Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/38

4 to Constantinople, where the native authorities dared not to call in question the rights of their new citizenship.

I do not know whether such international filching has received any check within the last few years; but of this there can be no doubt, that Russia still exercises almost unlimited sway over the affairs of the Greek Church in Turkey, and that the Armenian rayahs look up to her for assistance, which for the extension of her political influence, if for no other reason, she is never backward to grant. Causes such as these are sufficient to explain why the Greeks and Armenians have been able to make a better stand against the encroachments of Rome than the poor Syrians, whose comparatively small number, their distance from Russia, and geographical position,1 render them of little importance to the political views of the great Tsar. And added to this, in all their conflicts, they have had to contend singlehanded against the powerful influence of France, which arrogates to herself the right of protecting all the "Catholics" in the Turkish empire. This right, which has been put forth with so much impudence, and which some years ago was seemingly admitted in the House of Lords, when a discussion took place on the state of the Christians in Turkey, has no foundation whatever in any treaty made between France and the Porte. Let the capitulations be searched, and the only superior right granted to France is that of protecting the conventual establishments at Jerusalem, which a lax interpretation may extend to the Latin missionaries in other parts of the empire; but not one word is said which in any way can be taken to entitle that power to protect the subjects of the Porte who have joined the Church of Rome.

The influence which the representatives of France at Constantinople have exercised in behalf of emissaries from Rome, and their intervention in favour of the proselytes made from the different Christian communities in the Turkish empire, is not kept secret by their own writers. The Jesuit, Mons. Eugène Boré, thus writes in his work on Armenia, published in the "Univers":—"Si les catholiques n'avaient trouvé un appui politique dans les ambassadeurs, et principalement dans celui de France, le protecteur official de la religion des Latins, ils n'auraient pu résister à la persecution." And again:—