THE OTTOMAN POWER IN EUROPE.*
ANY book written by Mr. Freeman is sure to be readable, and a work from his pen on an historical subject, however ephemeral the occasion which may have called it forth, is sure to possess more than a transitory interest. The avowed object of the present volume is to influence public opinion in England on the Eastern Question, and even those who may dissent from his opinions and dislike his conclusions must admit that it is a question upon which, in its historical aspect at least, he has more than an ordi- nary right to speak, For not only is his knowledge of history in general much more comprehensive and accurate than that of the average educated Englishman, but be has made a special study of that portion of history which bears on the Eastern Question, in its various aspects and phases. A severe critic might say that Mr. Freeman's style in this volume, always vigorous and lucid, lacks here and there the repose and dignity of the historian. But Mr. Freeman has anticipated the objection and answered it. His book, he warns his readers, "is at once political and historical." Ile has a definite purpose in view,—namely, to enlist the understanding and syrnpathies of his readers on the side of a particular Conclusion in a great political argument. He aims at proving, as he puts it comically in his preface, that "the Turk in Europe answers to Lord Palmerston's definition of dirt ; he is matter in the wrong place.' " In order to bring this fact home to the reason and imagination of those who read his book, he takes the Turk from his first apparition on the stage of history, and traces his ways and doings down to the present time. And the impression which his sketch is calculated * The Ottoman Power in lettrope: its Nature, its Growth, and its Dedine.
A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D. London : Macmillan and Co. 1577.
to leave on an unprejudiced mind is that the rule of the Turk, and of the Ottoman Turk in particular, has always been,. and must always continue to be, a most cruel and de- basing tyranny. And it is unlike other tyrannies, evert. Mussulman tyrannies, in this,—that it is a curse, and nothing but a curse ; a malarious cloud without one streak of silver lining a brutal barbarism, unrelieved by any of the natural virtues and fitful gleams of generosity which even barbarians occasionally display. The history of the Turk has thus a repulsive and dread» fel monotony about it, His progress is invariably like the progress of an army of locusts,—before him is the Garden of Eden, behind him a desolate wilderness. The Mussulmans of Spain and Sicily were undoubtedly a curse to the Christians whom they kept in bondage, and the extinction of their rule was am unmixed good. Yet the traveller in Sicily, and much more in Spain, may still find memorials of the Arab's domination which show that he had aspirations which soared higher than the pleasures engendered by the unlimited indulgence of the animal passions. The Mussulman re'ginte in Bagdad and in Hindustam tells a similar tale. But the Ottoman Turk has been a destroyer,, and nothing else, all through his malign career.
No literature, or art, or science has anything to record in hie praise, and the subject races whose existence he has embittered and blighted owe him nothing but a prolonged malediction. And as this has been, so it must ever be the characteristic of his rule. His political institutions are based on his religion, which is un- changeable, not merely in its general principles, but in its minute particulars. Islam divides the Mussulman by an impassable gulf from all who are outside of Islam. "The blood of the Infidel is of no value till it is protected by the Aman," says the sacred and nnrepealable law of Turkey. In other words, the non-Mussul- man has no inherent right to live. But if he makes his submission to the Mussulrnan, and pays whatever tribute his master may impose upon him—it may be a part of hia substance, or the wife of his bosom, or the fruit of his body— the latter may grant him an amcin, or pardon,—pardon, that is, for not embracing Islam. But his condition henceforward is that of a slave. He is deprived of the fundamental right of freemen,—the right of self-defence. He is forbidden to bear arms, and his evidence is not received in the so.called Courts of justice. In other words, he may be wronged in his dearest interests, in his tenderest feelings, by the meanest Mussulmatt beggar, and he has no redress. If here and there a humane or- righteous Muesulman does him justice, it is not because he is obliged, but because his natural instincts get the better of the precepts of his law and religion, The Mussulman can never- do justice to his non-Mussulman subjects,—that is to say, he can never deal with them on equal terms, which means on terms of equity, without ceasing, in that degree, to be a true Mussul- man. One Mussulman ruler, and one only, tried to give equality of rights to his subjects of various religions, and he succeeded. But Akbar succeeded by ceasing to be a Mussulman. There is. just one way, and but one, in which the non-Mussulman sub- ject of a Mussulman ruler can obtain equal rights with his Mussulman fellow-subjects. That one way is by becoming a renegade, by renouncing his own religion, whatever it be, and embracing the religion of Mahommed. We hear inueli just now in praise of the Mussulman's toleration of other creeds. Cer- tainly he tolerates their quarrels among themselves, for in their- divisions lies his only chance of keeping them under his rule. But the Mussulman tolerates no encroachment on hie own creed. To convert or be converted from that is death to the transgressor. In other words, the toleration of the Turk is the toleration of the. Inquisition in its day of power. The Inquisition did not burn iufidels, but heretics—that is, Christians who had given up their
faith as taught in the Roman Church. Inl But hehane puts t
neru,th: Mussulman does not put the Rayah to death
death, when he can, the Mussulman who forsakes Islam, and the heretic or infidel who converts him.
