rapidity, cultivation is daily extending into the wilds of nature, and the beautiful spectacle is presented to the eye of the charmed traveler of industry overcoming the difficulties with which it is surrounded, and man existing in simple innocence, surrounded with the comforts of unsophisticated nature. 14. Servians by M. Lamartine, whose brilliant imagination is accompanied with a close observaPicture of the tion of external things, and whose travels are suspected to be poetical Lamartine. dreams only because they exhibit sketches from nature, colored with the tints of his poetic mind, has given the following picture of Servia, where, ever since its formidable insurrection in the commencement of the present century, independence, under the tutelary arm of PRINCE MOLOSCH, has been practically established: "The population in Servia amounts now (1836) to 1,000,000 souls, and it is rapidly increasing. The mildness of the climate, which resembles that between Lyons and Avignon; the riches of the deep and virgin soil, which covers the surface every where with the vegetation of Switzerland; the abundance of rivers and streams which descend from the mountains, circulate in the valleys, and often form lakes in the spacious woods; the felling of the forests, which at once, as in America, furnishes space for the plow and materials for the houses of those who hold it; the mild and pure manners of the people; their wise and protective institutions, the reflection, as it were, of the best in Europe; the supreme power concentrated in the hands of a man worthy of his mission, Prince Molosch-all these elements of prosperity and happiness promise to advance the population to several millions before a century is over. Should that people, as it desires and hopes, become the kernel of a new Sclavonic empire by its reunion with Bosnia, a part of Bulgaria, and the warlike Montenegrins, Europe will see a new empire rise from the ruins 1 Lamartine, of Turkey, and embrace the vast Voyages en and beautiful regions which extend L'Orient, vii. between the Danube, the Balkan, 12. 15. the Euxine, and the Adriatic.1 "The traveler can not quit this beautiful region, as I have done, without saContinued. luting with regrets and benedictions its rising fortunes. Those immense virgin forests, those mountains, those plains, those rivers, which seem to have come fresh from the hands of the Creator, and to mingle the luxuriant youth of nature with the youth of man; those new houses, which seem to spring out of the woods, to stretch along the side of torrents into the most sequestered nooks of the valleys; the roll of the revolving mills, busied with the cutting of wood; the sound of the village bells, newly baptized in the blood of the defenders of the country; the songs of the youths and maidens, as they lighten their toil; the sight of the multitude of children who issue from the schools or from the churches, the roofs of which are not yet finished; the accents of liberty, of joy, and of hope in every mouth; the look of spring and gladness in every countenance; the sight of those mountains which stand forth shaded with primeval forests; the fortresses of nature, and of that Danube, which bends as if to embrace so beauteous a region, and waft its productions to the east and the north; the prospect of the mosque every where in ruins, and the Christian churches rising in every village-all those speak the youth of nations, and we mingle our prayers with the song of the freeman. "When the sun of Servia shines on the waters of the Danube, the river seems to glitter with the blades of the yatagans, the resplendent fusils of the Montenegrins: it is a river of liquid steel which defends Servia. It is sweet to sit on its shore, and to see it waft past the broken arms of our enemies. When the wind of Albania descends from the mountains, and engulfs itself in the forests of Schamadia, cries issue from them as from the army of the Turks at the rout of Mosawa. Sweet is that murmur to the ears of the freed Servians. Dead or living, it is sweet after the battle to Voyages dans repose at the foot of that oak which L'Orient, vin. expands in freedom as we do."1 1 Lamartine, 41, 42. 16. But examples like that of Servia, of which there are several in the Turkish dominions, particularly in Bulgaria, General deand the valleys of Lebanon, are the crease of exceptions, not the rule. Generally population in Turkey. speaking, the country is retrograde, and exhibits the usual and well-known features of decaying societies. Roads there are none, except bridle-paths, often impassable for any save daring horsemen: harbors choked up; walls falling into ruin; bridges broken down, and never repaired; villages wholly deserted, or consisting of a few huts among extensive ruins; rich plains in a state of nature, or traversed only by the wandering Arab, who seeks shelter in the remains of former magnificence-are the general features of the country. The Turkish empire is perishing, literally speaking, from want of inhabitants; and