Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/86

76 and one of the worst parts, of the great fabric of Turkish oppression, and it is in accordance with all experience everywhere that their dominion should be even more galling than that of the genuine Turks themselves.

Another objection is sure to be made, so easy is it for the advocates of wrong to find objections to every movement on behalf of right. We are told, sometimes glibly enough, with that kind of ease which often comes of over and over again repeating a well-worn formula, that the revolt is no real revolt at all, that its chief leaders and agents are not natives of the country, that it is a movement got up from without, a movement stirred up by Prussia, a movement stirred up by Austria, a Pan-Slavic movement, anything in short rather than a real rising of an oppressed people against its tyrants. These things are always said whenever there is a revolt among the subjects of the Turk, and there is just enough truth in sayings of the kind to make them mischievous. There is no doubt that the movement is a genuine native movement; there is no ground for saying that the leading men among the native Christians keep aloof from it. There is no doubt that the mass of the actual insurgents are really natives of the revolted provinces, stirred up by the wrongs which they themselves have suffered. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt that their ranks have been swelled by sympathizers from kindred but happier lands, and that even some of the leaders of the movement come under this latter head. So it always will be in such cases; and why should it not be so? As a rule, the people of an enslaved district, if left quite to themselves, really cannot rise. They need help from without to enable them to do anything. And shall we dare to blame the Slave who, under the rule of Austria, at least enjoys the common rights of humanity, or the Slave who, on the heights of Montenegro, rejoices in a freedom won by his own right hand, if he goes to the help of his suffering brother who is still under the yoke? To take the analogy which I started before, if Hampshire were free and Berkshire enslaved, should we think it a great crime if a Hampshire man went to help a revolt in Berkshire, or if he even suggested to the men of Berkshire that a favourable moment for revolt had come? Between the men of Montenegro and the men of Herzegovina (here is no wider difference in blood and speech than there is between the men of the two West-Saxon shires. The only difference between them is that the man of Montenegro is free and the man of Herzegovina is in bondage. Is it a crime then for the freeman to help his enslaved brother? Is it a crime to think that one good turn deserves another, that, as many men of Herzegovina fought on the great day which secured the freedom of Montenegro, it is only common gratitude if some men of Montenegro fight in their turn to enable Herzegovina to win her freedom also? The wonderful thing is, not that some Montenegrins have joined the insurgent ranks, but rather that, at such a moment, any one Montenegrin can keep his pistol and yataghan idle in his girdle. That any one Montenegrin can hold back is a sign of the power of a wise prince over a law-abiding people. The traveller in Montenegro is almost inclined to mourn that, while the great strife of right and wrong is going on below, a single one of her valiant sons should be forbidden to share in the good work. But it may perhaps be better that those free heights should still remain a city of refuge, where the Christian flying from the Turk, aye and the Turk flying from the Christian, may seek shelter, and never seek in vain.

The revolt then is in truth a genuine revolt of an oppressed Christian people against Mahometan masters, whether Turks by blood or apostates of their own race matters not. It is a revolt of men who have made up their minds to cast away the yoke or to perish. The conventional talk about reforms is the mere childish babble of diplomatists. The time for reform is past, or rather there never was such a time at all. The experience of twelve hundred years of history ought by this time to have taught us a very simple lesson. The state of things in the European provinces of Turkey is one where the evil is far too deeply rooted for any mere attempts at reform to mend it. The truth is that no real reform can be made as long as Mahometans, whether Turks by blood or not, bear rule over men of any other religion. In so saying, I need hardly disclaim any intolerant feeling towards the Mahometan religion or its professors. I have, in more forms than one, striven to do justice to the Arabian prophet as one of the greatest of reformers in his own age and country. I know as well as any man that there are large parts of the world where the preaching of Islam has carried with it a wonderful advance in every way, moral, social, and political. Towards a Mahometan nation, living in its 