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asserts, 'that after the massacre of Chios, the 'Turks had thrown themselves out of the pale of 'civilization, had proved themselves to be pirates, 'enemies of the human race, and no longer enti'tled to toleration from the European family;' when he declares that expulsion from Europe was the natural and legitimate consequence of their flagrant violation of its usages in war.1

All Europe is now condemning with the just voice of indignant reprobation the cruelties practised in the battle-field by the Russians, who are, thus far, more guilty than their Turkish opponents, in that Christianity should have taught them better things. We are not apologists for Russian barbarity in the soldier, any more than for Russian ambition in the Emperor; but our notices of Mahometanism would be most unfair and incomplete, if, after having allowed the most that can be said on behalf of Mahomet and his disciples in Asia and Africa, we should omit to touch upon the history of their anti-Christian deeds in Europe. A summary of a portion (and only a portion) of those deeds has been executed for us in a manner so far above anything that we can pretend to, that we cannot resist quoting it at some length :

'I am not insensible, I wish to do justice to the high qualities of the Turkish race. I do not altogether deny to its national character the grandeur, the force and originality, the valour, the truthfulness and sense of justice, the sobriety and gentleness, which historians and travellers speak of; but in spite of all that has been done for them by nature and the world, Tartar still is the staple of their composition; and their gifts and attainments, whatever they

'Hist. of Europe from 1816 to 1852, vol. iii. p. 234.

may be, do but make them the more efficient foes of faith and civilization.

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'I might allude, if I dare, but I dare not, nor does any one else dare, else allusion might be made to those unutterable deeds which brand the people which allows them, even in the natural judgment of men, as the most flagitious, the most detestable of nations. I might enlarge on the reckless and remorseless cruelty which, had they succeeded in Europe, as they succeeded in Asia, would have decimated or exterminated her children; I might have reminded you, for instance, how it is almost a canon of their imperial policy for centuries that their Sultan on mounting the throne, should destroy his nearest of kin-father, brother, or cousin, who might rival him in his sovereignty; how he is surrounded, and his subjects according to their wealth, with slaves carried off from their homes, men and boys, living monuments of his barbarity towards the work of God's hands; how he has at his remorseless will, and in the sudden breath of his mouth, the life or death of all his subjects; how he multiplies his despotism by giving to his lieutenants in every province a like prerogative; how little scruple those governors have ever felt in exercising this prerogative to the full, in executions on a large scale, and sudden overwhelming massacres ; shedding blood like water, and playing with the life of man as if it were the life of a mere beast or reptile. I might call your attention to particular instances of such atrocities, such as that outrage perpetrated within the memory of many of us, how on the insurrection of the Greeks at Scio, their barbarian masters carried fire and sword throughout the flourishing_island, till it was left a desert, hurrying away women and boys to an infamous captivity, and murdering youths and grown men, till, out of 120,000 souls in the spring time, not 900 were left them when the crops were ripe for the sickle.'1

The same writer reminds us of certain facts which some persons among us seem bent upon forgetting or explaining away :

1 Lectures on Hist. of Turks, pp. 135, 136.

* How, when the Ottomans added an infantryI mean the Janissaries-to their Tartar horse, they formed that body of troops, from first to last, for near 500 years, of boys, all born Christians, a body of at first 12,000, at last, 40,000 strong, torn away, year by year, from their parents, circumcised, trained, corrupted to the faith and morals of their masters, and becoming, in their turn, the instruments of the terrible policy of which they had themselves been the victims; and how when at length, lately, they abolished this work of their hands, they ended it by the slaughter of 20,000 of the poor renegades whom they had seduced from their God. I might remind you how, within the last few years, a Protestant traveller tells us that he found the Nestorian Christians, who had survived the massacre of their race, living in holes and pits, their pastures and tillage land forfeited, their sheep and cattle driven away, their villages burned, their ministers and people tortured: and how a Catholic missionary has found in the neighbourhood of Broussa the remnant of some twenty Catholic families, who, in consequence of repudiating the Turkish faith, had been carried all the way from Servia and Albania across the sea to Asia Minor; the men killed, the women disgraced, the boys sold, till out of 180 persons but 87 were left, and they sick, and famished, and dying amongst their unburied dead."

We have ventured to warn the reader against lending too implicit credence to the minor publications of the day. One exception, however, must be made on behalf of a traveller who, if not among our profoundest thinkers, is at least an independent one, and never writes otherwise than as a scholar, a gentleman, and a Christian. The 'Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters' is being so extensively read, and quoted in newspapers, that it is enough for us to mention it. To Lord Carlisle, then, we refer the reader for hints concerning the shocking state of morals in Turkey,

1 Lectures on Hist. of Turks, pp. 137, 138.

such as, if fully known, would tend much to arrest the somewhat profuse flow of English sympathy for the Ottoman race;' the thorough corruption of officials, the incredible ignorance of the mass of the people, the incurable indolence, 'the deserted villages, uncultivated plains, ban'ditti-haunted mountains, torpid laws, and disap'pearing people.'

Surely, not all the heroism of France and England can ultimately save a race like this. The ambition of Russia, the guile of Greece, may have prolonged their term of European existence, but can it be more than a prolongation? They may be saved from external enemies, but can they be saved from themselves? The Sultan (even a Turk, Lord Carlisle tells us, has suggested the possibility of such an event)—the Sultan might become a Christian. But what, we must ask, in this case, would his Asiatic subjects say? what all those other Mahometan tribes, who, being Sonnites, recognise in him the spiritual successor of Mahomet? And yet, without such a conversion (which we regard for the moment in a temporal and political point of view, apart from its higher import), how can the Turks in Europe become civilized, and how, if uncivilized, can they hope to retain their position? They, and they perhaps alone, among the proselytes of Mahometanism, have been constantly and solely the enemies, not of paganism, but of Christianity; they have brought out, not the better, but the worst features of the creed of Islam; they, for the last 800 years, have been troubling, and, whenever they dared, persecuting the Church of Christ; and they are reaping at length their sad and bitter reward.

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In their fatalistic book-in the Koran, they find it written Each nation has its allotted period: when that period has arrived, men can neither hasten nor retard it.' That text of their selfstyled prophet_ they may well be called upon to ponder now. But the Christian knows of righteous laws which, even upon earth, bring woe upon rebellious races; he knows of chastisements denounced upon unrelenting foes of the Lamb's Bride; he opens the Book of God's truly inspired Prophet, and reads: The nation and kingdom 'that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those 'nations shall be utterly wasted.

John and Charles Mozley, Printers, Derby.

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