WE omitted to recommend these volumes at the moment of
their pub- lication. A suggestion that they form one of the most instructive and amusing works that has lately been written concerning the East, could not be made at a more seasonable moment than the present, when the eyes of all Europe are fixed upon the great events There taking place. Mr. MADDEN is a physician ; and his skill in medicine gave him fre- quent opportunities of seeing the Orientals under a more favourable aspect than ordinary travellers can hope to do. He is moreover an agreeable writer. The Turk has deceived all Europe. The lowest estimates that had been made of his indolence and ignorance never calculated on the apathy and imbecility that have been exhibited in the peer resistance opposed to the Russian invasion. It is curious to review the specula- tions that have been made on his character and condition ; and for this reason the following specimen of Mr. MADDEN'S work will not be read without interest.
" In giving you some account of the present condition of the Turks, and of the resources of their country, I affect not to offer you any elaborate deses ip- don of either, but simply to speak of the Moslems as they are ; to extenuate none of their vices, because they arc ` our ancient and natural ally,' nor to set down aught in malice, because they arc malignant and turbaned Turks.' With all that has been written on Turkey, it is astonishing how very little Correct information we have of that empire. Mr. Thornton wrote a book, to * Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, in 1524, 1625, 1826, 1827. By R.
,Xadden, Esq. laLlt.C.S. vols. London, 1829. Colburn.
exhibit the Turk as the beau ideal of humanity ; and the Baron de Tott wrote another, to represent the Moslem as the last link in the chain of human na- ture ; and, as a naturalist, seemed to consider him a sort of polypus on legs, in the same way Philhellenists, who have never seen a Greek, make him 'the paragon of animals:' and Sir William Gell visited the Morea expressly to prove that there were no Greeks in Greece. It has been a long-disputed ques- tion, whether the Greeks or Turks are the best people ; but the question should have been, which of them is the worst ; for I would be inclined to sac' from my own experience, that time Greeks, as a nation, are the least estimable people in the world, with the exception of the Turks, who are still less to he admired.
" But as to the outward man, the Turk is, physically speaking, the finest animal, and indeed excels all Europeans in bodily vigour as well as beauty. As to their moral qualities, I cannot go to the length of 'Thornton's commen- dation, nor of De 'fott's abuse. In my medical relations with them, I had much to admire, and a great deal to condemn. I found them charitable to the poor, attentive to the sick, and kind to their domestics ; but I also found them perfidious to their friends, treacherous to their enemies, and thankless to their benefactors. Eight cases of poisoning have fallen under ray observa- tion already ; five of these victims I attended, and in every case the fatal dose did its deadly business within eight and forty hours, but in must in- stances within twelve. The nature of the poison 1 cannot speak of with cer- tainty; from its being tasteless in the coffee, which is commonly made its vehicle, it can neither be opium, nor corrosive sublimate ; but from the symptoms it produces, I believed it to be arsenic. Of all things in Turkey, Lillian life is of the least value ; and of all the roads to honour and ambition, murder is deemed the most secure. I sat beside a Candiote Turk at dinner, who boasted of having killed eleven men in cold blood; and the society of this assassin was courted by the cousin of the Reis Iffewli, at whose house I met him, because ` he was a man of courage.' I attended the harem of the rich (Roma, a man of the law and of the religion, whose female slave was incapa- citated for drudgery. He proposed sending forome of the Jewish women who followed the avocation of infanticide, and who are consulted not only by the Turks, but also by the most respectable Levantines. I of course declined a consultation with a privileged murderess, and represented the evil conse- quences arising from such practices. In short, one of the most deplorable effects of despotism is, the little value it causes the people to set on human life. I do not imagine they are wantonly cruel ; but a government which overwhelms without punishing,—which visits crime with the hand of ven- geance, and not of justice which inflicts death, not for example, but for the sake of getting rid of the offender,—and whose fanaticism makes a merit of shedding blood,—such a government, I say, must deprave the hearts of the people, and render them sanguinary and atrocious. " The 'lurks are generally considered to be honestcr than the Greeks, and in point of fact they are, or at least appear so ; they are certainly less men- dacious, and are too clumsy to practise chicanery to advantage. Their pro- bity, however, depends not on any moral repugnance to deceit, but solely on the want of talent to deceive. I never found a Turk who kept his word when it was his interest to break it; but then I never knew a Greek who was not unnecessarily and habitually a liar. 1 le is subtle in spirit, insidious in dis- course, plausible in his manner, and indefatigable in dishonesty ; he is an accomplished scoundrel; and beside him, the Turk, with all the desire to de- fraud, is so gauche in knavery, that, to avoid detection, he is constrained to be honest.