while the philosophers of Europe were contemplating with dread the productive powers of its overflowing inhabitants, the travelers in Asia were anticipating the entire disappearance of the human race, in the regions where it was first created, and where the most ample means have been provided for its increase. The Ottoman dominions present from day to day a wide void for anarchy and barbarism to rule in; territories without inhabitants, tribes without rulers, plains without culture. No foreign interposition is necessary to complete its downfall; it is working out its own ruin; the colossus is falling without even a hand being stretched forth to hurl it to the ground. The population, thrown back upon itself, is expiring from its own impotence in many places it no longer exists. The Mussulman race is reduced to nothing in the sixty thousand square leagues which compose its immense and fertile domain; excepting in the capital, and a few great cities, there is scarcely a Turk to be seen. Gaze over that vast empire, its fertile fields, and seek the Ottoman raceyou will nowhere find it, except in large towns. The senseless, or rather murderous government of the Ottoman has in most places created a desert. The conquered races have generally in- L'Orient, creased, while the conquering is daily 332. disappearing.2 2 Lainartine, Voy ages dans viii. 331, Statistical facts of unquestionable veracity prove that these observations are not the mere offspring of a heated imagination, but the sober | little more than three millions are 1 Malte Brun, Mohammedans, certainly not a vii. 842, 843; third of what it contained in an- Von Hammer, cient days.1 17. deductions of reason. The Ottoman Statistics dominions, which are nearly the same of Turkey. with those which, on the partition of the Empire, fell to the lot of the emperors of Constantinople, contain 60,000 square geographical leagues, or 540,000 square miles-above four times the size of Great Britain and Ireland, and more than three times that of France. The benignity of the climate, luxuriance of vegetation, and warmth of the sun, have rendered the plains of extraordinary fertility, often yielding eighty and a hundred for one, while in England ten to one is reckoned a large crop, and at the same time made the rocky slopes, here abandoned to furze or heath, capable of yielding the finest crops of grapes and olives. Magnificent forests, furnishing inexhaustible resources for ship-building, clothe the mountain sides; and the Egean lies in the midst of the empire, studded with islands of ravishing beauty, inhabited by skillful and hardy sailors, as if to furnish the means of communication between its most distant extremities. Its capital is Constantinople, the finest harbor in the world, and so advantageously situated for foreign commerce that it in every age has engrossed the most lucrative traffic which man carries onthat between the East and the West. The greatest rivers of Europe, Asia, and Africathe Danube, the Euphrates, and the Nile-are its streams, and waft the varied productions of its industry to distant quarters, where they may find a ready vent. Yet with all these im mense advantages, which supported the Byzantine empire for a thousand years after the Western had fallen, the Ottoman empire now contains less than thirty millions of inhabitants, not a third of its population in former times, or a fifth of what it is capable of maintaining; and such as it is, this scanty population is daily declining. Turkey in Europe, with a territory more than twice as large as Great Britain, contains only ten millions of inhabitants, of whom *The following is the estimated population of Turkey ii. 273. sist? 18. There must have been some grievous faults on the part of government and institutions in Turkey, which, with In what does such advantages, has produced so Turkish opfearful a diminution of inhabitants. pression conNor is it difficult to see in what those faults consist. It is common to it with all the states in the East. There are no elements of freedom, no guarantees against oppression in the land. The rule of the Osmanlis is not more oppressive than that of other Asiatic states; but it is entirely despotic, and there is no check on the abuse of power by the sultan or the inferior governors of provinces. It is the practical application of the principles of government acted on in Turkey which has occasioned such a fearful chasm in the population, and weakened so remarkably the strength of the empire. 1. The first of these principles is, that the sultan nominates at pleasure, and removes at will, all the civil and military functionaries of the empire. He is absolute master of their fortunes and their lives; but the difficulty of carrying his mandates into execution in the distant pachalics, renders this power often more nominal than real; and the sultan, destitute of adequate regular troops to enforce his mandates, is obliged to bribe one pacha to depose another, by the promise of his power, his treasures, his harem, and oblivion for his crimes. 