the bag for the light o' love. There _la gent qui porte le turban_ may cultivate its mixture of childishness and senile cunning; its levity of mind, cloaked by solemn garb and mien; its mental indolence, with spasmodic efforts by way of change; and its conscious weakness warring with overweening arrogance. But Europe will no longer bear in her bosom this survival of the Unfittest. _Apage Sathanas!_ Return, Tartar, to that Tartary whence thou earnest. These are the words of St. Louis, and they shall be heard."

* * * * *

[He also wrote later on--]

"THE PARTITION OF TURKEY.

"The curious are beginning to ask, Do statesmen, politicians, and Foreign Offices really wish to settle the so-called 'Eastern Question'? Does the trade hesitate to take it in hand from the dread vision of half its occupation gone? And yet what a host of evils such _fainéance_ breeds! Take, for instance, the last miserable move, known to politics as the 'Cession of Dulcigno,' a paltry village on the wild Albanian shore. It kept the fleets of Europe at bay for a couple of months; it kept the whole of Southeastern Europe in 'hot water;' it kept newspapers in news while starving trade; and it supplied history with an episode the most comical, the most absurd. Of the Turk we may say (with Spenser)--

'That his behaviour altogether was
_Alla Turchesca_.'

He has adhered to his traditional policy--procrastination, promising, non-performance. 'The friendly concert of the Great Powers' has been sorely tried, strained to breaking point. Bulgaria, 'one and indivisible,' has been arming and drilling instead of tilling and earing. Greece has made it the business of her national life to raise a loan and an army of 60,000 men. Albania has, perhaps, fared the worst. The Porte encouraged her to resist the so-called 'will of Europe,' and to oppose with all her might the transfer of Albanians to Montenegrins. Then the Porte executed the normal manœuvre _volte face_; commanded, or pretended to command, her to give up her property; and made a happy despatch of her recusant chiefs--by means of the usual cup of coffee. The turbulent mountain region is now between two stools; she is neither Turkish nor Albanian, she is lost to the Porte without having gained her independence; and, like the Libanus in the past, she has become one of the 'tinder-boxes' of the West. Meanwhile the work of the European world has suffered, and still suffers, from an armed peace which has many of the evils and none of the good which war brings.

"When I last wrote (1879) the Turco-Russian campaign of two years, which must have cost the lives of a million human beings, had dragged itself to its weary end. It left the Sick Man weaker and more prostrated than ever--even the political doctors with their patent drugs could do no good to a constitution fast breaking up. The short respite from his sufferings called peace was not a 'peace with honour.' Resolved to maintain the 'integrity of Turkey,' the rough surgeons dismembered, disintegrated her. She was, before that treatment, a 'scattered Empire like England;' after it she became a 'geographical expression,' as was the Italy of the eighteenth century. Virtually she lost all her European provinces, except Roumelia, which took the peculiarly inconsequent title of Eastern Bulgaria. Dynastic demoralization and despotic government; diminished territory and autonomous provinces; national bankruptcy, with confusion of finance, unpaid debts, and a paper money which caused disturbances wherever it circulated, have made the Sick Man a dying man; and, instead of soothing and syruping his last moments, the greedy heirs standing by his bedside are wrangling and recriminating and calling one another names over the approaching distribution of his property.

"The 'future of Turkey' was virtually settled in 1816, when 'Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington' proposed to the great Muscovite Empire the mediatization of Constantinople. Russia saw how great a boon this step would be to her. She may look forward to absorbing the Queen of the Bosphorus after half a century; in the present state of things she knows that the superb possession would be a well-nigh unmitigated evil. It would cut her Empire in two: and the southern would only injure the sounder and sturdier northern half. The _status quo_ she knew to be equally detrimental; autocratic governments must obey popular will; and an ebullition of national rage may at any moment force on a campaign like that of 1877-78. She wants rest; and she wishes to recruit her finances, to reorganize her armies, and to settle conclusions with the Tartars and the Chinese. In fact, peace in Europe, but not an armed peace, is a desideratum to her, and she can obtain it only when Constantinople becomes a free town. She knew this half a century ago, and she knows it still.

