Page images
PDF
EPUB

believe his assurances, that we fear his friends would not feel bound by his promises, and might play us false; but shall quote for him a paragraph from a history with which we cannot suppose him to be unfamiliar. It will need no oracle to read our riddle. When that exemplary Vicar of Christ, Sixtus the Fourth, was wreaking his private vengeance on the Colonnas, and was at the same time plundering them of their estates, there happened this incident:-'He seized on their domain of Marino, and 'causing the prothonotary Colonna to be attacked in his own 'house, took him prisoner, and put him to death. The mother 'of Colonna came to St. Celso, in Banchi, where the corpse lay, 'and lifting the severed head by its hair, she exclaimed, "Behold the head of my son! Such is the truth of the Pope. "He promised that my son should be set at liberty if Marino "were delivered into his hands. He is possessed of Marino, "and, behold, we have my son-but dead. Thus does the Pope "keep his word."'

[ocr errors]

We willingly add as a postscript, that Mr. MacCabe's translation of Dr. Döllinger's work is admirably done. It reads well, and is thoroughly trustworthy, though here and there is a word or a phrase which might advantageously be altered. He should certainly have used rather more freedom in correcting his author's few errors, and should quite as certainly not have referred English readers to pirated or otherwise dishonest editions of English works.

**June 19th.-The Japanese martyrs are canonized. Рах Manibus. The Consistory has been assembled; the Pope has pronounced his allocution; and Europe is once more, and by supreme authority, admonished of atheism, revolution, and general collapse and conflagration. But of all this superlatively shrill and shrieking oration what is the manifest lesson? That the temporal power is regarded by the Pope and his advisers as indispensable; that it is dear as the apple of the eye, is something like the heart's blood of the whole system; that to this venerable and priestly conclave the ideal of civil society is that of a theocracy in which Pius the Ninth and his successors should be the theocrats! Wherefore we quote to ourselves a well-known Horatian ode, Justum ac tenacem, and follow it with the reflection, Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat. Who is the Quem his Holiness may decide at pleasure.

(179)

ART. VIII.-The Turkish Empire in its Relations with Christianity and Civilization. By RICHARD ROBERT MADDEN, Fel. R.C.S. Eng., M.R.I.A., Author of 'Travels in Turkey,' 'Infirmities ' of Genius,' &c. London: Newby. 1862.

IT is distressing to see an author wandering through literary life with intellectual aspirations above his intellectual condition. It has been Mr. Madden's aim, in most of his works, to soar into the lofty regions of philosophical inquiry. Unfortunately, he has never learnt where his forte lies, and where his weakness lies. He would make a fair statistician, at least, if he subjected his facts to a somewhat more careful scrutiny. But of philosophical induction he has not the faintest notion. He sets himself a thesis with so obscure a perception of its purport, that he obviously knows not, from first to last, what he is himself aiming to establish. He drifts through his subject like a mariner on the ocean, who has a chart indeed before him, but no compass, and, after innumerable involutions of navigation, finds himself to his surprise on the very shore from which he had originally set sail. Thus, in Mr. Madden's last chapter we see no appreciable advance from the positions taken up in his first; although we pass in the interval through a long array of irrelevant facts and inappropriate statistics, which tell us (whenever they are accurate) just what we knew before, but certainly fail to expound the relations of the Turkish Empire with either civilization or Christianity.

It is clear, however, what Mr. Madden's opinions are, and what he would wish to show if he could. He considers civilization, as he understands the term, incompatible with Turkish rule and Mahometan institutions; and he looks on the Ottoman Empire as doomed to a speedy fall, which the intervention of the Western Powers can but temporarily arrest. This conclusion may be perfectly just; but it expresses, to a certain extent, an opinion so widely entertained that it hardly reflects much originality on Mr. Madden. We shall here take up this subject as a political rather than as a philosophical one. We start accordingly with the practical question, 'What is to be done with Turkey?' with which our author finishes his lengthy discussion. It is quite unnecessary to follow him through the dreary annals of Turkish oppression and misrule in past ages, which form the bulk of his volumes, and from which he is no more logically entitled to determine the character and capacities of the Turkish Empire now, than a Mahometan would be justified in deducing the character of Christianity in the present century from the

horrors of the Albigensian crusades. To determine, therefore, 'what is to be done with Turkey?' we must study, for the most part, at least, Turkey as it is.

The

Mr. Madden announces his practical aim to be that of confuting those who have asserted the new birth of the Turkish Empire, and its capacity to return, under European reforms, to its former prosperity. This is an equally interesting and momentous question. But, unhappily, Mr. Madden has no notion who and what his adversaries on this question are. champions of Turkish renascence are really represented by statesmen of experience, such as Lord Palmerston, and by enterprizing travellers like Mr. Layard. But Mr. Madden thinks he finds them among latitudinarians, free-thinkers, and broad churchmen! Ill as we have always augured of this movement in the Church, we certainly never apprehended that Mahometanism was a natural development of the scepticism of nominal Christians. Yet the persons whom Mr. Madden puts forward as advanced thinkers' on Christianity and Turkish politics indiscriminately, are 'Herbert Spencer, Buckle, Baden Powell, Theodore Parker, G. N. Lewis, Mr. Martineau, Gregg, 'the Hennells, and last, though not least in intellect, Francis 'Newman.' It is needless to ask why Mr. Martineau is the only one of these alleged apostles of Turkish restoration who receives the prefix which ordinary courtesy expects for the living, and why the names of Sir G. C. Lewis and Mr. Greg are misspelt. It is more apposite to notice Mr. Madden's remark, that What 'is truly marvellous in these tendencies is that Christians, be'lieving in their religion, read eulogiums on the character of Mohammed, apologies for, and even panegyrics on the Koran, 'without ever suspecting that the authors of these works are 'practical infidels professing Christianity, whose real objects are "indirectly to disparage Christianity, and directly to accredit its 'impugners.'-(Vol. i. p. 3.) We take leave to say that we know of no panegyrist of Mahometanism or the Koran, either in politics or literature, but Mr. Monckton Milnes; and we believe that even he has long ago sown those wild oats of religious or poetical free thinking.