But the religion to which Mahommedanism has always shown. itself most hostile is the religion of Christ, In theory, indeed, it professes more tolerance for Christianity than for any other. It places Christians first among what it calls "the people of the Book,"—that is, people who have a written revelation of the Divine will, and who are therefore entitled to live. All others— Hindus, Chinese, and the whole Pagan world—lie under sentence of death, which any Mussulman may execute. They are not entitled to claim the anuin,—that is, the right to live on payment of tribute. This is what Islam is in profession, but its profes- sion does not always accord with its practice. It has not always By Edward put Pagan subjects to death, and it has sometimes treated them better than its Christian subjects. And this is quite natural, for Christianity is more like Mohammedanism than any other religion, except Judaism, and confronts it, therefore, more directly as a rival. We see illustrations of this among ourselves. Ultramontanes hate the Old Catholics more than they do Anglicans, and they hate Anglicans more than Pro- testant Dissenters, because the latter do not come into direct rivalry with them. The creed of the Jew is, indeed, nearer that of the Mussulman than the creed of the Christian. But the Jew and the Mussulman are not rivals. The Jew does not trouble himself to make proselytes, but the Christian and the Mussulman are rivals in the fields of missionary enterprise. Besides, the Jew is not a dangerous subject to the Mussulman. He is few in number, and politically non-aggressive and unambitious. The Jews in European Turkey are like the Turks themselves in one respect,—they are aliens, in a land which is not theirs. The Turks are aliens because their religion forbids them to become one people with the nations whom they conquered. They are forbidden to mix with them, to assimilate them, or be assimilated by them. An impassable barrier divides them for ever. The Jews are aliens simply because they have no country of their own, and having no country of their own, they can have no lively sympathy with the patriotic longing of the other enslaved subjects of the Turk to break his yoke. The Turk treats them accordingly with contemptuous indifference. It is for the Christian that his vilest epithets and his ingenuity of torture are especially reserved. And when we consider that there is not a Christian in Turkey who might not purchase in a moment equality with his oppressor by the renunciation of his faith, we have a right to say, with Mr. Freeman, that "every Christian under a Mussulman Government is in truth a confessor for his religion." Degraded as the Ita,yah may be by centuries of ruthless oppression, the core 4af his humanity is evidently sound while he exhibits such splendid self-sacrifice as that.
