Since the arrival of the Turkish Ambassador in London, I have had frequent occasion to observe, that the people of his train have been already, by the good example of our British Belles and Beaux, pretty much eased of their national modesty, and can look at the women with as broad and intrepid a stare, as the greatest puppy in the Metropolis.
Their habitual tenderness and deference for the fair sex, while it speaks much for their manly gallantry, must be allowed by candour to be carried to an excess extravagant and irrational. It is the greatest disgrace to the character of a Turk to lift his hand to a woman: this is, doubtless, right, with some limitations; but they carry it so far as to allow no provocation, be it what it may, sufficient to justify using force or strokes to a woman; the utmost they can do is, to scold and walk off. The consequence of this is, that the women often run into the most violent excesses. There have been instances where they have been guilty of the most furious outrages; where they have violated the laws in a collected body, and broke open public stores of corn laid up by the Government: the Magistrates attended, the Janissaries were called, and came running to quell the riot—but, behold they were women who committed it: they knew no way of resisting them, unless by force; and force they could not use: so the ladies were permitted quietly to do their work in defiance of Magistrates, Law, Right, and Reason.
Among the variety of errors and moral absurdities falsely ascribed to the Mahomedan Religion, the exclusion of Women from Paradise holds a very conspicuous place, as a charge equally false and absurd; on the contrary, the Women have their fasts, their ablutions, and the other religious rites deemed by Mahomedans necessary to salvation. Notwithstanding, it has been the practice of travellers to have recourse to invention, where the customs of the country precluded positive information; and to give their accounts rather from the suggestions of their own prejudiced imaginations, than from any fair inferences or conclusions drawn from the facts that came under their observation.
LETTER XXX.
The subject I touched upon in my last three letters, and on which this, and probably some succeeding ones, will turn, is attended with circumstances of great delicacy, and may possibly bear the aspect of at least a dubious import, as touching the great point of Religion. I will therefore, before I proceed further, explain to you (lest it should require explanation) the whole scope of my meaning.
My object throughout the whole of what I have said respecting the Turks, is to war with prejudice, not to draw comparisons:—to shew that where the Mahomedans are vicious or enslaved, it is not the fault of their Religion or their Laws:—to convince you, the Turks are not the only people in the world, who, under all the external forms of sanctity and religion, are capable of the most detestable crimes, and sometimes utterly bereft of all pretensions to charity—and that, while they have been held up as a perpetual subject of reproach and accusation, they were committing only just the same crimes that conscience might have retorted on their accusers. If allowance can be at all made for historical misrepresentation, we may perhaps be disposed to consider that of the ignorant Catholic Missionaries of the early ages, as entitled to some excuse, or at least mitigation. The intemperate zeal of those times forbade the full exercise of the rational faculties; but in this age of illumination and liberality, he that falsifies from polemical malice should meet little quarter and less belief. And it must be grievous to all men of virtue and religion to reflect, that churchmen, disciples of the Christian Church, which should be the fountain of purity and truth, have been foremost in the list of falsifiers.
The difficulty of obtaining information of any kind in Turkey, is very great; of their Religion chiefly they are extremely tenacious; and as to their Women, it is allowed by the best-informed men, who have lived there for many years, in departments of life that gave them the best means of obtaining information Europeans can have, that, at best, but a very imperfect knowledge can be had of them. Yet travellers who probably never migrated farther than “from the green bed to the brown,” have given us diffuse accounts of their religion; and adventurers who never were beyond the purlieus of Drury, have scaled Seraglio walls, and carried off the favourites of Sultans.
The truth is, my dear Frederick, the Turks, like all other people, have their share of vices, but are by no means countenanced in them by their Religion; and from what I have been able to collect, as well from my own inquiries and observations, as from reading the best Historians, I am persuaded that they have not, in the whole scope of Mahomedanism, one doctrine so subversive of virtue, or so encouraging to the indulgence of vice, as many that are to be found in that curious code, Popery.