This desolation is no accident of a declining empire; it dates from the very time that a Turk first came into the country, from the era of the Seljukian Sultans, eight hundred years ago. We have indirect but clear proof of it in the course of history following their expulsion from the country by the Crusaders. For a while the Greeks recovered their dominion in its western portion, and fixed their imperial residence at Nicæa, which had been the capital of the Seljukians. A vigorous prince mounted the throne, and the main object of his exertions and the special work of his reign was the recovery of the soil. We are told by an English historian,[53] that he found the most fertile lands without either cultivation or inhabitants, and he took them into his own management. It followed that, in the course of some years, the imperial domain became the granary and garden of Asia; and the sovereign made money without impoverishing his people. According to the nature of the soil, he sowed it with corn, or planted it with vines, or laid it down in grass: his pastures abounded with herds and flocks, horses and swine; and his speculation, as it may be called, in poultry was so happy, that he was able to present his empress with a crown of pearls and diamonds out of his gains. His example encouraged his nobles to imitation; and they learned to depend for their incomes on the honourable proceeds of their estates, instead of oppressing their people, and seeking favours from the court. Such was the immediate consequence when man coöperated with the bountifulness of nature in this fruitful region; and it brings out prominently by its contrast the wretchedness of the Turkish domination.
6.
That wretchedness is found, not in Asia Minor only, but wherever Turks are to be found in power. Throughout the whole extent of their territory, if you believe the report of travellers, the peasantry are indigent, oppressed, and wretched.[54] The great island of Crete or Candia would maintain four times its present population; once it had a hundred cities; many of its towns, which were densely populous, are now obscure villages. Under the Venetians it used to export corn largely; now it imports it. As to Cyprus, from holding a million of inhabitants, it now has only 30,000. Its climate was that of a perpetual spring; now it is unwholesome and unpleasant; its cities and towns nearly touched one another, now they are simply ruins. Corn, wine, oil, sugar, and the metals are among its productions; the soil is still exceedingly rich; but now, according to Dr. Clarke, in that "paradise of the Levant, agriculture is neglected, inhabitants are oppressed, population is destroyed." Cross over to the continent, and survey Syria and its neighbouring cities; at this day the Turks themselves are dying out; Diarbekr, which numbered 400,000 souls in the middle of last century, forty years afterwards had dwindled to 50,000. Mosul had lost half its inhabitants; Bagdad had fallen from 130,000 to 20,000; and Bassora from 100,000 to 8,000.
If we pass on to Egypt, the tale is still the same. "In the fifteenth century," says Mr. Alison, "Egypt, after all the revolutions which it had undergone, was comparatively rich and populous; but since the fatal era of Turkish conquest, the tyranny of the Pashas has expelled industry, riches, and the arts." Stretch across the width of Africa to Barbary, wherever there is a Turk, there is desolation. What indeed have the shepherds of the desert, in the most ambitious effort of their civilization, to do with the cultivation of the soil? "That fertile territory," says Robertson, "which sustained the Roman Empire, still lies in a great measure uncultivated; and that province, which Victor called Speciositas totius terræ florentis, is now the retreat of pirates and banditti."
End your survey at length with Europe, and you find the same account is to be given of its Turkish provinces. In the Morea, Chateaubriand, wherever he went, beheld villages destroyed by fire and sword, whole suburbs deserted, often fifteen leagues without a single habitation. "I have travelled," says Mr. Thornton, "through several provinces of European Turkey, and cannot convey an idea of the state of desolation in which that beautiful country is left. For the space of seventy miles, between Kirk Kilise and Carnabat, there is not an inhabitant, though the country is an earthly paradise. The extensive and pleasant village of Faki, with its houses deserted, its gardens overrun with weeds and grass, its lands waste and uncultivated, and now the resort of robbers, affects the traveller with the most painful sensations."[55] Even in Wallachia and Moldavia the population has been gradually decreasing, while of that rich country not more than a fortieth part is under tillage. In a word, the average population in the whole Empire is not a fifth of what it was in ancient times.