2. The second principle is, that every depository of power can delegate it entire and uncontrolled to his subordinates in office; so that every aga or janizary within his territory is as despotic as the sultan in Constantinople. It is a common saying in Turkey, that the sword of the sultan does not fall upon the dust; and neither does it: but the sword of the sultan falls upon the pacha, and the sword of the pacha falls upon the aga, and the sword of the aga upon the janizary, and the sword of the janizary upon peasant. Each is invested with uncontrolled power over all beneath him; and as 2,350,000 there is no popular representation, or check of 275,000 sort on power, it may readily be imagined any 120,000 with what severity it falls on the humblest 3,057,000 classes. It was well expressed in a letter, written by Odysseus to Mohammed Pacha, explaining the reasons which induced him to take up arms 79,500 at the commencement of the Greek Revolution: "It was the injustice of the viziers, way wodes, According to their races, the inhabitants stand thus: in Europe, according to M. Hassel and Malte Brun: 312,000 100,000 224,000 the his own. 15. 1822 Gordon's Greek eadis, and baloukbashis, each of whom closed 19. Sultan. 1 Michelus, Ottoman Empire, 178; Ubicini, Lettres sur la Turquie, 270. portation. pire; but as it rests in the hands of priests and lawyers, in the double fangs of ecclesiastical power and legal subtlety, with nothing but a usufruct or life-rent right of enjoyment in the trustee or real owner, it is of course utterly fatal to any expenditure of money on, or improvement of, landed property in Turkey. This is one great cause of the general dilapidation of buildings, roads, and bridges in the rural districts, and the entire want of any thing like expenditure of capital on lasting improvements. Add to this, that, by a fundamental law of the empire, landed property, even when not in the hands of a mosque, can be alienated to or held by a Turk alone. No Christian, be his fortune in money what it may, can become a landed of conquest the property of the sul-proprietor; when they really do so, it can be tan, and may be reclaimed by him at pleasure. done only by holding in name of a Turk. This It it true, this extreme right is kept in abey- necessarily is fatal to the improvement of land, ance, and not in general acted upon; but its for it excludes from its purchase the entire reality is never doubted, and it forms a fearful Christian population, the only one possessed of principle to fall back upon, when arbitrary acts capital, energy, or resources, and confines it to have been resolved upon, or the public treas- the dominant Ottomans-like the Normans, a ury stands much in need of replenishing. The race of warriors who utterly dewhole Christians, whether Greeks or Armenians, spise all pacific pursuits, and know and the Jews, as well as other similar" dogs," no use of land but to wrench the stand in this situation. They purchase their last farthing out of the wretched lives annually by payment of a capitation tax, cultivators.1 known by the significant name, "Redemption of the price of heads;" but the application of the principle to immovable property produces still more disastrous consequences. It is held that no one, not even the Turks, can enjoy the hereditary right to landed estates; they never can be more than usufructuaries or life-renters. If the owner dies without a male child, the sultan is the heir, to the exclusion of the daughters; if there are sons, their right of succession is redeemed by the payment of a tenth of the value, but that tenth is estimated by the officers of exchequer. The persons holding office under the sultan in any degree are subject to still greater uncertainty; all their property of every description belongs on their death to the sultan, and must be redeemed at an arbitrary rate. So great is the apprehension entertained of this right, that no one ventures to expend money on heritable property. If a house, a roof, or an arch fall, it is suffered to remain in ruins. Whatever property can be accumulated is invested in movable effects-jewels or money 2 Volney, Voy--which, being easily concealed, ages en Syrie, are more likely to escape the Archap. . Lu- gus eyes of the tax-gatherers. The only way in which property in perpetuity can be settled in Turkey, is by bequeathing it for pious purposes to a mosque, the direct-ish ors of which, for a moderate ransom, permit it to be enjoyed by the heirs of the testator.2 In consequence of this insecurity of land-tenure in Turkey, and of the mosques Great extent of affording the only security that can land in Turkey be relied on, a very large proporheld in mort- tion of the heritable property in the country has come into the hands of these ecclesiastical trustees; some estimate it as three-fourths, none at less than two-thirds There results from this general life-tenure and of the entire surface. This species of property, insecurity of property in Turkey the most being subject neither to taxes nor confiscation, scandalous venality on the part of persons holdis largely resorted to in every part of the eming office, and the most rapacious exactions decke, Relation de la Turquie, 1. 