TIM is the republication in substance, and with considerable additions,
of a pamphlet published by Mr. Denton thirteen years ago. At that time Mr. Denton was but " a voice crying in the wilderness." He had, indeed, a good right to speak on the con- dition of the Christians of Turkey, for he had examined their condition on the spot, and had, moreover, read what few English- men care to read,—the evidence of Parliamentary Blue-books. But at that time we were within seven years of the Crimean war, and the Palmerstonian policy was in the ascendant. Visions of a regenerated Turkey dominated the imagination of the English nation, and induced it to close its eyes and ears to the evi- dence of unimpeachable facts. Mr. Denton's pamphlet was accord- ingly little read and little regarded. It was quoted once or twice in the House of Commons, but only to be sneered out of court by the partisans of Turkey. Time, however, was on Mr. Denton's side, and has now brought him an ample revenge. The Bulgarian massacres opened the eyes of the English people to the true character of the Turkish Government, and one of the conse- quences of that revelation was that Mr. Denton's pamphlet, which had encumbered for years the shelves of his publisher, went rapidly out of print, but only to reappear in the enlarged form in which we now gladly welcome it.
Mr. Denton's volume is in no sense a partisan attack. The bulk of it was published when Lord Palmerston was in office, and Mr. Denton's politics have always been Conservative. The tone of the book is sober. There is no rhetoric and no passion. it is simply a calm statement of facts, based chiefly on official testimony, and leading to two irresistible conclusions : first, that the system of the Ottoman Government is incom- patible, not only with civilisation, but with the elementary rights of humanity ; secondly, that this system of government is, by the very law of its being, quite incapable of regeneration. And it is in defence of this inhuman and incurable system of government that millions of English treasure and many thousands of English lives have been sacrificed. The indictment which Mr. Denton brings against our English policy is indeed a heavy one. Those who read his pages will no longer be surprised that our Embassy at Constantinople should have been ignorant of the Bulgarian massacres weeks after the principal actors had been rewarded by the Government which sent them to " thin the popu- lation." Our Consuls in the East know that facts which tell against the Turkish Government are unwelcome at the British Embassy. Our Ambassadors are English gentlemen, and English gentlemen scorn to tell a lie. It is convenient, therefore, that they should not know the truth, so that when some troublesome Member of the House of Commons asks a question on the endless subject of Turkish misrule, the representative of our Foreign Office should be able to reply that our Ambassador at Constanti- nople had been communicated with, and that he had heard nothing about it. Our Prime Minister was thus enabled to assure the House of Commons, in the beginning of last August, that the tragedy of Batak, which took place in the beginning of May, was
nothing but "coffee-house babble." Mr. Denton does not deal in vague accusations. " I shall abstain as much as possible," he says, "from any evidence or conclusions of my own. I have an abundance of witnesses whom I can cite, and I prefer their testi- mony to any which I can bring as to the condition of the great bulk of the people of Turkey. The witnesses whom I am about to quote are, for the most part, our own Consuls, settled in that country. These write with an evident consciousness that any bias in favour of the oppressed races of that country would be ' unwelcome to the Embassy,' and as Sir Henry Bulwer had in- formed them in writing before requiring their testimony, to the British Government itself."
We have heard a good deal of late as to the duplicity and bad-faith of the Russian Government, but a careful study, not * The Christians of Turkey; their Condition undo,• Massulman Rule. By the Rev. W. Denton, M.A., Author of "Beryl,' and the &yawls." London : Daldy, sod O. 1876.
only of Mr. Denton's book, but of the whole history of the diplomacy in Turkey during the last quarter of a century, has convinced us that, whatever the delinquency of the Russian Government may be, England is certainly not in a position to throw the first stone. The incident referred to by Mr. Denton in the passage just quoted may well be retorted upon us by Russia. We wish we could say that it stood alone. It is related at length in the introduction to Mr. Denton's pamphlet, but the dry facts may be given briefly.
In the beginning of 1860, Prince Gortschakoff addressed a Circular to the Great Powers on the condition of the Christians in Turkey, reminding them that the Treaty of Paris had placed the Christians of Turkey under the united protectorate of the Great Powers, instead of under the exclusive protectorate of Russia. The Russian Chancellor proceeded to show that all the promises made by Turkey under the Treaty of Paris had re- mained unfulfilled, and that the Christians were in a worse plight than ever. Under these circumstances, the Russian Government suggested, first of all, " an immediate local inquiry," on the part of the Great Powers, " to verify the reality of the facts ;" and next, " an understanding which it is reserved for the Great Powers to establish with each other and with the Porte, in order to engage it to adopt the necessary organic measures for bringing about, in its relation with the Christian populations of the Empire, a real, serious, and durable amelioration." Prince Gortschakoff went on to explain how an inquiry such as he suggested would be extremely beneficial to the Porte itself. Without wounding its dignity, it would help it to carry out the necessary reforms, and at the same time prevent insurrection on the part of the Christian population of the Turkish Empire, inasmuch as the combined action of the Great Powers would be to them " a proof that their fate is taken into considera- tion, and that we are seriously occupied in ameliorating it." This remarkable despatch concluded with the following warning :—
" We trust that these views are shared by all the Cabinets, but we are also convinced that the time for illusions is past, and that any hesitation, any adjournment, will have grave consequences. In combining with all our efforts to place the Ottoman Government in a course which may avert these eventualities, we believe that we are giving it a proof of our solicitude, while at the same time we fulfil a duty to humanity."