"Meanwhile, the partition of Turkey has been going on merrily. In the war brought on mainly by our old enemy Rashíd Pasha, the 'rebellious Principalities,' Montenegro and Servia, have enlarged their boundaries; but both want more, and both will have more. For the characteristic of the actual 'situation' is its purely provisional nature. No one is satisfied as matters now stand; all are without exception claimants, and urgent claimants, for something more than 'administrative autonomy,' either municipal or provincial. The new 'tributary principality' of Bulgaria Proper, as I suppose we must call her, will not be satisfied with _quasi_ independence. She has spent the last two years in preparations for a campaign; in buying arms and in drilling under Russian officers. She waits only for Greece to begin the game; whilst Greece says, 'Gentlemen of Bulgaria, fire first.' It is the old story of the Earl of Chatham and Sir Richard Strachan. Eastern Roumelia, which is Southern Bulgaria, cannot be satisfied with her rank as a mere province, even under a nominal Christian Governor whose ministry rules. She must conquer her freedom; and she will conquer it by uniting with Bulgaria Proper, and by throwing herself into the arms of Russia, if we compel her to commit this act of political suicide.

"Greece, that progressive little kingdom, which has been so much and so unjustly abused by the sentimentalists of England, behaved with exemplary patience during the Russo-Turkish War. She allowed herself to be cajoled by promise after promise, and now she finds that--

'In native swords and native ranks,
The only hope of freedom dwells.'

Action, in fact, is thrust upon her. The two Conferences of Berlin promised her a thin slice of enslaved Greece, which she thankfully accepted as an earnest of more. It would weary the reader to recount the miserable subterfuges and tergiversation of Turkey, who alternately presents the bittock to her lips and withdraws it, proposing impossible conditions. In this mean matter politics are complicated by something like personal spite and racial hatred. The Turk makes it a _pundonor_ not to yield to the Greek; he would keep for his own use the right of robbery and rape, kidnapping and murdering. The Greek will bear no more the hateful yoke.

"The former declares with perfect untruth that the transfer of Janina, Larissa, and other places would be the loss of a commanding strategic line. The Greek asserts that he must also have Epirus, Thessaly, and even Thrace, because the whole country is Greek in language, manners, and religion. And a fresh complication has sprung up. Greece has been making, for her, immense sacrifices, and an army of 30,000 to 40,000 men will soon eat up a State whose population is 1,500,000, and whose revenue of £3,600,000, with a deficit of half a million and a debt of eighteen millions; it would hardly keep her in bread and cheese. Every day costs her more money than she can afford; the business of everyday life is at a standstill.

"Austria has at length adopted the course prescribed to her in the last century by the soldier and statesman, Prince Eugène of Savoy, who advised her to abandon her worse than useless Italian conquests, and to bring her weight to bear upon the Turk. After an 'occupation,' which was a campaign costing some 4000 lives, she has established herself in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, which are geographical necessities to the 'Kingdom of Dalmatia,' the old 'Mother of Emperors.' Here she has done, despite her enemies, excellent work. A traveller writes to me, 'The improvements effected in the new protectorate during the last two years must be seen to be believed. The military roads extending from Brood on the Sava to Serajevo, and from Serajevo through Herzegovina, by Mostar, to the mouth of the Narenta, do infinite honour to the Engineer Department, and, considering the immense outlay of the Imperial Treasury, to the forethought and generosity of the Government. A capable police has been organized, and district courts and schools have been established throughout the length and breadth of the land. I found perfect order and tranquillity prevailing everywhere, and well will it be for the best interests, social and political, of the people, the farther Austrian rule is extended and the longer it is perpetuated.'

"Austria took formal charge of the Ottoman in South-Eastern Europe at the Congress of Berlin--a step enthusiastically hailed by a statesman as 'glad tidings of great joy.' The Emperor's journey to Dalmatia (1876) was the beginning of that policy, and we have still to see the results of the Imperial round of visits in the summer of 1880. It is understood that the attitude of England has revived the league known as the Dreikaiserbund, and that Germany and Austria are united in the determination that the other third should not profit exclusively by annexing Turkish territory. When the war breaks out, and it may break out at any moment, Austria cannot remain passive. Under pain of retrograding she must advance. Adrianople will become necessary to the Dual Empire when Greece enlarges herself; when Bulgaria shall conquer her independence, the course of events must carry Austria forward to Salonica. There is nothing to prevent her becoming a great Jugo-Slav (South Slavonic) power, the mainstay of the Catholic Slavs, as Russia is of the Northern or orthodox. By cultivating the Christian populations on the Lower Danube, and by a league with 'Old Bulgaria' (Servia, Roumania, Roumelia, etc.), she would invest the Muscovite rival to the south and the south-west, while Germany hems him in to the west and the north-west. Russia declares that such a union, forming a state of siege impossible to endure, would be a calamity second only to the restoration of the kingdom of Poland.

