Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/12

 Vl PUEKACE. sense over themselves; for at a moment wheu the State was pursuing its accustomed policy, they inter- posed with a mind to shackle it, and I think it is in vain to deny that during a period of several months the State was shackled accordingly. The truth is, that from the time when observers, unallured by the charm of the East, began to cast critical glances at the polity of the Ottoman Empire, no one well — without smiling — could say it was other- wise than grievously bad, and not many could even see in it the germs of a much better system ; so that, wheji superadded to the spectacle of public bank- ruptcy, and the other abundant proofs that there were of Turkish misgovernment, the outrages committed last May in a part of what some called ' Bulgaria,' * gave such weight, power, and substance to indignant denunciations of the Sultan's rule, that a mass of opinion in this country was brought into harmony with that of the great Kussian people ; the distant multitudes of the East and of the West being thus, as it were, 'made kin' by the touch of a human feeling. Despite intervening distance, the two multitudes were both alike moved by the same pity, the same anger, the same longing to inflict retribution, the same scorn of any cold policy or any unwelcome prudence that seemed standing in the way of their vengeance. The Russian multitude, as I have shown, were not without means of pressing their entreaties upon the bituatc far south of the Balkan, in the country we cull Kounielia.
 * The outrages occurred in villages occupied by Bulgarians, but