Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 44.djvu/498

484 possessed the love and confidence of her husband, and little by little the poison imbibed circulated through her veins."

The writer continues, that as it is impossible for a reaction to occur in a country without its rushing to the opposite evil, in Turkey the leap from ignorance to knowledge had the first effect of so dazzling the Turkish woman that, in casting off the ancient trammels, she also in many cases abandoned the code of honor existent among women in every country. "Of our old customs, as well as of our old faith, very little remains, and it is only in the lower orders, or the most secluded harems, that some vestige of them can be found. At Constantinople women hardly hide their faces, and think it no shame to appear before the public in habiliments which would be hardly considered decent with the lowest dregs of European society."

But, as Adalet sagely observes, "All this is a secondary question." She rightly appreciates that freedom is a gift which can be wisely used only by practice in the use of freedom, and does not forsake her faith in freedom because its first possession has intoxicated those unaccustomed to it. Perceiving that slavery is the corner stone of polygamy, she urges that the women of Turkey should strive with all their force for the abolition of polygamy by themselves enfranchising their own slaves. But she also declares that, however good, as far as negroes are concerned, may be the result of the action of the English Government in Egyp't for the enforced abolition of slavery, the*effect upon the Circassians has been only evil, and that continually, and for these reasons: "No Circassian would ever condescend to go to the slave-home, or work as a servant. What has, then, been the result? Hundreds of white slaves have gone to the police court for their freedom, and from there have gone to the bad. In fact, they only took their papers with that intention, as no Circassian ever thought that slavery was a shame, or that it was irksome in any way. Freedom to them means nothing unless the freedom is accompanied by a husband and a home, and they know very well they can not expect these from the police court, as no marriage can be valid with the paper taken from there. . . . They have given a bad repute to the police court, and now no slave who respects herself will go there." Thus Adalet concludes: "I frankly own that I think, in the case of the Circassians, no efforts made for the abolishment of slavery will be successful, when coming from the outside. It is we, we alone, who can, by enfranchising and marrying out, little by little, those we possess, and buying no more, end a custom as bad to ourselves as to them. Every scheme in which we do not participate will end by doing the slaves more harm than they will ever suffer in a harem."

The extreme of injury done to the body politic by a mode of