"Austria has two opponents who will serve only to force her forwards. The Land of the Magyar has become a country of 'white Turks,' of 'ogres,' as Mr. Freeman calls them, more Ottoman than the Ottomans. Kossuth's lately published volumes explain the reason why; but the ambitions and the passions of 1848, which brought about the unnatural and abominable union, cannot outlast a second generation. The other rival is Italy, whose statesmen view, with a curious mixture of rage and spite, the aggrandizement of a quondam master. Since Italia became _una_, her politicians have shown a turbulent spirit which menaces the peace of Europe. _Italia Irredenta_, an old idea, but an expression apparently coined in 1878, means much. The _Redenta_ represents an 'Italy free from Etna to Trieste.' The Moderates would be satisfied with annexing the Trentino, the duchy of Gorizia, and the peninsula of Istria. The 'Immoderates' add all Dalmatia and part of Albania; in fact, wherever the Roman _regiones_ extended. But Trieste will not be Italian. Mr. Disraeli said, 'The port of Trieste is not a mere Austrian port; it belongs to the German Confederation; and an attack on Trieste is not an attack on Austria alone, but also on Germany.' The managing man, _par excellence_, of Europe has as openly declared that if the Italians attempt to march upon the Vice-Queen of the Adriatic, they will meet a sword-point which is not Austrian. Italy might do better than to lay out her income upon 'bloated armaments,' a disproportionate army which she is still increasing, and colossal ironclads, which any torpedo-cockboat may blow up. She is one of the poorest of nations, in the very richest of soils; her agriculture has progressed little beyond that of the 'Georgics;' her railroads are a disgrace; so is her post-office; her finances suffer from the good old practice of converting a stocking into a bank; and her business is injured by her over-'cuteness' and greed of gain. She is no longer the charming country of the early nineteenth century. Freedom has taught her all the roughness, but little of the virtue of the Northerner. Honesty seems to be at its lowest ebb. The knife is king. Whatever Italy has of genius, energy, and 'go-ahead' is now devoted to warlike preparations, and to dreams of conquest. The awaking will be bitter.

"So much for Turkey in Europe, where, despite Mr. Redhouse, she can hardly be said to exist. In Asia, or rather Asia Minor, her future home, she has lost her most valuable possessions--Kars, the great base of military operations, and Batoum, the rival of Trebizonde, and the port that commands the Bosphorus. The Muscovite really requires nothing more in Western Asia; and it was a masterly stroke of policy our pledging ourselves to protect what wants no protection. It is again the Dean's--

'When nothing's left to need defence
They build a magazine.'

But here again Russia is being forced forward. She has nothing to do with the bleak and barren mountains of Armenia, an Asiatic Scotland; but the cries of the unfortunate Christians, though peremptorily suppressed in the Turkish papers, are exciting legitimate Muscovite sympathies. It is the old story of the 'Bulgarian atrocities.' Armenia, when I last wrote, was a 'rebellious province,' and she was to be put down by slipping at her the Kurd bloodhound. This race of bandits, fanatical as it is ferocious, has perpetrated every horror under the sun; and the complication of a hunger-year has made the desolate Christians ready to accept any rule. And now they are attacking in force Persia, the neighbour and ally of Russia, so as to compel the latter to remove.

"The 'reform by moral force,' the honest gendarmerie, the just tribunals, and the tax-gathering publicans turned to saints, all these choice projects of a future for Asia Minor have turned out, as might have been expected, the merest visions, baseless as a mirage. If England were _doctrinaire_, she would either let the task severely alone or she would appoint to every government (_vilayet_) of Turkey a British 'Resident,' after the fashion of Anglo-India. But compromise is her specific; it is a panacea for home use, and, _ergo_, it is a panacea everywhere. She has done neither this nor that; she has adopted _mezzi termini_ (half-measures); she has again applied the rule of thumb; she has 'meddled and muddled' once more. How perfectly she has failed is known to every newspaper reader.

