Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/400

392 join and materially help, while they morally embarrassed, any wide-spread rising of Christians in Turkey. Their hatred to the Turk is bitter, while they retain traces of sympathy with Servs even though they do not scruple to oppress them with a lawlessness almost unknown to any other Mussulman official, — if there are shades in that blackness. The southern Albanians have more in common with the Greeks, but are also professedly Mahometan. Both have done as much fighting for as against the Turks, and were, long ago, before their apostasy, the only Christians in the Turkish army in the East. It may be well, à propos of the Albanians, to suggest, in few words, the two sides of the question of the Christians in Turkey in relation to the army. Favourers of Turkey remark upon the privilege enjoyed by Christians of immunity from military service, while the Turks and Mahometan populations have to furnish a certain contingent although they dislike military life. The Mahometans are represented as justly jealous of their Christian fellow-countrymen on this point. But the other side of the question is this; that although military reclamations fall heavily upon the Mussulmans, the privilege of going about armed is one which would be gladly purchased by the Christian population at the same price, while the Mussulmans are free from the heavy tax paid by all Christian males above three months old for exemption from military service, a tax which often serves as an excuse for extortion. The sultan has now announced that Christians will be enrolled in the army, but unless it be in separate regiments this promise cannot be fulfilled, since the daily life and habits and morals of Christians and Mahometans are irreconcilable. Perhaps the most cogent proof that Slavonian Christians and Mahometans can never peaceably share one country, is the fact that the former are without blame and irreproachable in the matter of chastity, while the Mussulman, and especially the Turk, allows and practises unbridled license. Among the former women are intelligent, respected, and free, and among the latter are the degraded instruments of loathsome vice. Such light and such darkness cannot dwell together.

The Bulgarians come more completely than the Albanians under the description of Christians in Turkey. Originally brethren of the Servs, with whom they have in common a language which is harsh and rude in their mouths, and soft in the districts nearer to Italian influences, but which is easily mutually intelligible, and otherwise identical, as far as vocabulary is concerned, their period of prominence came earlier, but they fell at about the same time before the Turkish arms. They were only gradually subjugated, and were able to make good terms for themselves, as indeed most people could, the tyranny of the Turk having everywhere grown more and more grinding as lapse of time made him feel more at home, and privileged in his oppression. At first the Bulgarians preserved their autonomy, both in State and Church, paying tribute to the sultan; but some chieftans apostatized so as to share in the power which they found Mussulmans in neighbouring countries arrogated to themselves; some were driven into exile, some were disposed of, and the great blow to Bulgarian independence was dealt just a century ago, when the sultan imposed upon the people a set of bishops belonging to the corrupt patriarchate of Constantinople, creatures of the Turkish government, who buy their sees and recoup themselves at the expense of their flocks. The story is the same for all the Greek-Church communities under the power of the Porte. The Christians suffer as much from the religious superiours imposed upon them against their will as they do from the civil governors and their subordinates. But the subjection of the Bulgarians had not lasted long enough to deprive them of all courage when the resurrection of Greece, of the Moldo-Wallachian provinces, and of Free Servia, gave them spirit to bestir themselves. Early in this century a movement began among them for better education, and now the whole province possesses a most respectable number of schools for both boys and girls, in which the ancient Cyrillic alphabet, the old Bulgarian language, and the early version of the Bible, are carefully taught in order to help forward free intercourse with the neighbouring Servs. The policy of the Porte has been to harass the people by forced immigrations from wilder portions of the empire; but they have steadily held on their way, cultivating the marvellously fertile plains which fall to their lot, and which would make them wealthy under a good government, and with access to European markets. They grow cotton, silk, and corn, in what would be abundance but for oppressive taxation, and leave the Mussulmans to people the towns. In the towns, however, many shopkeepers are Christians, and the taxes are arranged so as to fall most heavily on the trades