THE TURKISH EMPIRE.
IN another page will be found a chronological table of the leading events which took place in the Ottoman empire between the death of AIAnstorn the Second and the signiee of the convention of the 15t1m July by the Four Powers. They have been taken from the Portqf;:.tia ifaltese ; to the sound judement and accurate informa- tion of which journal we had last week occasion to bear testimony. NVe claim the attention of our readers to this chronological table, on account of the light which such a ritstont7t is calculated to throw on the real condition and prospects of the Ottoman empire. No suspicion can attach to such a naked inartificial statement of facts, that it has been coloured by the predilections of the compiler. It merely shows the outside of events arranged in time order cut' time and place, leaving the reader to divine by the exercise of his own judgment the character of the living spirit beneath, which gives them connexion and motion.
To us, the picture presented is that of a nation in name, not in reality—destitute of a head—in which hang,hty and unprincipled grandees shake the fabric of society by their struggles for ascend- ancy : and the only really influential parties are the foreign diplo- matists permanently resident at court. It is a nation in name, not in reality, for there is no homogeneous people. The Turks have never amalgamated whim time tribes they have conquered and among whom they have settled. These tribes are kept asunder by differences of hmenage and religion, and by the influence of clanship anti sectarianism anmoeg those of the same tongue and timith. There are Turks, :kritbs, Kurds, Greeks, and Armenians ; there are Christians. Jean, and Mahometans : there are Bedouins, Tureomans, and Fellaheen ; there are Druses. Me- tualies, Maronites, Armenians catholic and schismatic, &c. There is no cohesion, no faculty of cooperation, amid the chaos of human units.
This nominal nation has no head. .Annur. Mensim a lad of seventeen, taken from the harem where he had seen nothing and learned not is in the hands of the I fivan like an him age in the hands of the priest, lie is the mere vestment of royal:y worn by time intriguer who has been able for the moment to snatch the reins of goverm mment.
tierce contests of' the more powerful leaders for ascendancy are shaking into fragments this rotten structure. M tim rstes
Aci-
ambit self-willed, and long MI 3 CCOS'.111`.101 to any efficient con. trol—ia willing to take to himself a portion of the empire: but, born and bred a Turk, he cannot shake Iminself lose from early associations: and it is clear that on the death of 'Skim se len he con- ceived the idea of uniting the whole of the empire under hi s real authority, with the name of Vizier, in preli me nee to the erecting, of a new d■ nasty. His intrigue with the G.:pit:in his circular to the Provincial Governors, his correspoa,t, Ile, with tit, seraa1;0„.his attacks upon KnositErr. all intlicide this directbm of his ambition. On the other hand.. K nosey:re, the t'aithful drudge of the empire tom' so many yeara. the moment he is dep:,sed frota the Vizierate, engages in it plot ag,aittat the Government. Every since the ac■ e.,aion of Atone. Mims In was sec mm a dilferently-el,inr each Di- van : even the consciousness that the Porte he I neither en army nor navy, that the combined fleeta of Egypt and Conseintinople were in the p.saession of MnItn•trr At th:it ha:minis army, flualted with conquest, oceupiLtd the dc:i!os of '1' moron, coul,1 not stop for the moment the indulgence of their 1,Ltrsonal animo- sities.
'Phe real directors of events are the foreign diplomatist,: resi- dent at Constantinople. When the Suiten had neither army nor navy, and the Pasha of Feypt had both, it was time fear of being involved in hostilities with tile European Powers that arrested the progress of the latter. It was the English Andmsaador who P' ompted the intercepting of res Ibmian recruits • it was his dragonem who converted the simple movement agamst Int:A- lum in Lebanon into a declaration for the Sultan : it was by his directions that time fighting English Consul of Alexandria proposed to take upen him the anomalous power of giving pessrorts to 'nuts within the Turkish dominions; it was he who was ever at the elbow of the Divan when its courage flagged, whispering" no compromise with Mehemet Ali." In neither of the factions—that of Constan- tinople nor that of Alexandria—do we find a generous disgust at foreign interference. :MEHEMET ALI and the Sultan (that is the Divan) have both of thent invoked foreign interference to mediate between them. Both have shown themselves equally ready to accept of power as the gift of the alien Infidel. The government of the Ottoman empire is as rotten as the popu- lation is chaotic. To talk of its regeneration by the actors in the farce at Gul Khaneh is idle. That vaunted Hatti Sherif merely mentions that certain reforms ought to be set about, and promises that this shall tbrthwith be done. A penal code has since been published; but what is a book of law without men to enforce it ? and whEnce are these men to come? From the barbarous clans who occupy the Ottoman provinces, and who scarcely know what law and government mean ? or from the corrupt habitu6s of the old system? Again, the system of firming the diffbrent branches of the revenue has been prohibited, and tax-collectors for every province appointed. But as the farmers paid in advance, and the collectors can only pay as the money comes in, and as the treasury had been exhausted by Manmoun's operations, the Divan discovered after it had made the change, that it had no funds for immediate use, and no means of getting them. Some three clays after it had substituted salaried collectors for thrmers of the re- venue, the Divan met to consider how it was to raise money in the interim. The collectors arc goaded to send in money for their pro- vinces without delay : the people, accustomed to have time allowed them by the limners, are everywhere complaining of exactions: and the Government is punishing the col lectorsfor executing its own orders to keep the discontented quiet. To envenom this growing discontent, the Ulemah are beginning to denounce RESIIID new penal code (framed upon the Code Napol6on) as a blasphemous attempt to supersede the Koran. A tut to complete the ingredients of this witch's cauldron, the Turkish Government is about to throw in a foreign loan or an issue of Turkish assignats. It may gratify the vanity of Lord PONSONIIY to think that he holds in his hands the destiny of the Ottoman empire. It may gratify the vanity of Lord PALMERSTON to think that he has beat his brother-intriguer M. Timms. But what concern has Great Britain in this miserable conflict ? The Ottoman empire is dis- solving through the influence of its own vices : it can be kept alive by no human aid—least of all by the interference of aliens. Our Government is merely wasting there the attention and eilbrts and expenditure upon which British interests have the first and only legitimate claim.
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