On receipt of this Circular, the English Government, declining the combined action suggested by Russia, instructed our Am- bassador (Sir Henry Bulwer) at the Sublime Porte to draw up a list, of questions on the condition of the Christians in Turkey, and send them to be answered by our Consuls. The questions were sufficiently exhaustive,—more so than Sir Henry Bulwer
relished. Together with the list of questions, therefore, he sent a private circular, which, in plain language, was an instruction to
the Consuls to report in favour of Turkey, with a threat as to what they'might expect in case of disobedience. " I assure you," said her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador, " that your conduct at this crisis will be watched by me, and my opinion respecting it, whether favourable or the reverse, communicated to her Majesty's Government." One unlucky consul received the list of questions without the circular of instructions, and imagining, in the sim- plicity of his heart, that what the British Ambassador wished to know was the unvarnished truth, he answered the ques- tions in a manner which amounted to a formidable indict- ment against the Turkish Government. To his horror, however, he received Sir Henry Bulwer's menacing paper of instructions some days after the despatch of his ingenuous answers to the Ambassador's questions. What was to be done ? The consul was equal to the occasion. He wrote a second report, which, like Pharaoh's lean kine, was intended to eat up the at one which he had just sent to Constantinople. " On the 4th fast," says the perplexed and alarmed agent of her Majesty's Ambassador, " I had the honour of forwarding my replies to the queries contained in your Excellency's Circular of June 11, which had reached me only a few days previously, and yesterday I received the other Circular bearing the same date. I
thus furnished what information I could, without being aware of the motives dictating the questions, and without being in possession of the vahtable instructions conveyed by the Circular. I shall therefore endeavour now to supply the deficiencies of my replies." This he does by a virtual withdrawal of his first and honest report, accompanied with an abject "hope" that "I may be held excused if I have too freely given utterance to those crude notions, on a subject the consideration of which may not strictly form part of a consul's attributes."
Dr. Sandwith, who knows Turkey well, supplies similar testi- mony. In a long conversation with an English consul, who " told him stories that curdled his blood with horror concerning the cruelties and barbarities of the Turks, chiefly towards the
Christians," Dr. Sandwith'remarked, " At all events, you have the satisfaction of reporting all these horrors in your despatches." " Oh dear, no !" he answered, " I dare not! We have received more than a hint that our Government is determined to uphold Turkey ; and if I were to tell the truth, and describe things as they really are, my career would be ruined. More than one consul has been severely snubbed for doing so." To this we may add a fact within the present writer's own knowledge,—namely, the case of a consul who had his report returned to him, with an intimation that it was not the kind of report which he was expected to send in.
Under these circumstances, it would be well to remember the proverb about glass houses and stone-throwing, when we hear or read of fiery accusations against Russian intrigues and bad-faith. We are no apologists for any misdoings that can be proved against Russia, but our own bands are not so clean in our Eastern policy that we can afford to lecture down with lofty disdain on the immorality of other nations. Dr. Manning, the Secretary of the Religious Tract Society, confirms, in a letter to Mr. Denton, the suppressio-veri policy of our Embassy at Constantinople. He has travelled in Egypt, Syria, and European Turkey, and to all his inquiries why " the brutal and stupid tyranny of the Turks" was not made known in England, the inevitable answer was " that the Consuls were expected to make their reports as favourable as possible to the Turkish Government, and that any report in a con- trary sense would be regarded with disfavour at Constantinople."
It is much to the credit and honour of our Consuls generally that, in the face of all this discouragement, they should have given, as they have done, such an appalling picture of the cruelty, sensuality, and consequent decadence of the Turkish population, —a decadence which is in process of rapidly ridding the soil of Europe of their presence. Mr. Denton's examination is chiefly, though not entirely, confined to the Parliamentary papers on the affairs of Turkey published prior to 1863. We have read in extenso all the papers from which he quotes, and also all those pub- lished down to the end of last Session ; and it is, therefore, on clear and positive evidence that we assert that not only has Mr. Denton not exaggerated his case, but that, without the slightest violence to truth, the picture might be drawn much blacker than he has painted it. Mr. Lowe declared the other day at Bristol that in upholding the integrity and independence of the Turkish Empire the English Government was, in fact, "holding the keys of hell." The metaphor is scarcely accurate, if we understand by " hell " a place where the guilty are justly punished for their crimes. In Turkey it is the innocent who suffer, while England "holds the keys " against those who would deliver them from their tormentors. The day of deliverance is near, however, and the victims of the latest outburst of Turkish brutality have not died in vain. By their death they have done more to break the yoke of their oppressors than they could have done by the most successful insurrection. Whatever the result of the Conference may be, the Turkish Government is not likely-to have another opportunity of "diminishing the population" after the manner of its recent Bulgarian achievements.
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