"A number of English officers, mostly ignorant of the languages and customs of the East, have been made Consuls and Vice-Consuls in Asia Minor. Turkey, on her side, has sent Englishmen, with high official rank in her armies, to inspect provinces, to inquire into abuses, and to send in long reports for instant pigeon-holing. This is again mere dust thrown in the general eyes. As Sultan of Turkey, the old Bāsh-Buzzuk of Cavala would have given new life to the battered and broken empire of the 'unspeakable;' and, naturally enough, his ambition was dreaded by the northern pretenders to Constantinople. Let one sentence suffice to show the difference of development between the two. Syria has not one made harbour; Egypt has three. Egypt has a dozen railroads; Syria boasts only of one carriageable highway, and that is French property. But Palestine grows in importance every year. Mr. Laurence Oliphant has surveyed the land of Gilead, the eastern frontier; and, supported by the Israelitish capitalists of Europe, he proposes to restore that part of Judæa to her old owners. Captain Cameron, equally well backed, has virtually begun the Euphrates Valley line, despite the adverse forecasts of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. Jerusalem, it is true, cannot, in the present state of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any European Power. But already almost all the land around has been bought up by the Jews, and the Sacred City, like her holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet, may be said to belong to them. The sooner Syria is made over to Egypt the better.

"Then we shall recognize the full value of Cyprus. The marvellous excitement, caused at home and abroad, by this latest scrap of annexation shows the way the popular wind blows--the reaction of the melancholy policy which restored and ruined Corfu. We do not wish to make the Mediterranean an 'English lake;' but it is, and ever will be, our highway to India and to Indo-China; and we reasonably object to its becoming a French lake or a Russian lake. And England wants secure ports and stations for her guardhouses, the ironclads. Candia and Mitylene would not oppose the hoisting of the Union Jack. These acquisitions must be unpopular at first--they will cost money, and men will die of fever. The Turks, who occupied three centuries of misrule in making the noble islands howling wildernesses, will clamour as they now do for the 'surplus revenues' produced by British blood and gold. Rome was not built in a day, nor will Cyprus be restored in a week. But our energy and industry must at last prevail. We will clean out harbours, raise cities, and drain away malaria. We are not justified in failing where our crusading ancestors succeeded so grandly.

"As regards Egypt we are beginning only now to appreciate the grand results brought about by the great high-minded Ali Pasha and his successors. We want from her nothing but the free right of transit and transport; but we are resolved that the great highway of nations shall not be barricaded by her or by others. Meanwhile, the absolute independence of Egypt has become a necessity. Her connection with Turkey is an unmixed and unmitigated evil. She wants all her hands; and yet she was compelled to send a large contingent to the last Russo-Turkish campaign. When the Turks are freely allowed wholesale 'repudiation,' the Nile Valley must pay her usurious creditors the uttermost farthing of a public debt individually contracted. She wants all her money, and she should, in common justice, be freed from her heavy tribute, and from the heavier benevolences and _douceurs_ which perpetually find their way to the Seraglio, or rather into ministerial pockets. And Egypt is at present, despite the rose-water reports of officials, who take a personal pride in writing, not the truth but what is wished to be the truth, far from comfortable. Abyssinia has placed her between the horns of a dilemma. She must either grant or not grant a port to the barbarous and bloodthirsty Nestorians called Christians. In the former case, the only imports will be arms and ammunition, especially the latter, for Johannes, the Emperor, has thousands of breech-loaders, but no cartridges. In the latter case she will be in a state of chronic war with her turbulent neighbour, who is ever threatening her inland frontier.

