On this page

• Departments (1)
  • 
• Text (5)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    THE FUTURE OF THE TURKISH EMPIRE.*

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    816 The Saturday Analyst and Leader . [ Sept . 22 , 1860

    Untitled Article

    the increased efficiency of the churches ^ it the office our observer to look at tendencies . A vast change has already taken place in the City , and there is every probability that this change will still go on , man increases in ratio . The city becomes iess and less , from year to year , a place of residence . Courts and alleys are likely to diminish , counting-houses and warehouses to increase , narrow streets will have to give way , and even should Dr . Ceoly have a successor , and should that successor be even more eloquent than Dr . Cboly , which is not likely , he would probably expend his greater eloquence on a smaller congregation . Before very many years are over our heads it is likely that a few housekeepers and warehousemen will be the sole Sabbath tenants of most of the city houses ; the smaller shopkeepers will go into the couiitry in the environsThe cit

    for the day ; the larger live . y congregations , whatever Dr . Croey may say , for the most part , are miserable now , they will be more miserable then ; we cannot shut our eyes to this tendency , which is obvious enough : That there are a certain class of clergy who will stick to .-the churches , that is , their bare walls , as long as they yield a bare or ample living , no one can donbt ; the question is whether this ought to be permitted ; whether , if any better use can , be made of them , and of their incomes , ten churches ought to be standing within call of each other , without sufficient congregations to fill one of them , is a question . "We think not ; let useful churches , of those churches which might be useful , if their incumheitts were well paid and active men , those churches round which the poor still lie thick , be left , and some better use be made of the others ^

    In some Roman Catholic countries , where more respect is felt than in England for the mere consecrated ecclesiastical structure , these structures are desecrated with apparently little offence to the feelings of the population . Who has visited Tours , or Angers , or Toulouse , and not seen churches empty and tottering churches the storehouses of forage or grain , churches turned into , markets , and the sellers of doves and the money-changers literally installed in the Temple ? We have seen this , and regretted it , scarcely more thaii we should do twenty years hence , if we live as long , to seethe London Church devoted to the curate , the clerk , the sexton , two or

    three hired old women , and twenty , we fear , mechanical charity children , if so many are left ; while the thickly-peopled outskirts lie in spiritual destitution . Subscribe afresh and build , says the Doctor , but calls are innumerable :, and the Church Commission has had already : tq be summoned , to aid . The transference of your old structures will cost you as much . as the erection of new ones- ^ -probably , he adds . That remain * to be seen . We doubt it , if properly managed and without jobbery . At any rate , let the incomes be transferred . English feeling- will not allow any wholesale indecent insult to the dead on a large scale ; what has been done of this kind on a small one has met with abundant execration . Let the

    open spaces be left intact , at any rate for the present , and only used hereafter as the sites for educational or charitable institutions . This would not be desecration ; neither graves nor foundations need to be deeply disturbed for some years to come .

    Untitled Article

    T HE position of Eastern affairs , and the recent complications which have taken place are once more calling general attention to the probable fate of the Turkish empire . Is it true , as some publicists would lead us to believe , that it has reached the last stage of dissolution , and that it exists now only on sufferance ; or , taking" a more favourable view of the case , shall we say , that a moderate amount of improvement in the internal administration of

    the Sultan ' s dominions might for some time to come , at least , secure to that monarch and to his successors the undisturbed onjoymont of their territories ? M . Poujade is disposed to adopt this latter view of the question , and however cautiously we may feel disposed to accept some of his statements , yet it seems quite clear to us that the decrepid condition of the " Sublime Porte " has been very much overdrawn by other historians and politicians who were tqo anxious to make a case for the interference of Russia , France , or some other of the leading powers of Europe .

    The volume we are now noticing 1 must not bo confounded with the innumerable brochures or pamphlets which have boon produced during the last twelve months ; it is the result of long and intimate acquaintance with the vurious races of people spread over the surface of the Ottoman empire ; it embodies the experience of many years , and the details it contains are dorived from personal observation . Some of the chapters of M . Poujado's " Chretiens et Turos " will be at onco recognised by the reader of the " Revue des deux Mondos , " although they are now introduced in a very modified

    shape , having received from the writer a number of important developments suggested by the progress of political events . Our author begins his work by an introduction , or preface , in whioh ho explains the respective attitudes of France , ling-land , and Russia , with reference to Turkey ; and he lays down as the conclusions whioh his narrative is destined to prove , tho following threefold statement : <« En , rosurap , Ux Franco ft vouly , concilior 1 ' oxistonoe et lo mention , de l ' ompire Ottoman aveo , lo developpemcmt moral ot materiel doa Ohrotions j la Grando Bije - tajrno a ou pour prinoipal mobile lo maintien . du utatu quo on Onont , n ' aooopto quo les modifications dovonus inovitablos , ot n ' a vuo uo quo la satisfaction do ses interots , Iia Rueaio a poursuivi deux objets ; son aggrandissemont aux de ' pous de la Twquje ,

