1867 AND 1876 IN TURKEY AND ENGLAND.
BY a curious coincidence, two statements on the Eastern Question from the year 1867 have been simultaneously published, the one in Turkey and the other in England, which have more than a curious interest at the present crisis. In November, 1867, All Pasha, the best and wisest of Turkish Viziers, was Extraordinary Commissioner of the Porte in the Island of Crete. The scenes which he witnessed on every side, and his reflections on the general condition of the Ottoman Empire, led him to compose a Memoir on the causes and remedies of the existing dangers, which, as he plainly saw, boded the total destruction of Turkish rule. This memoir has just been published at Constantinople, presumably at the instance of the Reform Party who are fighting a hopeless battle for the introduction of some approach to order, decency, and justice in the relations between the Porte and its Christian subjects. About the same time, the Duke of Argyle felt it his -duty to pass upon the Tory Government of the day, with regard to its conduct of the Cretan question, a severe criticism, which is also so germane to the present miserable policy of the same party, that we cannot but be glad of its opportune republication. The Memorandum of Ali Pasha deserves to be considered, taking all things into account, the most important contribution to the cause of Radical Reform which has emanated from any past or present Turkish Minister. At the same time, it is calculated to deepen the conviction that Turkey is absolutely incapable of reforming itself. Passing over the lengthy prologue in which All Pasha devotes himself to the task, so congenial to an Ottoman statesman, of unveiling the multiplied machinations of Russia—for the simple reason that All Pasha admits that it is the wretched condition of the Turkish Christians which gives Russia her opportunity—we light upon a confession of Turkish misrule, and of the necessity of sweeping and funda- mental reforms, at once most complete and most dispiriting. What, indeed, can be less reassuring than the admission by this wisest of Grand Viziers that Turkey can only be saved by measures which we know perfectly well can never be made compatible with the ineradicable instincts of ninety-nine per cent. of the Mussulman population.
Ali Pasha was aware that the Christian subjects of Turkey were keenly feeling the distinction which Turkish law draws between Moslem and non-Moslem populations. " We are subjects of this land, members of this State," he describes them as saying, " but because we are not Mahommedans we are only burthened with a mass of duties and obligations, while in relation to our Mahommedan fellow-citizens we are not placed on a footing of equality, and we are accordingly despised." "Such is the language," continues Ali Pasha, " which is to be heard on all sides, and so long as the foreign agitatois unceasingly strengthen these sentiments, our future position will become still more difficult, and it will be impossible for us to keep the Rayah in obedience. In consideration of these circumstances, it is necessary that the Sublime Porte should itself take the initiative and seek out the means for removing these seditious dispositions, and for rendering our subjects proof against the incitements of foreign revolutionists. This can only be done by placing our Christian subjects in a condition which will no longer compel them to look abroad for their refuge." More generous, and also more wise than our Tory Ministers, Ali Pasha acknowledged that the work of the " revolutionary agitators " could only be expected to stop when the Porte had relieved its Christian subjects of the necessity of going abroad for the satisfaction of their legitimate demands, by securing to them in Turkey every advantage which they could hope to obtain from Pan-Sclavists and Pan-Hellenes. With still greater magnanimity, this great Grand Vizier does not hesitate to declare that nothing is more short-sighted and shallow than the Mahommedan prejudice against the admission of the Christians to full equality. Even in their present oppressed state, he says, it is the abilities of the Christians which have preserved the Turkish Empire. " Unfortunately, it is only too true that we, the Mahommedans of Turkey, neglect the acquisition of knowledge, and that we do not endeavour to raise ourselves to the level of the .civilised nations around ns ; and had we no Christians among us, we should no longer be able to administer this empire." It is not in the speeches of Lord Beaconsfield, certainly, that we meet with a recognition of the great but cruelly oppressed capabilities of the. Christians of Turkey, to compare with these upright words of the old Turkish statesman. - Unfortunately, none of the recommenda- tions of Ali Pasha were ever carried into effect. The- temporary fright of the Cretan Insurrection passed away, drowned and subdued in the blood of the wretched Cretans, amid the worse than indifference of the Tory Ministry of Great Britain. The butcheries which had roused the Turkish Premier to such unwonted recognition of the untenable condition of Ottoman rule fell in 1867, as in 1876, unheeded and disregarded on the "light hearts" of the then Lord Stanley and the then Mr. Disraeli. The old, trite, empty parrot-talk about the "independence " and the "integrity" of the Turkish Empire found the same stereotyped expression in the traditional common-places of the Tory leaders. The opportunity for im- pressing a policy of honest reform on the despicable Govern- ment of Constantinople was allowed to go by. The same old system of brutal sensuality on the Bosphorus and brutal oppression in the provinces entered on a renewed lease of de- grading and desolating power. " Order," as Lord Beaconsfield would say, " once more reigned in Turkey," until, for the hundredth time in the bloody and polluted annals of Turkish savagery, the horrors of Arkadi and Selino reproduced them- selves in our own day, and the mangled babes, ravished virgins, and ripped-up mothers of Bulgaria gave witness anew of the "spirited foreign policy" of a British Ad- ministration.
