But these are trifling matters. The outcasts of European society here find a safe retreat, and are even protected in their outrages, while the various protégés of the different Legations, natives and foreigners, constitute a privileged community.
Russia has endeavored to increase her own power by inducing the rayas to adopt her protection, in order to secure any claims whatever against either Turks or Christians.
“The most desperate ruffians of Southern Europe are in Turkey under British, Austrian, French, or Greek protection. The English give impunity to Ionians and Maltese; Austria has her Croats; French passports screen a crowd of Levantines, whose professed attachment to Catholicism is allowed to be the cloak to any knavery; while Greece and Naples send a contingent whose character may be easily imagined. While the worst of them have protection for delinquencies, the whole enjoy immunities of the most unjust kind.
“They can only be sued in the consular courts of their own country. They pay less taxes than their neighbors, and in some places none at all. They are wholly beyond the jurisdiction of the Porte, while for all claims on the government, or on Turkish subjects they can bring into play the whole machinery of their embassy. Each representative is almost bound to make every private complaint an affair of state, and, in fact the real or nominal Austrian, Briton, or Frenchman, practically turns the diplomatists of his sovereign into his own special attorneys whenever he pleases.”
This picture is not too highly drawn, and shows that if the Mussulmans need reforms, the nominal Frank population are in a somewhat similar category.
The effect which has been produced upon the minds of the Osmanlis by such specimens of civilized Europeans has certainly not been favorable; and it is to be hoped that more extended intercourse with Europe will counteract these influences.
The Diplomatic corps and the Perotes, though the Upper Tendom, and codfish aristocracy of Pera, are by no means the greater part of the population.
English, Americans, French, Germans, Greeks, Armenians, and even Moslems, reside there, preferring the bustle and public amusements which are to be secured, to the quiet atmosphere of Stamboul. The opera house and the fashionable emporiums of commerce have their attractions. On a Friday, it is amusing to see the crowds of Turkish women in the different shops, relentlessly handling the merchandize to the infinite annoyance of the proprietors themselves, who are not so patient as the merchants of the Bazaars. Often the most extravagant prices are paid for trifling articles of luxury, by the Osmanlis of wealth, who, even in this sort of trade, seem to feel that everything à la Franca must cost them dear.
The modistes have grown rich by selling them feathers, flowers, and haberdashery, and the confiseurs have exchanged their honeyed stores for bags of Turkish gold. There is a great fondness for dress in the population of Pera, and the balls, soirees and reunions are so numerous that many shopkeepers, having reaped a rich harvest, have retired from business. Feast days and holidays, which are so frequent, require their appropriate garb, and the Carnival, its masquerades and costumes de bal.
All the people, high and low, are determined to dress well, and display their toilets, so that the marts of fashion and luxury are never deserted.