    The chief cause which lias hitherto kept up the power of the Sultan is , we believe , to be found in the divisions which separate the different Christian populations scattered over the vast extent of his dominions . Amongst the subjects of the " Sublime Porte " we find Greeks , Wallachians , Albanians , Armenians—a number of comparatively small tribes , all calling themselves Christians , \> vl % distinguished from each other , by certain forms or ceremonies which , however trifling , when impartially considered , aie quite sufficient to prevent anything like amalgamation , between them . The Armenians do not like the Turkish rule , . but they would dislike still more having to be governed by men whose sole point of disagreement , nevertheless , is a passage in the Greek ritual , or the interpretation of some liturgical trifle , of eourse _ it is the interest of the Ottoman government to favor these dissensions ; and we may say

    et l ' elivation de f element Chretien sur les ruines de 1 ' elemen t Ottoman . " Without stopping to examine here the accuracy of M . PoujadeY statement respecting the views entertained by the English , we may just remark that the proposition he endeavours to prove is naturally identified with , the system of policy which he ascribes to France , noting at the same time , en passant , that he despairs of ever seeing it accomplished . " I / auteur , " says he in his preface , '' a entrepris ce livre avec un desir sincere de trouver une solution favorable aux Turcs dans le question d'Orient : mais les evenements , a mesure qu . 'il avancait dans sa tache ont . semble vouioir lui en . montrerrimpossibilite . " It would be , indeed , carrying optimism very far to suppose that the Turkish empire has any elements of vitality left , although , as we have stated in the beginning of this article ; it has not yet reached the state of decrepitude and dissolution which some diplomatists pretend to notice already , because it agrees with their views and suits admirably their preconceived

    planswith , triithj ; that the successors of Mahomed exist on the petty quarrels and childish , feuds of their Greek subjects . If the Hellenes of the nineteenth , century were not that degraded set of men whom M . Edinond About has so wittily described in his " Grece Contemporaine , " and in the 'fjRoi des Montagues , " the rule of the crescent -would long ago have come to an end . Such being the state of things in Turkey , and considering- the example givjen by-Montenegro and the Danubian provinces , M . Poujade has come to the very natural conclusion that the transformation of- the Mahometan empire might be brought about under the shape : of a federation , somewhat analogous to the Swiss republic , and which would be less likely to excite the uneasiness of Russia , France , or England , than the complete union of all the provinces under the authority of a single luler .

    M . Poujade has remarked , with much truth , that it would have been f ar better if the religion preached by Mahomed had , like the various forms of Polytheism , claimed nothing in common with either Christianity and Judaism- It then would have immediately given way before the progress of the gospel , and the Arab tribes , for instance , snatched by the " Commander of the Faithful" from the errors of idolatry , would have become Christians , instead of stopping half way , and settling down in the professions of a creed which , after all , is decidedly hostile to the doctrines of Jesus Christ . To quote once more from M . Poujade , " loin d ' e tre un bienfait pour l'humahite , comme certains ecrivains protestants , et notamment un savant traducteurdu Koran l ' ont pretendu , cette nouvello religion fut un obstacle aix developpement de la civilisation universe !^ et arreta la diffusion du Christianisme , e ' est a dire de l ' oxpression Jtneme la plus pure de la civilisation , sur l ' Europe et l'Asie . " The genius of Mahomed , in the favoured

    first place , and tho circumstances amidst which he appeared , to an extraordinary degree the spread of Islamism ; but now that the political conditions of the world has entirely changed , and that tho religion of tho Koran has lost so much of the influence it formerly enjoyed , symptom ' s of deoay are manifesting themselves on every side , and the very acts of arbitrary despotism and wanton brutality which the Turkish rulers indulge in from time to time , only serves to prove that the government does not feel conscious of its existence , unless it can manifest a Hpurious kind of activity ot tho expense of the weak » nd the innocent . After relating several acts of cruelty which ho witnessed himself , M . Poujado adds , that the local authorities commit them for tho very reason that they are ashamed of their own real nullity , nnd that they want to givo to their neighbours signs of political life . In Epirus , he continuos , their domination is coming to an end . The mosques fall in r « ms , and no one thinks of rebuilding them . It is just the same in various noints of Turkev in Europe . On landing at Gallipoli , tho allies

    found several mosques quite abandoned . At Peru , which is one ot the suburbs of Constantinople , one can see minarets from whence tho Muezzin no longer summons tho faithful to prayors . The houses are tumbling down , the owners either die , or omigrato to Asm , and tho only living being- left amidst those ruins is tho dove , mourning her plaintive song on a lonely cypress troo . At Janissa , tho ruinous condition of tho Turkish houses struck mo at first with nstonislimont . I explained myself once on tho subject with an old Mwsflul . man . who used to teach mo the Turkish laniruae : o ,. and I asked him why

    he did not repair his own House . Ho smiled bitterly as if my intention had boon to laugh at him . " Why , " said he to mo , " do you ask mo a question , tho unswor to which you know better than I do mysen , Do not the powerful nations of Europe intend to divide us between them P Our fate is already written ; tho strong will roust and bo killed ; the cowards will submit and bpconap faithless . Why would you have mo rebuild my town for the benefit of a Giaour ? Thar , deriving-a gleam of hope from the sense of the marvellous , hoaddoci , " all tho Mussulmans aro not doomed to perish j ah onemy shall no

    Untitled Article

    * Chretiens et Turos , Scene * et Souvenir * do la vio Polttique , JfdUafre « . RiUgieuto en QrterX . far W . JSugono Foujndo , 8 vo , PnrlH , Dldlcr ,

    The Future Of The Turkish Empire.*

    THE FUTURE OF THE TURKISH EMPIRE . *

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 22, 1860, page 816, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2366/page/8/