There are few Liberals who entertain the notion that the Tory leaders would deliberately fall short of the duties of humanity, if once they were keenly convinced of the exigencies of a situation full of misery and terror. The truly grave fear which so many men besides Liberals share at the present moment is that some insuperable difficulty, psychological or other, perpetually intervenes to prevent the Tory chiefs from realising what the condition of the Christians in Turkey must always be, in the absence of sufficient guarantees against Ottoman caprice and brutality. Lord Derby is brimful of good intentions, but Lord Derby seems to be under an invincible inability to realise what Turkey is, and what the Christians of Turkey suffer. It is this Radical incapacity which makes him so prodigal of abstract observations and so barren of practical measures. His various despatches on the Eastern Question contain more common-place truths and generalities, more re- marks which nobody can gainsay, than the " Proverbial Philo- sophy " of Martin Tupper. There he sticks, however, and there he is bound, apparently by some uncontrollable law of his mental nature, always to stick. This characteristic of Lord Derby's method of dealing with the Turkish Question comes out strongly from the perusal of the Duke of Argyll's speech on the conduct of the Foreign Office during the insurrection in Crete in 1867. From beginning to end of the Tory conduct of affairs at that time, we find the then Lord Stanley inditing the same sort of in- controvertible declarations of common international law, the same sort of observations on the duty of neutrality, and maintaining the same balanced attitude towards the Porte, as if the Government of Constantinople were an ordinary civilised Government, and the Christian population ordinary political insurgents, instead of being poor, down-trodden wretches, with- out protection or right as against any and every excess of a horde of licentious savages. So fine is Lord Derby's sense of the sovereign rights of the Porte to use all extremities of re- pression against " revolted subjects," that he even refuses per- mission to our Consuls and our war-ships to afford the barest refuge to the miserable wives and daughters of the Cretans, flying for their honour and their lives to the shelter of the British flag from Albanian and Egyptian banditti. How grimly the following reads, in the added light of the recent Tory policy in Bulgaria ! We quote from the Duke of Argyll's speech My Lords, on the 20th of October the Government heard of another most significant fact. Your Lordships are probably aware that about one-fourth of the inhabitants of the island of Crete are Mussulmans. In consequence of what was actually going on, and of what was coming, the Mussulman authorities were taking care that the Mussulman women and children should be put out of reach of the war. Of this the Government were informed by Lord Lyons in his despatch of that day. On the 26th they were informed by Mr. Erskine that Consul- General Saunders had reported to the Government that mercenaries were being shipped from Albania, for the purpose of carrying on the war against Crete ; and he added, that the Porte would do well to reflect before having recourse to the assistance of these reckless, sanguinary mercenaries ; that even any momentary success ob- tained through their agency might be dearly purchased by the additional exasperation which could not fail to be imported into the conflict by the use of such allies. On the same day, the Government heard from Lord Lyons his opinion that the conquest was being carried on with an animosity on both sides pro- ductive of most deplorable consequences. On the same day, the Government received the first petition from the Cretans, praying that her Majesty's ships might be allowed to remove from Crete any Christian women and children who might escape to the shore, and find refuge on board ship. Three days after that petition was received, the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary—of course, after consultation with the Government—despatched his first refusal to allow her Majesty's ships to remove those women and children. The noble Lours refusal was founded on the ground that to do so would be virtually a violation of the principle of neutrality."
" Virtually a violation of the principles of neutrality !"—the protection of trembling women and children from hideous outrage " a violation of neutrality !" But, as we have said, this is only Lord Derby's way. It is nothing but Lord Derby's radical incapacity for dealing with an extraordinary emergency.
" On December 29 a second request to sanction the removal of some of these people reached the Government, this time from Lord John Hay, who was connected with a charitable fund for their relief. Addressing the noble Lord, the Foreign Secretary, he said :-4 If you could send a ship, or let one call round the coast, with, if necessary, a Turkish official on board, in order to carry off these people, the last difficulty would have been disposed of.' (p. 134.) The people referred to in that letter were about 1,000 women and children, who were anxiously awaiting the return of her Majesty's ship Assurance' at Selino. On January 2 the Government again refused, and on the same grounds."
A sort of half-hearted permission to receive these miserable fugitives in extreme cases and as sparingly as possible was subsequently given, but as soon as the Tory Government heard that the Americans were acting with more generosity, and were freely affording the shelter of their war-ships to the Cretan refugees, it actually made that fact an excuse, not for out- stripping the noble conduct of the American commanders, but for backing out of the work of mercy altogether, because the removal of the women and children of the incur- _ -gents facilitated opposition to the Turkish authorities, ' through the weaker portion of the population being thus placed out of danger of the Bashi-Basouks and the Egyptians. Here is what the Foreign Office wrote, as quoted by the Duke of Argyll :— " In reply, I have to acquaint you that even if her Majesty's Govern- ment had seen reason to alter the decision which has already been com- municated to you in regard to the removing of refugees to Greece, the necessity for their doing so would now appear to be much loss required, inasmuch as they learn from Lord Lyons that the Greek Minister at Constantinople has been informed by the United States Minister that all refugees who may present themselves will be received on board the ships of the American squadron, which has been ordered to Candi& for that purpose."
How worthy all this is of what we know of the recent policy of the Government, but at the same time, how it confirms our fears that the cause of the Christians in Turkey can never be defended, or even understood, by the present Ministers of the Crown!
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