DECAY OF TRADE, ETC.

259

Syria, and confined him to Egypt. The Turkish government has no power to preserve order within its provinces; and within the limits of Turkey, to be under the protection of the consulate of any Christian power is of vastly greater advantage than to be under the shield of the Ottoman Empire.

The external and internal political weakness of the Turks is not more striking than the decay of their religion, trade, manufactures, and population. The charm of their faith is broken by the destruction of their political power, and infidelity, with respect to their own religion, is spread widely among all, but particularly the upper classes. The decline of their religion inspires even the Christian with a momentary sadness, when he sees everywhere the mosques and religious monuments falling into decay, and not a hand lifted to restore the crumbling walls or prop the tottering domes. Commerce and manufactures have wellnigh become extinct throughout the empire, and exist now only where they have been preserved by native Christians, or revived by Frank enterprise. Decay of trade has produced a great decrease and depreciation of the coin, so that a Spanish dollar, that had been worth only five piastres formerly, was, when I was in the East, worth twentytwo piastres at Alexandria, twenty-four at Smyrna, and twenty-seven at Constantinople.

But the decrease of the population is the most marked symptom of decay. At first this decrease chiefly occurred among the native Christians, who melted away under the intolerable oppression of the Moslems; but for the last two centuries it has taken place among the Moslems themselves. The traveller is struck with astonishment and filled with melancholy as he beholds the crowded and countless cemeteries amid vast soli

260

DECREASE OF POPULATION.

tudes, where, but a few generations past, flourished populous cities, towns, and villages; the turbans on the tombstones testify that a Mohammedan and not a Christian population is buried there. So I found it everywhere in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, and so Mr. Walsh describes it for a distance of three hundred miles from the capital, through Roumelia to the Danube, naturally one of the most fertile portions of the earth.

66

"I had travelled more than three hundred miles through the Turkish dominions in Europe, from their capital to the last town of their empire. When I contemplated the extent of territory, the fertility of the soil, the cattle and corn it produces, and its interminable capability of producing more-when I considered the despotic government that had absolute power over all these resources, to direct them in any manner and to any extent, and that this was but a small portion of the vast empire that extended over three parts of the globe, it seemed as if the Turkish power was as a sleeping lion, which had only to rouse itself and crush its opponents. But when, on the other hand, I saw the actual state of this fine country, its resources neglected, its fields lying waste, its towns in ruins, its population decaying, and not only the traces of human labour, but of human existence, every day becoming obliterated-in fine, when I saw all the people about them advancing in the arts of civilized life, while they alone were stationary, and the European Turk of this day differing little from his Asiatic ancestor, except only having lost the fierce energy which then pushed him on-when I considered this, I was led to conclude that the lion did not sleep, but was dying, and after a few violent convulsions would never rise again. The circumstance most striking to a traveller passing through Turkey is its depopulation. Ruins

FRANKLAND'S ACCOUNT.

261

where villages had been built, and fallows where land had been cultivated, are frequently seen, with no living. things near."

Captain Frankland gives a later and more dreary picture of the same country;

66

From the banks of the Danube to the shores of the Propontis, the traveller will see fertile provinces lying waste, well-inhabited cities of the dead (cemeteries), but desolate and ruined abodes of the living. He will see the remains of the arts, and the civilization of a former and a better age, and but few marks of the present era, save such as denote barbarism and decay. The few towns that he will meet with in his long and dreary journey are rapidly falling into ruin, and the only road (the great means of civilization) now existing, and which can put in any claim to such an appellation, is either of the Roman age, or that of the great Sultan Solyman; but even this pavement is almost worse than nothing. Wherever the Osmanli has trod, devastation and ruin mark his steps, civilization and the arts have fled, and made room for barbarism, and the silence of the desert and the tomb. Where the Sultan's horse has trod, there grows no grass,' is a Turkish proverb and a fatal truth."

What Captain Frankland observed of roads in Roumelia is more strikingly true of Asiatic than of European Turkey. There is not a road in Palestine or Syria along which even an ox-cart could be drawn for a mile, except on the level surface of some natural valley, and everywhere in Asia Minor the traveller stumbles on the broken pavements, now disused, which at once attest the former prosperity and present decay of the country.

The extent of this decay of population cannot be accurately ascertained, as no census is ever taken. The various countries composing the empire possess natural

262

ELLIOTT AND SANDYS' ACCOunt.

capabilities sufficient to support the declarations of history that they teemed with population at the time of their first subjection to the Mohammedan power. Comparing their condition now with what it was then, we shall not exaggerate the decrease of population when we say that three fourths of it has disappeared, and the progress of decay is increasing rather than diminishing. It is impossible to approximate with certainty the present population of Turkey. Reid says that in the seventeenth century it was about forty-one millions; "but at the present day, it is a matter of doubt if the Turkish sceptre de facto sways over eight millions of people." C. B. Elliott estimates the present population at about twenty millions, and the natural capacity of the country sufficient to sustain four times twenty millions. Amid these conflicting estimates, one point stands forth undisputed, the rapid and increasing decay of the Mohammedan Empire.

Intelligent European travellers two hundred years ago detected the general decay of Turkey. Old Sandys said, "Her rich lands at this present remain waste and overgrown with bushes, receptacles of wild beasts, of thieves and murderers; large territories dispeopled or thinly inhabited; goodly cities made desolate; sumptuous buildings become ruins; glorious temples either subverted or prostituted to impiety; true religion discountenanced or oppressed; no light of learning permitted or virtue cherished; violence and rapine insulting over all, and leaving no security save to an abject mind and unlooked on poverty."

NECESSITY OF REFORM IN TURKEY.

263

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE TURKISH EMPIRE.

Necessity of Reform perceived by the Turks.-Difficulty of introducing Christian Civilization.-Attempts of the present Sultan.-The Hatti Sheriff of 1839. Difficulty of carrying out its Principles.- Proclamation for the Establishment of Schools.-Its Object.-Edict for an Imperial Parliament. -External Relations of Turkey.-Views of the Five Great Powers.Probable Dissolution of the Empire.-Hopes.

Ir required two hundred years of disaster and decay to open the eyes of the Mohammedans themselves to their real condition, and the absolute necessity of reformation in every department of the government, from the bureau of the Grand Vizier to the tribunal of the sheikh of the distant and nameless village. The Sultan had felt the influence, and was compelled to acknowledge the superiority of Christian Europe. He saw clearly that any efficient reformation must bear the impress of Christian institutions, and emancipate the millions of his Christian subjects from the horrible bondage under which they had groaned for centuries. Herein was and is his difficulty. The introduction of Christian civilization, and the elevation of the "Christian dogs,” strike at the authority of the Koran, and produce violent resistance on the part of the people, who regard the Bible of the Prophet as the fundamental law of the empiré, which they think not worth preserving if their religion is dishonoured. Hence the Commander of the Faithful is placed in a dilemma from which escape seems impossible. On the one hand, he sees his empire rapidly approaching a crisis, ready to dissolve from its own weakOn the other, he is convinced that its preserva

ness.