" It has ever been a matter of surprise to me, how the government makes head against all his difficulties without borrowing money ; and how the bulk of the Turkish population, without commerce, or agriculture, or manufac- ture, contrives to subsist, and to support the external appearance of opu- lence. Perhaps there are no people in Europe so well and so richly dad a, the Turks, but where the means come from Heaven only knows. Every avocation that demands intellect is followed by a Christian ; every trade which requires any extraordinary energy of mind or body, is usurped by a Ilayah. The Jew and the Arminian absorb no small share of the riches of the state, as bankers and money-brokers. The Greeks and Copts act as se- cretaries and factors to the merchants and grandees ; such trades as shoe- making, embroidering, pipe-boring, sword-polishing, and silk-weaving, are in the hands of the Turks. The Turkish merchants principally deal in rice and corn; every second shop in Constantinople is a baker's or a huckster's, and provisions appear to be the sole merchandise of the city. "'!'here is hardly a Turk of my acquaintance who leads not a life of indo- lence, who smokes not his pipe all day long, who spends not his tune in sauntering from Galli to Caffil, who sports not a splendid suit at the Beiroin, the Turkish Easter, and who maintains not, three or four wives, and double as many slaves ; and yet he has no ostensible mode of living, he has no pro- fession, no apparent income, no available resources. Such is the condition of two-thirds of the inhabitants of Constantinople. Within the last live years they have been greatly impoverished, and it is not to be wondered at : hitherto the revenues of the empire have arisen from the plunder of the na- tions that have been conquered, and the extortion that has been practised on the unfortunate provinces ; and when it is considered that these provinces are farmed out to rapacious Ptichas, who wring- the last paras from the wretched peasant, and literally ` grind the faces of the poor,' it is no wonder that province alter province should be made desolate, and that the revenues of the Sultan should diminish daily. The Greek insurrection in the Morea, and the loss of the principal Islands in the Archipelago, struck a fatal blow at the Turkish finances. The total product of the commodities of the Mores amounted, a few years ago, to six millions of francs; the revenues of the islands were solely applied to the marine, and barely sufficed for that purpose. Now, both the naval and military expenditure fall on the exhausted treasury, " What further ruin the expenses attendant on the prosecution of the war will produce, it is deplorable to consider ; for notwithstanding: the energy of Sultan Mahmoud, it is impossible for him to obviate the evils of bad govern- ment, of bad laws, and of an antiquated political religion, neither suited to the times nor to tie circumstances of the state ; he cannot alter the ordi- nances of the faith, he dare pot subvert the principles of the religion, be cannot prevent misrule in the provinces, he cannot prevent rebellion in the pachaliks qr Syria. Though possessed of more energy of character than Sultan Selim, though insensible to fear, and unalterable in his purposes, he wants every quality but ferocity, to make him even a Turkish hero. Inaccessible to counsel, he looks with contempt on all European sovereigns, and has not sufficient prudence to mask his animosity :—devoid of generosity, the affec- tions of his subjects are alienated from him ; and every where 1 have been, the people have only panted for his death. Their last hope is in the succes- sion of Iris son; and whenever that event takes place, the partial and tempo- rary changes which have been lung meditated, and partly carried into effect, will fall to the ground.
" The Turks are accustomed to visit their national misfortunes on the heads of their Seitans; and so nothing is commoner now to hear, than exe- crations its the mouth of every woman, on the Sultan, because bread is dear and money scarce.
" A respectable mar,, called Yussuf Effendi, with whom I am intimate, told me in the presence of Dr. Perousel, that he and three of his friends were going to Egypt, ' to get beyond the grasp of a tyrant who had ruined his peo-
P le•' I mention this, not because I agree with the Effendi in believing that the impoverishment of the country is to be attributed to the Sultan, but be- cause it shows the feelings with which he is regarded by his people.
" Were he attacked, however, by the infidels to-morrow, there is not one of his subjects who would not rally round the standard of the prophet, and account it an honour to fight for their Sultan. No matter how tyrannical he may have been, he is still to them the Zilullah, the image of God on earth.' " This feeling has frequently been taken advantage of by former Sultans ; the people are soldiers by sentiment, because their religion promises Para- dise to the slayer of the infidel ; and they are soldiers by speculation, because warfare leads to plunder. There is, therefore, little difficulty in collecting an army, but the difficulty is in maintaining it, and also in maintaining the en- thusiasm of the fanatics who compose it. Some of Dc 'l'ott's observations are very accurate, and none of them more so than that ' the Ottoman army once attacked, is broken to pieces without being beaten ; but the first shock of the Turks is always dangerous, and difficult to sustain. At the affair of Grotska, to get possession of a redoubt, they heaped the ditches with their dead ; and fanatacism carried some of them so far, in the last war against the Russians, a3 to make them brave the fire of the artillery, by rushing like madmen to hack with their sabres the mouths of the enemy's cannon' The merits of their tactics cofisist in the effective combination of small groups of cavalry with large bodies of infantry. The cavalry, considered individually, and not as a body, is the finest in the world. Buonaparte considered two Alame- !mikes more than a match for three of his dragoons ; but when it came to numbers, a thousand Frenchmen were sufficient to put live thousand Mame- loukes to rout.
" but however Turkey may have declined, the capital at least is capable of being well defended on the seaside, in the event of the Dardanelles being again forced. When the English squadron appeared before Constantinople, the Turks mounted nine hundred and seventeen pieces of cannon, and one hundred and ninety-six bombs. The rampart near the point of the Seraglio has now a line of batteries, constructed by General Sohastiani ; another on the opposite side of the Bosphorus, and one also on the opposite side of the harbour. Near the point of the Seraglio sonic enormous guns, for projecting stone halls, are placed on a level with the water ; and, if well served, might do great damage to shipping. " The walls, however, on the land side, are in a wretched state ; the fosse is, in many places, quite filled up with rubbish ; behind it three walls are placed at short distances, the last. of which is flanked with towers ; the walls are in such a ruinous state, that a very few balls would bring them to the ground ; on the Adrianople side they have tumbled altogether, and have been replaced by a single wall of no strength. On this side Constantinople certainly could not stand a siege of ten days. The water is supplied from without the walls; and the,construction of the city is such, that a dozen bombs and rockets could hardly fall within its wooden precincts without producing a general conflagration.
" Such are my impressions, I am aware there are many who augur better of Turkey and her people; hut, in speaking of regeneration in that country, our I actors and politicians make the wish tlx ether to the thought' " iii whatever part of the empire I have been, I invariably found the rulers rapacious, the magistrates corrupt, and the people wretched ; the miserable ittryglye oppressed, plundered, and debased : and if the Greek proved more degraded than all the rest, it was because his civil condil ion was the worst. lis degradation was due to his slavery ; and it would he a lost hope to expect to sec the man redeemed before the slave was disenthralled."
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