Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/88

78  Mahometan minority. But no reform short of this will answer. A Mahometan government may rule well, as far as any despotism can rule well, over a Mahometan people. Over a people not Mahometan it must ever be, even in spite of itself, a government of sheer force and oppression. It must ever be a government towards which its subjects have but one duty, the duty of throwing off its yoke whenever they have the power.

The Turk then must go or he must cease to be a Turk. As he is not likely to cease to be a Turk, it is enough to say that he must go. It does not follow that he need go all at once. From Servia he has gone already. Bosnia and Herzegovina have given him notice to quit, and from them he must go at once. It will be time for him to go from Bulgaria and Albania when Bulgaria and Albania give him notice to quit also. But Bosnia and Herzegovina have made up their minds that they will get rid of him or perish. Which of these two alternatives is to take place is the true Eastern question. It is the question which the powers of Europe have to settle. No one supposes that, if the combined voice of Europe speaks, the sick man whom Europe has so long swathed and bolstered up for its own ends will dare to disobey. An awful responsibility therefore rests on those who now guide the counsels of the European powers. It is nothing short of the responsibility of deciding between good and evil. Shall the lands which have risen against the yoke be forced down again beneath the yoke, or not? To talk of reform is childish. The Turk, as long as he remains a Turk, cannot reform. The revolted lands ask, not for reforms which cannot be had, but for freedom which may be had. It is freedom for which they ask; never mind what form freedom takes; freedom from the Turk will be a blessing, in whatever form it comes. Be it the freest of commonwealths, be it only a despotism which does common justice between man and man, in either case it will be freedom to men who have so long groaned under the yoke of mere brigandage. One change may be better than another, but any change will be better than what is now.

And now at such a moment as this is it too much to ask that the wretched talk about interest and honour and prestige, which has so long grated on the ears of all who love right for its own sake, may at last be hushed? As for "prestige," I hardly know the meaning of the ugly foreign word; by its etymology it would seem to have something to do with the tricks of a juggler. As for honour, I know of only one way in which true honour can be won, and that is by doing right fearlessly at all hazards. The most honourable thing of all is never to do wrong; next after that comes the true courage of the man or the nation who, when wrong has been done, is ready to confess the wrong and to redress it. Our true honour can never demand that we should go on propping up a rotten fabric of evil; it does demand that we should undo the wrong that we have done in helping the evil cause thus far. As for interests, questions about Central Asia or the Suez Canal, I do not profess to be any judge of such matters; but if our Atlantic island has any real interest in them, I suppose that those questions, like other questions of interest, come under the head of the eternal rule that interest should give way to right and duty.

We were told one and twenty years back that our interests were so pressing, that the Russian bugbear was so frightful, that we had no time to listen to the claims of oppressed nations, even when we had ourselves doomed them to oppression. So I would say back again, that, when a plain duty calls on us to help the cause of our suffering brethren, I at least can find no time for nicely calculated questions of interest, not even for counting how near Russia may, in the discharge of her civilizing mission in barbarian lands, have come to the bounds of our own distant dominion. I can only say that the interests of Russia or Austria, the interests of France or Germany or England, must not be thought of in the face of the interests of humanity. Happily one specially sordid form of interest will now be driven to hold its peace. Europe will hardly be called upon to prop up the black fabric of Turkish tyranny in the interest of Turkish bondholders in England. The Turk has, fittingly enough, played the Turk with his creditors as well as with his subjects. Englishmen were not ashamed to lend their money to the barbarian, knowing that every penny which they lent could be used only in propping up the foulest of tyrannies, and in enabling a sensual despot to spend yet more on his luxuries and his vices. They lent their money, knowing that every penny of interest that they were to receive was to be wrung by the minions of a tyrant out of the scanty 