63: Lady Montague's main. 20. The Turkey, in consequence of this extraordinary and anomalous position of its land- 21. ed property, and of the want of Injury done to any durable interest in the domi- Turkey by imnant race of the state in its prosperity, has long been the victim of the old im perial policy, inherited by the Ottomans from the ancient masters of the world--that of sacrificing the interests of production in the country to those of consumption in towns. magnitude and importance of Constantinople, the extreme danger of any serious discontent among its turbulent inhabitants, the number of sultans who have fallen victims to insurrections among the janizaries, have contributed to impress upon the Ottoman government, at all hazards, the necessity of keeping down the price of provisions. Every thing is sacrificed to this object. Goods of every sort, including grain, imported, pay an ad valorem duty of 5 per cent.; all goods exported pay an ad valorem duty of 12 per cent. This strange policy, akin to that of the Popes in modern, and the Emperors in ancient Rome, springing from dread of the old cry of Panem et Circenses" of the Roman populace, is of itself sufficient to account for the ruinous state of agriculture in the Turkish empire. Constantinople is fed from Alexandria, Odessa, and Galatz, not Roumelia. The Turk government at one period went so far as to prohibit exportation from Wallachia and Moldavia to any other place than Constantinople; and yet so great are the agricultural resources of these provinces, that, since this restriction has been removed, the exportation of grain from Galatz and Brahilow, the chief harbors, has increased at the rate of 2 Ubicini, Let700,000 quarters a year, and now tres sur la Turamounts to 5,000,000 quarters an- quie, 280, 281, nually.2 285. 22. Universal venality in the fice. tice. 24. on the unfortunate persons subjected to their | self in his turn the victim of the jealousies of authority. Every one feeling his the government. It is evident that, though situation precarious, his property this system conduces at times to the signal life-rented only, hastens to make as punishment of a guilty or rebellious satrap, it holders of of much of and expend as little upon is utterly inconsistent with any thing like reguit as possible. The situations of lar or good government, and only chastises vizier, pacha, cadi, and the like, are sold to the crime by providing for its unpunished continulargest bidder, and the purchasers, who have ance in future times. often paid a high price for these offices, seek to make the best use of their time to repay the purchase-money, and leave something considerable in a movable form, capable of being concealed to their families. It is true, if the oppression of any one pacha has become intolerable, the complaints of his subjects, despite all the tyrant's vigilance, sometimes reach the ears of the sultan, and a terrible example is made. The bowstring is sent to the culprit, his head is exposed on the gates of the seraglio, with an inscription detailing the crimes of which he has been guilty; his property, wherever it can be discovered, is seized for the sultan's use, his harem dispersed, and the most beautiful of its inmates transferred to the royal seraglio. But no redress is thereby afforded to the sufferers by his oppression; the fruit of his rapacity is conveyed to the treasury at Constantinople, not restored to its original owners. Hence it is a common saying in Turkey, that "the pachas are so many sponges put over the ground, in order to suck up the wealth of the inhabitants, that it may be the more readily squeezed into the sultan's coffers." It is impossible to suppose that the process of squeezing will be very vigilantly watched by the rulers of the 1 Porter's Trav- empire, when it is foreseen that, els, 79, 80; if carried to a certain length, it Malte Brun, vii. is likely to terminate in such a 707. 23. Ruinous weakness of the Executive. result.1 To these manifold evils must be added another, which, in its practical results, is often the greatest of the whole; and that is, that the central government at Constantinople has no adequate force at its command to enforce its mandates, or compel a just administration on the part of its remote satraps. The regular military force at the disposal of the sultan is so small, in comparison to the immense extent of his dominions, that he is often unable to find troops under his immediate control to punish or restrain his rebellious or oppressive vassals; and thus he has no resource but to punish one pacha by the forces of another-that is, to destroy one culprit by creating a second. This can only be done for an adequate consideration; and that consideration in general is, either the gift of the culprit's pachalic, or oblivion for some huge