Mr. Madden, therefore, must descend to humbler ground, and abandon the illusion that the Turkish politics of this country in 1862 bear the remotest antithesis to our national belief in the truths of Christianity. His next position then, is, that the Turkish Empire and the Mahometan religion are essentially 'barbarous,' and totally opposed to the 'civilization of Christian 'Europe. That no people under the Mahometan religion are susceptible of the development of a people who recognise

Mr. Madden's hazy notions.

181

Christianity, needs not to be asserted. But Mr. Madden's mistake here lies in a confusion between such abstract terms as 'barbarism' and 'civilization.' He assumes the universal existence of a sharp contradistinction between barbarism and. civilization, exactly coinciding with the boundaries of Christianity. But surely Christian States may be barbarous as well as civilized,. the only invariable distinction being that Christianity, as we have said, is susceptible of a social development, of which Mahometanism is not. It would be hard to maintain that at this moment the Russians are a more civilized people than the Turks, or that they enjoy more personal liberty, or more spiritual freedom, or that they are better acquainted with the arts and sciences, which form so many tests or attributes of civilized life. Yet Mr. Madden would wish to see Turkey, as a Mahometan State, surrendered to Russia, as a Christian State, although Russia is at least as barbarous as Turkey.

A writer who aspires to be a practical politician must take the world as he finds it. The Turkish Empire stands before us. a vast institution, whether vigorous or decayed, stretching into. three continents, and comprehending some 38,000,000 of human beings. By the common consent of Christendom, it has been admitted into the comity of nations. It is a great fact that an immense horde of Asiatic Mahometans inhabit this empire. It is a fact also that, if we were to drive those Asiatics who inhabit Turkey in Europe into their original continent, we should not weaken but should rather strengthen them in Asia. It is a fact that we could not exterminate them even if we would; that even if their country were to become a desert, we could not repeople it; and that if we were to drive them out of Europe into, Asia, we should create difficulties in Europe which no Christian Government pretends at this moment to be able to solve. We may believe that Mahometan Turkey will eventually decline and expire, but it surely demands no 'free-thinking' on the part of Christian statesmen to lead them to make the best of that which, for the present, is obviously inevitable.

If we take those chapters apart which aim to deal with the political question of the day, we find that Mr. Madden totally misconceives the reasons for which the Turkish Empire has been maintained by Western Europe. He is astonished that the first Protestant Power and the first Catholic Power should have combined to support a Mahometan rule, ascribes the combination to their infidelity, and characterizes it as a repudiation of their professed religion! But we utterly deny that this country (whatever may have been the views of public men in power at the time) went to war, in 1854, with a view of supporting the

Ottoman rule. That Europe ever entered into a compact with the Porte was, if a fault, the fault of our grandsires. But the terms then made with the successors of Mahomet, when they were too strong to be conquered by Europe, obviously consulted the interest of those Christian races whom the Turks. had subdued and included in their empire, and whom Europe then became in a position to protect. From those political relations fresh political relations have descended to our own day. Our antecedents, indeed, did not involve us in any direct obligation to take up arms against Russia in support of Turkey. But they enabled us to make use of the Porte, as the instrument by which we could obtain the greatest practicable amount of independence for the Christians of European Turkey, and by which also we could best secure our interests in the Levant and our empire in India.

The 'thinking men,' whom Mr. Madden denounces as antiChristian supporters of Mahometan institutions in the abstract, probably look upon the Turkish Empire as little more than a cover for the independence of the Christians in the southeastern corner of Europe, until they are strong enough to maintain themselves against all opponents. Mr. Madden, indeed, commences his work with a flourish of trumpets concerning his 'personal knowledge' of the Turkish Empire. We may venture, perhaps, to set our own personal knowledge of that empire against his; and to tell him that, although he classes all Christians as civilized and all Mahometans as barbarous, the Christian races of Turkey are, excepting the Hellenic, much less civilized and less capable of self-defence than the Turks, and that they are at present incapable of standing alone. As Mr. Madden professes himself also a friend of liberty, we may ask him whether he imagines that Russia, under whom those Christians must otherwise fall, would tolerate the Skouptchina and the free press of the Servians, or the Moldo-Wallachian Parliament, that Turkish suzeraineté now serves to protect? He will see, then, that the Turkish Empire in Europe is supported by us at this day because it is the only present alternative to a partition or an exclusive Russian occupation, and because it serves as a cover to those liberties which we hope in the meantime so to cherish and promote, that they may be able to hold their own when the Turkish Empire falls, against their mighty neighbours.

Having thus briefly disposed of the positions which Mr. Madden has so erroneously taken up, we propose to glance anew at the question of the relations of the Turkish Empire with Christianity and civilization, which he has propounded, but has mot, as we think, resolved. Scarcely any other question is at

« PreviousContinue »