Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/157

 BETWEEN THE CZAK A~SD THE SULTAN. 115 almost to court this kind of interference. The chap. practice of suffering the Christian Churches to '__ live and thrive separate and apart without being subjected to any attempt at amalgamation, has given to these communities so many of the privi- leges of distinct national existence that they long to make their independence still more complete, and to do this, not by attempting to lay their timid hands upon the government, but rather by becoming more and more separate, and at last dropping off from the Empire. Therefore, instead of harbouring schemes for rising in arms against the Sultan, they have accustomed themselves to seek to form ties of a political and religious kind with foreign States, and to appeal to them for protection against their Ottoman rulers. Here, then, of course, a gaping cleft was open to receive the wedge which diplomatists call a ' Protectorate.' Russia claimed a moral right to protect the ten or fourteen millions of Turkish subjects who con- stituted the Greek Church, and she availed her- self of some loose words which had crept into the old treaty of Kainardji as a ground for main- taining that this moral claim was converted into a distinct right by treaty engagement. Austria, armed with treaties, was empowered to protect the Roman Catholic worship, but France had always been accustomed to busy herself in watch- ing over that portion of the Latin Church which was connected with Palestine and Syria. It is true that the Armenian, the Coptic, and the Plack Churches were without any recognised foreign