delinquencies on the part of the officer to whom the execution of the sultan's decree has been intrusted. In either case, the system of oppression continues, or rather is increased; for the executioner is secured of long impunity by the lustre of his recent victory over his victim. This system, so well known in Scottish history, and, indeed, in that of all the feudal monarchies of Europe, is still in full vigor in Turkey, and was exemplified early in the Greek revolution, by the dethronement and decapitation of Ali Pacha by the forces of his rival, Kourchid Pacha, who hoped to succeed to his pachalic, but was him Justice is venal in the Ottoman, as, indeed, it is in all Oriental states. The judges, both high and low, are taken Venality from the Oulema, a sort of incorpora- and corruption of persons learned in law and tion of jusjurisprudence; and if they were persons of probity, their influence would be very great. But they are so venal in their conduct, and so arbitrary in their decisions, that no weight whatever can be attached to their judgments. All judges-the mollah, the cadi, and simple naib-pronounce sentences, both in civil and criminal cases, without appeal; thence, of course, an infinite variety in the judgments pronounced, and an entire impossibility of rectifying an unjust decision. The cadi, in flagrant cases, may be deposed, bastinadoed, and his fortune confiscated; but the only effect of that is to enrich the sultan or the officers of his treasury, but by no means to rectify the injustice done to the unhappy suitor. The Turkish jurisprudence consists in a few maxims from the Koran, and a few traditionary principles handed down in the courts; written statutes, collections of decisions, they have none; witnesses are examined, and oaths administered on both sides, and at the end of a few minutes or hours the decision, which is final and irreversible, is pronounced. The defendant or culprit, if poor, is bastinadoed; if rich, or a Frank, he is amerced in a pecuniary fine called an “avaria;" if a thief or a robber, he is hanged. Every thing is done as swiftly as it was in the camp of Othman; and so strongly is the military impress 1 Volney, still retained in the empire, that ii., Letter the chief judges of the empire in Tournefort, ii., Europe and Asia bear the name re- Letter xiv. ; spectively of Kadi-laskar, or judge Malte Brun, of the army.1 vii. 709. So powerful are these causes of evil, that they must long since have led to the 25. entire dissolution of the Turkish em- Contrary pire, were it not that they have been principles combated by circumstances, which good in Turkey. have, in a great degree, neutralized Weakness their influence, and prolonged its ex- of power. istence long after, under other circumstances, it must have terminated. The first of these is the weakness of government itself, the principal, often the only, shield to innocence and industry in the East. As much as this weakness impedes the regular administration of affairs, and often secures impunity to crime in the depositaries of power, does it prevent their previous abuse of its authority, and shield the people when nothing else could save them from its excesses. The inhabitants are often saved from oppression, not because the pachas want the inclination, but because they want the power to oppress. Industry is sometimes left at peace, because the tyrants can not reach it. The military force of the empire being entirely confined to the Osmanlis, and they being in many places, especially in the rural districts, not a tenth, sometimes not a twentieth part of the entire inhabitants, they are often without the means of enforcing their exactions; without any regular force to levy taxes or carry into execution their mandates, without money to equip a body of troops from the Turks in towns, they can not make their power felt in the remoter parts of their provinces. 26. cation. the only honorable occupation, and worthy of a freeman. But no one can mingle with them, either in business or society, without perceiving that few races of men are more estimable in the relations of private life. Fearless, honest, and trustworthy, their word is their bond, and they are destitute of the restless spirit and envious disposition which so often in western Europe and America at once disturb happiThe very desolation and ruin of the coun- ness and provoke to crime. Inactivity is their try, the want of roads, harbors, or great characteristic, repose their chief enjoyAnd want bridges, the difficulty of reaching ment. Their wants, generally speaking, are of the means the distant places with an armed few; their enjoyments such as nature has of communi- force, often proves the salvation of thrown open to all. To sit on a carpet, smoke the inhabitants. This is particu- a scented pipe, and gaze under shade on the larly the case in the mountain districts, which dancing of the sunbeams on the waves of the form so large a part of the territory of Turkey, Bosphorus, is their supreme enjoyment. Satisboth in Europe