"And Egypt has lately offended the moral sense of Europe by a peculiarly retrograde Mohammedan measure--the systematic revival of the import slave-trade. England has a manner of convention with her for suppressing it: but the provisions of 1877 should be made more stringent. She has now reached that point of civilization when she can afford to proclaim a total abolition of compulsory labour, the full and immediate emancipation of the 'chattel.' Slaves and eunuchs, the latter denounced by Islamism, are mere articles of luxury for pashas and beys. I will not deny that when the infamous revival of trade in human beings was brought to their notice, her Ministry addressed a circular letter to the _Mudirs_ or provincial Governors, and appointed a director for its suppression. But this, again, was the Eastern trick of _poudre aux yeux_. The director went up the Nile, and the slaves came down the Red Sea. Then the director, having apparently done enough for a rose-water report, retired to his winter quarters at Cairo, and the slaves returned to the Nile. Meanwhile the Ministry, whilst permitting this shameful traffic, has systematically neglected the gold and silver placers discovered on the Midian coast, and evidently extending far southwards; in fact, the old Ophir and Havilah. In Turkish Arabia (the _vilayet_ province of Yemen, near Sana'a), a new digging has been discovered, and, with true Oriental exaggeration, has been proclaimed 'one of the richest in the world.' But in the hands of the Turkish Government even a diamond-mine, a Golconda, would be a losing affair; it can be worked with profit only by European heads and hands. Meanwhile Egypt must recover her prestige by abolishing slavery and by exploiting her mineral wealth.

"To conclude. Poets are sometimes prophets; and we have a specimen in the forecast of Camoens, which dates from the year of grace 1572--

'Those fierce projectiles, of our days the work,
Murderous engines, dire artilleries,
Against Byzantine walls, where dwells the Turk,
Should long ago have belcht their batteries.
Oh, hurl it back, in forest caves to lurk,
Where Caspian crests and steppes of Scythia freeze,
That Turkish ogre-progeny multiplied
By potent Europe's policy and pride.'

"What also wrote Torquato Tasso, only a few years after Camoens?

'For if the Christian Princes ever strive
To win fair Greece out of the tyrant's hands,
And those usurping Ismaelites deprive
Of woeful Thrace, which now captived stands;
You must from realms and sea the Turks forth drive,
As Godfrey chased them from Judah's lands,' etc.

Amen, and so be it!

"R. F. B.

"Trieste."

[1] Written in 1876.

[2] Lord Beaconsfield.

[3] This was written in 1876.

[4] "This was written at the end of 1876. It would be impossible to-day (1878) not to sympathize with and admire Austria and her brave army struggling single-handed and manfully in the great Bosnian and Herzegovinian difficulty, but when it is over her reward will be great. It is a large step in the right direction; but we, who want a great Austrian Empire, wish she had had all the nineteen million Slavs, not a part."

[5] "This was written January, 1876."

[6] "I fear that the Future now threatens to be the Present (1893)."--I. B.

[7] This was written in 1876.

[8] His grandson was Chancellier at Trieste in 1888.--I. B.

[9] "See 'Lettres, Journal, et Documents,' vol. ii. pp. 298-300. He rates the mob at five thousand, and writes dramatically. The cushions of a divan do not form an _espèce de tombeau_, where a woman can be _ensevelie vivante_. M. de Lesseps says that he had the details from the chief actors of the drama, but I prefer M. Sabatier's account."

[10] "Our diamond weights are as follows:--

16 parts = 1 (diamond) grain = 4/5 grain, troy. 4 diamond grains = 1 carat = 3 1/5 (3.174 grains, troy).

"The Indian weights are:--

1 Dhan = 15.32 grains, troy, in round numbers half a grain. 4 Dhary = 1 Rati = 1 2/3 grains, troy. 8 Rati = 1 Masha = 18 grains, troy. 12 Mashas = 1 Tola = 180 grains troy.

"The 'ounces' in the text probably represents 'tolas,' certainly not troy ounces of 24 grains."

[11] "Mr. Maclean kindly drew my attention to the Treaty with the Nizam (November 12th, 1766), which cedes to the E. I. Company 'the five Circars or Provinces of Ellour (Ellore, north of Masulipatam), Rajahmondra Siccacole (or Chicacole on the coast), and Moortizanuggur or Gunton.' The four first named were added to the French dominions by De Bussy. 'These Circars,' we read, 'include territory extending along the coast from the mouths of the Kistna (Krishna) northward to near Ganjour, and stretching some distance inland.' Article No. 11 of the same Treaty runs thus: 'The Hon'ble E. I. Company, in consideration of their diamond mines, with the villages appertaining thereto, having been always dependent on H. H. the Nizam's Government, do hereby agree that the same shall remain in possession now also.'"

[12] "All this was written two years before the late Afghan War began."