A VILLAGE UNDER THE TURK IN 1878.
[To THY EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—One day in 1878 I came by chance upon a village in Syria. I might have passed it unaware, for the hovels were of the same colour as the low dusty hill and scarcely changed its outline. From these low earth hummocks a few lean, ragged people crept out at our coming. I have been in the four quarters of the world, but never have I seen a collection of men's dwellings so forlorn. I could not but seek the cause of misery so pitiful. I learned that all which they produced, feebly scratching the dust with antique implements, was -shared between the Turkish Governor and the city usurer. Government to them was merely the tax-gatherer. The -taxes went into the pocket of the Governor and there remained; and in return they received nothing, no pro- tection for life, liberty, or property. Their safety lay in their abject state; they were not worth powder. That these poor folk might meet the exactions of the tax- „gatherer, a usurer had tempted them with loans. He was now owner of the village, and the villagers his slaves. And now mark what Europe meant to these simple folk ! Their native usurer had naturalised himself as citizen of a European State that he might use, for the extortion of the last pewter coin, the terrors of a Vice-Consulate. As the Turkish Government meant merely the tax-gatherer, so Europe meant the moneylender.
Nothing remained of government in the Turkish provinces twenty years ago but the brute force, on which government is based. It has been anarchy tempered by massacre. In 1878 "Independence and integrity” was the phrase. " Inde- pendence " seems to have dropped out; and "integrity," one hopes, has come to mean, in the strange language of diplomacy, an orderly disintegration.—I am, Sir, Ix., JULIAN STURGIS.
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