Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/80

70 thoughts of any man in the western lands. It was no more than human nature if, in the face of the great events of the last sixteen years, in face of the reunion of Germany and Italy, in face of the overthrow of tyranny in France and of slavery in America, the best friends of the Greek, the Slave, and the Bulgarian might sometimes forget them for a season. Now and then indeed the East became again uppermost in the thoughts of men who could think and feel. There was the moment when Montenegro secured her freedom at Grahovo; there was the moment when Crete rose against her tyrants. Of that last tale of English shame I have before spoken in these pages. I have spoken of the crime of that flinty-hearted man who, when men who had hearts, English consuls and English sailors, were doing what they could to save Cretan women and children from their destroyers, bade that the common rights of humanity should be refused to the oppressed, for fear forsooth that we should "open the Eastern question," or disturb "the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire." Then too was seen that other shameful sight of an Englishman sold to the barbarian, abusing English naval skill and science to press down again the yoke of the barbarian on nations who were striving to cast off his yoke. I suppose that the highest degree of glory and of infamy to be found in the annals of naval warfare may be seen in the two contrasted pictures of Hastings in command of the "Karteria" and Hobart in pursuit of the "Henôsis."

But the climax of our national shame was not yet reached. That an Englishman should bear arms in the cause of a barbarian despot, that an Englishman should forbid the offices of humanity to that despot's victims, were after all only the crimes of particular men. But it was something like a national humiliation when the very moment of the Cretan war was chosen to give the oppressor of Crete and of so many other Christian lands a public reception in England. There is something very strange in the way in which we deal out our favours to foreign potentates. When any king comes among us who, other on account of his own character or on behalf of the nation over whom he rules, is really entitled to respect, hardly any notice is taken of him. It may be in some cases that such a prince wishes to avoid the burthen of having any great notice taken of him; but the fact is plain; a respectable king passes almost unnoticed in England, while, when some despot or tyrant or perjurer comes among us, people at once fall down and worship him. Such an one is always received with every honour; crowds assemble to cheer him in the street; orders of chivalry are bestowed upon him; he dines with the lord mayor, and the lord mayor is made a baronet on the strength of the dinner. The red hand is in truth not unhappily chosen as the symbol of the guest for whose sake the honour is conferred. So we received Louis Napoleon Buonaparte, when his words of perjury were still fresh upon his lips, when his hands were still reeking with the blood of his December massacres. So we received the Turkish sultan at the very moment when a Christian people were striving to cast off his hated yoke from their necks. The Turk got his dinner and his garter; the badge of Saint George was thrown around the neck of the successor of Mahomet; and the lord mayor got the rank which seems specially reserved for those who have tyrants to dine with them. But, far worse than this, we were told in the papers that the popular reception given to the sultan could be compared only to the popular reception which had been given to Garibaldi. Had it come to this, that the English people were ready to cheer anything? — that to a London crowd an oppressor and a deliverer were the same thing — that Englishmen were equally ready to shout when Sicily was set free, and when Crete was again bowed down in slavery? So it was. And the cup of our folly and ignominy was filled up by giving a ball to a man who was not the least likely to dance, and by charging the expense of the costly foolery on the purses of the people of India. It was suddenly found out that England was a great Mahometan power, and, to keep up our Mahometan character, the unoffending votaries of Brahma were made to pay for the caperings at which our Mahometan guest sat and looked on. Our zeal for the Turk and his prophet was so great that Christian and heathen alike were to be mulcted to do them honour. The sultan came with his hands reeking with Christian blood, decked in pomp wrung from the tears and groans of Christian subjects. Not to lag behind our guest, the cost of his entertainment was to be wrung out of men of yet a third religion, men who had hitherto deemed that the rule of the Christian had at least delivered them from the rule of the Moslem. Of all the strange forms which oppression and homage to oppression ever took, surely the most grotesque was that of making the people of India pay 