and Asia. Hence the smiling fied, if wealthy, with his own harem, which aspect of the villages and valleys in Servia, combines the ideas of home and pleasure, the Bulgaria, Bosnia, the Lebanon, the Taurus, and Turk has generally no ambition to invade that some parts of Macedonia, which contrast so of his neighbor; and the enormous mass of strangely with the desolation and ruin of the female profligacy which infests the great cities plains in their vicinity. The cavalry of the of western Europe is unknown. Nothing expachas pause at the entrance of the rugged cites the horror of the Osmanlis so much as the valleys, where nothing but break-neck bridle- details of the foundling hospitals, and fearful paths are to be seen, and sturdy mountaineers, multitude of natural children in Paris and armed with their excellent fowling-pieces, are Vienna; they can not conceive how society ready to pour death upon the reckless invaders. can exist under such an accumulation of evils. They are happy to exchange the doubtful Though capable, when roused either by religchances of warfare for the certainty of a regu-ious fanaticism or military excitelar tribute. The inhabitants of the plains, ment, of the most frightful deeds of 1 Malte Brun, especially if they have made any money, flock cruelty, they are far, in ordinary Urquhart's to these asylums of industry in the midst of a times, from being of a savage dis- Spirit of the wasted land; and hence the constant increase position; they are kind to their East, 1. 420, of inhabitants in the mountains, contrasted wives, passionately fond of their tine, Voyages with the general depopulation of the plains, children, charitable to the poor, dans L'Oriwhich has been observed by all travelers, and and even extend their benevolent ent, viii. 356, led to such opposite conclusions as to the ulti-feelings to dumb animals.1 mate destiny of the Eastern Empire. In the north of Europe, where commerce is indispensable to comfort, industry protected, and an exchange of surplus rude produce Vide Mante's for foreign luxuries is essential to ney's Travels, civilization, the formation of roads Porter's Trav is always the first step in improveels, Clark's ment; but in the East, where martine's Voy- wants are few, and the benignity of the climate furnishes every L'Orient, Cha- luxury that man requires, this Itinéraire de want is not experienced, and roads Paris à Jerusa- are rather dreaded as affording an lem, and Urqu- entrance to oppression, than dehart's Spirit of sired as giving the means of export Travels, Vol Travels, La age dans teaubriand's the East. vii. 702, 704; 427; Lamar 357. To this it must be added, that though in practice the administration of govern- 28. ment by the pachas is generally The theory of to the last degree oppressive and the central govdestructive, yet the system of government is comernment is by no means equally paratively mild. tyrannical, and in some respects is wise and tolerant, to a degree which may afford an example to, or excite the envy of the Christian powers. Though the Turks, when they stormed Constantinople in 1453, established the religion of Mohammed as the creed of the empire, yet they were far from proscribing other tenets, and to the religion of Jesus in particular they extended many immunities. They admitted its to the productions of industry.1 divine origin, confessed that the Koran embodFurther, the character of the Turks, taken ied many of its precepts, and claimed only for as individuals, has many estimable their own faith that of being the last emanation qualities, which have gone far to of the Divine Will. They did not at first tramqualities in counteract the disastrous effects of ple upon or oppress their Christian subjects the Turk- their system of government. That merely on account of their faith; on the conish charac- they are brave and determined, and trary, the heads of the Greek Church were at one period were most formidable treated with respect, and its clergy maintained to Europe, from their military prowess, need in their chapels and other places of worship. be told to none; but it is not equally well Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Catholics, and Protknown how worthy they are, and how many estants were alike tolerated, though not admitexcellent traits of character are revealed in ted to power; it was the long, obstinate, and at their private life. They are not in general last disastrous wars with the Christians, which active or industrious-they have left the labors rendered the "Giaour" so much the object of of the fields to the natives of the soil-the aversion, and led to so many instances of savcares of commerce to the Armenians, and the age oppression. Still the original tolerant prinislanders of the Archipelago. Like the ancient ciples of the government have again 2 Malte Brun, Romans or the medieval Knights, they deem asserted their supremacy over these vii. 712. the wielding of the sword or managing a steed | transient ebullitions of rage, and by 27. Excellent ter. |