Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/778

772 never acknowledged as other than evil. The very doers of them would admit that they were ugly blots on a system to which they were essentially foreign. But the atrocities of Batak are not foreign to the Turkish code of morals; they are part of it. They grow out of it as naturally as thorns out of a bramble-bush. The Turk does not think them morally wrong, and when he condemns them it is not because they are wicked, but because they have been found ont. The atrocities in Bulgaria are not one of those abnormal outbreaks of human nature which all nations have to lament; they are, on the contrary, nothing more than a grand representation en tableau of what goes on all the year round in detail over the whole area of the non-Mussulman population of Turkey. To say of any civilized State that its normal policy is Machiavellian is to say that its normal policy is thoroughly bad and immoral. Yet there would be some hope of regeneration for Turkey if its political morality were only Machiavellian.


 * Cruelty [says Machiavelli] may be well or ill applied. It may be called well applied (if indeed we may use the term "well" of that which is essentially evil) when it is only exercised once in a way under the necessity of self-preservation, and afterwards converted as much as possible to the benefit of the class who have suffered from it. It is ill applied when it shows a tendency to repeat itself, and to increase rather than diminish with time. The proceedings of the former class are of the nature of a remedy, and have been suffered to prosper both by God and man. A state which practises the latter cannot continue to live. ("Il Principe" c. viii.)

To quote then, if it were possible, from the history of England or of Russia examples of atrocities as great and hideous as those of Batak would be nothing to the purpose of the present argument. Those who indulge in that style of reasoning are but beating the air; they do not touch the essence of the question even with the tips of their fingers. The case against Turkey is not simply that its administration is bad, but that it cannot be good; not merely that it errs, but that it errs on principle; not merely that it practises iniquity, but that it makes of iniquity a virtue and an article of faith. This is the indictment which I bring against the government of the Porte, and now I shall endeavor to prove it.

In the middle of September last year the insurgents in the Herzegovina drew up a list of their grievances in a long document which they presented to the representatives of the great powers, with a most pathetic appeal which, as it is short, may be reprinted here: —


 * In order to get out of this misery [they say], to put an end to such sufferings, to free the Christians from the rule of the Turks and from continual oppression, to remove the fuel of the raging insurrection, and to ensure a durable peace, we find no other means than one of the following resolutions: —


 * 1. The Christians are resolved to die rather than suffer such slavery; therefore they should be left to seek their liberation by arms, and if they are not assisted they have at least a right to have no obstacles put in the way of their enterprise, and to expect that no aid should be given to the oppressor.


 * 2. Or we are forced to beg some Christian power to grant us a corner of land, so that we may all emigrate to it, and abandon this unhappy country so cursed with misfortunes.


 * 3. Or if the powers should prevail on the sultan to let an autonomous state be formed of Bosnia and Herzegovina, tributary to the sultan, with some Christian prince from elsewhere, but never from here.


 * 4. Or finally (the minimum), let the powers agree at once to put a strong body of troops from some neighboring state into the principal cities of the province, and let the representatives of the powers enter the principal Midjlis as judges until things are put in order, and the lives, honor, and property of the Christians are rendered secure, with equality of civil and religious rights. ("Parliamentary Papers," No ii., pp. 30-40.)

The list of grievances in this document would occupy more space than I can reasonably claim for the whole of this article. I must therefore content myself with specifying some of them; premising that they can all be substantially proved by the evidence of consular reports, and many of them by the subsequent admissions of the Porte itself.

Let us, first, take the case of the various imposts which are levied by the Porte, and let us begin with the tithes. This is 