the towns. Now these men are "sinners before the Lord exceedingly " (the Biblical reader will understand the allusion)-not merely one here and there, but very generally. Boys and young men "walk the streets" in all their towns. . . . A man of wealth and power (a governor, judge, or mufti, for example), will send to any Christian who has a nice-looking son, and order the son to come to his house. And such is the state of abject terror and abasement to which the Christian population has been reduced by centuries of the most cursed and cruel oppression that a refusal is hardly ever ventured upon, or the whole family would on some pretence or other be ruined, if not destroyed. Within the last few years the poor abject creatures have gathered courage from the residence of foreigners, and have refused sometimes;' and then the Turk has recourse to forcible abduction. The writer, however,

is careful to add :

'Pray do not think that I bring these charges against the villagers and fellaheen, or the Druzes of the Hauran, or the tent Arabs, or the mountaineers, among all of whom I have wandered so much from the Danube to "the river of Egypt." My charge is against the towns of the Empire where the Turks have resided and introduced their "morals." How I wish my countrymen could know these facts! Will no widely circulated paper have the courage to publish them? But it would be quite necessary to conceal strictly my name, employment, and whereabouts; or I should soon be found to have committed suicide; or worse still. . . . Somehow or other they would ruin or kill me.'

The writer from whom I am quoting, it may be well to add, is by birth and conviction a strong Conservative; yet he is unmeasured in his indignation at the

CHAP. II.] FUTURE OF TURKS AND RAYAHS RESPECTIVELY. 189

policy of Lord Derby during the past eighteen months. It would have been much pleasanter to spare the reader even an indirect allusion to the abominations which he describes; but the admirers of the Turk have left the lovers of truth and justice no alternative. When they assure us that Turkish morality is at least on a par with Russian morality, and probably a good deal better, they force those who hold a contrary opinion to furnish, so far as decency will permit, some evidence of what Turkish morality really means. best, and I believe the true, excuse for those who advocate the integrity and independence of the Turkish Empire' is that they really do not know what manner of being the Turk is, and what manner of life it is which he compels those to lead who are cursed with his rule.

The

And now I ask the candid reader to decide whether I have not advanced evidence enough to prove that the government of Turkey is not intolerable only, but incurable in addition. And I commend to his consideration, as an appropriate conclusion to this chapter, the following weighty opinion from one of the ablest and most experienced of our Consuls. After giving credit to the rural Turks for such negative virtues as have been noticed some pages back, he proceeds as follows:

'These are redeeming traits in the Mussulman character which it is but simple justice to record. Observed, however, in the wider circles of society, and from a political point of view, the Mus ulman of this country appears under a different aspect. His religion has set upon him a seal which nothing can change or efface. It pervades his whole life, individual, social, political; it enters into all his motives and regulates all

his actions, admitting of no change and allowing no fraternity with others. These remarks apply chiefly to the educated Mussulmans of the country and to those of high rank. As to the mass of the Albanian Mussulmans, they know little more of their religion than the pride and indolence which it inculcates.

'Now as regards the Christians, it is certain that the desire of progress and Western civilization is spreading among them. With the diffusion of education new ideas are gaining ground and new aspirations are growing up. But how to give effect to these ideas and aspirations, there is the difficulty. This tendency is in direct antagonism to the policy of their rulers, who, while respecting Western civilization, fear its influence and dread its approach. They therefore endeavour to repress the onward impulse of the Christians, to check their progress, to keep them down. And as they can no longer do this by open force they are careful to exclude from the country all the material aids and appliances of advancing society. Hence they refuse to make roads, to establish banks, facilitate communication, encourage industry, promote trade, invite foreign skill, and enterprise, &c., by all of which the Christians would be the chief gainers. So that this system of refusal proceeds, not, as has long been thought, from apathy and procrastination, but from a studied policy of selfpreservation which sees danger to Ottoman supremacy in the progress of the Rayahs.'1

1 Consular Reports of 1867, p. 57,

CHAP. III.] MUSSULMAN RULE IN SPAIN AND SICILY. 191

CHAPTER III.

MUSSULMAN RULE IN SPAIN AND SICILY.

ONE of the stock arguments advanced of late, to prove the capacity of the Porte to govern non-Mussulman races with moderation and justice, is the case of Spain and Sicily under Arab domination. The enlightenment of the Moors, their philosophy, their poetry, their chivalry, their architecture, still attested by the splendours of the Alhambra,-all this is put in evidence to show that Turkey may turn over a new leaf and do likewise. But to argue thus is to draw one and the same conclusion from two sets of premisses which have nothing in common. The annals of Turkey may be searched in vain for any of the qualities which made the Moorish régime in Sicily and Spain, after a sort, illustrious. Intellectual sterility has been the characteristic of the Turk from his first apparition on the stage of European history till now. In no single department of human life has he ever been a producer. He has contributed nothing to the improvement or progress of mankind. He has been a destroyer everywhere, and nothing but a destroyer. Every land on which he has settled he has blighted materially, morally, intellectually. He has reduced to ruinous heaps some of the fairest and most fertile regions of the earth, and has destroyed every home and centre of civilization which has fallen. under his ruthless and barbarous sway. He has never

dreamt of any higher aim or purpose in life than the satisfaction of his animal appetites; and the paradise for which he hopes hereafter is but a repetition of his orgies on earth. Deeming the Koran to be the last expression of the Divine Will and the sum of all knowledge which it is good for man to learn, he has ever been an enemy to civilization, and his concessions to the pressure of Western diplomacy have been made reluctantly, and have proved barren of fruit. A comical illustration of this grudging deference to Western ideas is found in the fact that till quite lately, and even now for aught I know to the contrary, the Copernican system of astronomy was taught in the Turkish schools and colleges on the European side of the Bosphorus, while the Ptolemaic still held its own on the opposite shore. Is it, after all, so very outrageous, is it even an exaggeration, to characterise a race whose history may be thus accurately epitomised, as the one anti-human specimen of mankind'? What is the history of Ottoman domination everywhere but a black record of cruel and demoralising warfare against all that conduces to the welfare and happiness of man?

To launch such an accusation against the Mussulmans of Spain and Sicily would certainly be doing them a gross injustice. There is much in their history which it is unpleasant to read; but there is also not a little which is pleasing and attractive, at least as regards the Mussulmans of Spain. Their intellectual activity was remarkable. They covered the land with educational institutions. The principal towns had their colleges and academies, and almost every village had its gymnasium. Fifty of these academic institutions were scattered over the rich plain of Granada alone— a fact which sufficiently attests the Moor's thirst for