It is hopeless, we fear, to expect our philo-Turks to put themselves through a course of serious reading in the annals of Turkish misrule. But they might get through such a book as Mr. Freeman's without getting bored. It would not put their attention to too severe a strain. It is pleasantly written, and he has a knack of putting the same point in such a variety of ways that it can hardly fail to pierce even the dullest understanding. What a world of illusions the mastery of even so small a book as this would dispel ! Among the many evils which have accrued from the Treaty of Paris, not the least mischievous has been the admission of the Turk into the family of civilised nations. But his admission into civilised society has not turned the barbarian into a civilised being. He may learn to put his legs into tight trousers, and his feet into patent-leather boots, and to speak the tongues of Christendom,—but it is all veneer. Underneath the thin disguise the instinct of the savage remains what it was before. Chefket Pasha is a " " Turk, and so were the worst miscreants in the Lebanon massacres. Awl in these massacres the chief difference between the irregular and the regular troops of the Sultan is that the former slaughter their victims like coarse butchers, while the latter are more ex- pert in the art of torture. It is recorded in the Blue-books on the Syrian massacres that the Druses, after witnessing the way in which the Regulars used their weapons, confessed theraselves beaten, and left the cruel work to their more skilful rivals. And they were not Bashi-Baeouks, but Regulars, and soldiers of the Sultan's own guard, who made such skilful use of flags of truce in the Shipka Pass, and lured their gallant foes ta massacre and mutilation. In this, however, there is. nothing which ought to surprise. Whenever the Turk conducts war on civilised princi- ples, which he never does except in isolated cases, it is not because he acknowledges, in the interior of his own conscience, any obli- gation to do so, but because it may be impolitic to do otherwise with Europe looking on, At this moment the Turk is under no obligation by his law or religion to spare the lives of his Russian captives, They have not asked, nor hike he granted them, the am& and without the amii n the life of any Russian who falls into his hands isforfeit. If he spares him, it is a concession to European opinion, which it might be awkward to offend. But to take the life of a Christian, fighting against Mussulmans, is to do a meri- torious act ; and the more such lives a True Believer takes, the greater is his reward in Paradise. That is the ingrained belief of every soldier in the Sultan's army who is loyal to his creed, and it is.a doctrine which is preached by multitudes of ulemas and dervishes throughout the Turkish Empire. In the face of such a fact, it. is but a mockery to ask the consent of Turkey to the Geneva, Convention. The consent is, of course, as readily given
and costs no more trouble than the granting of a Hatt or an bad& But even if the Pashas were sincerely anxious to fulfil their promises, they are powerless in the face of an unchangeable law, and of a population who have assimilated that law into the woof and texture of their character.
Mr. Freeman's book is so full of matter that it is impossible to give even a summary of his argument. He divides it into seven chapters. In the first, he draws out with great clearness the vast and insuperable differences which divide the Turks from the other nations of Europe. Among all the differences of those nations, they have a vast heritage of things in common. Even before Christianity, there was nothing to hinder the races which in- habited the Roman Empire from intermingling with each other. Conquerors and conquered might blend, and often did blend, and form one people. But there are various reasons, among which religion holds the first place, why the Turks can never coalesce with the other nations of Europe. To expect that any number of Constitutions or reforms will bring them any nearer to that result is to expect the impossible. Mr. Freeman works out this proposition with an affluence of illustration and
argument all his own. In the second chapter, he gives a sketch of the races of Eastern Europe, and shows—put- ting the Turks aside for a moment—the points in which the Eastern Christians differ from the Western. The next four chapters give the reader a concise, yet comprehensive, bird's-eye view of the Ottoman Turks, from the dawn of their history to what we trust we may consider its sunset. The concluding chapter is entitled, "The Practical Question," and contains both a keen criticism of the policy of our own Government, and a dis- cussion of the various contingencies which Mr. Freeman either desires or anticipates from the present imbroglio. Certainly no Government ever threw away its opportunities with such lavish recklessness as the Government of Lord Beaconsfield. From a rare conjuncture of circumstances, it might have taken the lead and guided the policy of Europe in one of the grandest causes that over appealed to the generosity and imagination of a states- man. But instead of rising to the occasion, our Premier sought to shield the most abominable Government on earth by a policy of vulgar brag and feeble trickery. And the result of it all is that England is at this moment without a cordial friend among the Cabinets of Europe. Even the Turk thinks, and with good reason, that he has been shamefully used by the English Government, and despises us from the bottom of his heart. When the campaign is over, by the triumph of Russia's arms, there will not be a tribe in Asia which will not conclude that the glory has departed from England. We menaced Russia; we encouraged Turkey to resist. But Russia went on her way heedless of our remonstrance, and worked her will on Turkey as if we were of no account. Such will be the reasoning of the Oriental mind, and Russia will gain in influence what England will have lost. A pretty look-out certainly for" British interests !"
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