7.
Here I am tempted to exclaim (though the very juxtaposition of two countries so different from each other in their condition needs an apology), I cannot help exclaiming, how different is the condition of that other peninsula in the centre of which is placed the See of Peter! I am ashamed of comparing, or even contrasting, Italy with Asia Minor—the seat of Christian governments with the seat of a barbarian rule—except that, since I have been speaking of the tenderness which the Popes have shown, according to their means, for the earth and its cultivators, there is a sort of fitness in pointing out that the result is in their case conformable to our just anticipation. Besides, so much is uttered among us in disparagement of the governments of that beautiful country, that there is a reason for pressing the contrast on the attention of those, who in their hearts acknowledge little difference between the rulers of Italy and of Turkey. I think it will be instructive, then, to dwell upon the account given us of Italy by an intelligent and popular writer of this day; nor need we, in doing so, concern ourselves with questions which he elsewhere discusses, such as whether Italy has received the last improvements in agriculture, or in civil economy, or in finance, or in politics, or in mechanical contrivances; in short, whether the art of life is carried there to its perfection. Systems and codes are to be tested by their results; let us put aside theories and disputable points; let us survey a broad, undeniable, important fact; let us look simply at the state both of the land and of the population in Italy; let us take it as our gauge and estimate of political institutions; let us, by way of contrast, put it side by side of the state of land and population, as reported to us by travellers in Turkey.
Mr. Alison, then, in his most diligent and interesting history of Europe,[56] divides the extent of Italy into three great districts, of mountain, plain, and marsh. The region of marsh lies between the Apennines and the Mediterranean; and here, I confess, he finds fault with the degree of diligence in reclaiming it exerted by its present possessors. He notices with dissatisfaction that the marshes of Volterra are still as pestilential as in the days of Hannibal; moreover, that the Campagna of Rome, once inhabited by numerous tribes, is now an almost uninhabited desert, and that the Pontine Marshes, formerly the abode of thirty nations, are now a pestilential swamp. I will not stop to remind you that the irruptions of barbarians like the Turks, have been the causes of this desolation, that the existing governments had nothing to do with it, and that, on the contrary, they have made various efforts to overcome the evil. For argument's sake, I will allow them to be a reproach to the government, for they will be found to be only exceptions to the general state of the country. Even as regards this low tract, he speaks of one portion of it, the plain of the Clitumnus, as being rich, as in ancient days, in herds and flocks; and he enlarges upon the Campagna of Naples as "still the scene of industry, elegance, and agricultural riches. There," he says, "still, as in ancient times, an admirable cultivation brings to perfection the choicest gifts of nature. Magnificent crops of wheat and maize cover the rich and level expanse; rows of elms or willows shelter their harvests from the too scorching rays of the sun; and luxuriant vines, clustering to the very tops of the trees, are trained in festoons from one summit to the other. On its hills the orange, the vine, and the fig-tree flourish in luxuriant beauty; the air is rendered fragrant by their ceaseless perfume; and the prodigy is here exhibited of the fruit and the flower appearing at the same time on the same stem."
So much for that portion of Italy which owes least to the labours of the husbandman: the second portion is the plain of Lombardy, which stretches three hundred miles in length by one hundred and twenty in breadth, and which, he says, "beyond question is the richest and the most fertile in Europe." This great plain is so level, that you may travel two hundred miles in a straight line, without coming to a natural eminence ten feet high; and it is watered by numerous rivers, the Ticino, the Adda, the Adige, and others, which fall into the great stream of the Po, the "king of rivers," as Virgil calls it, which flows majestically through its length from west to east till it finds its mouth in the Adriatic. It is obvious, from the testimony of the various travellers in the East, whom I have cited, what would be the fate of this noble plain under a Turkish government; it would become nothing more or less than one great and deadly swamp. But Mr. Alison observes: "It is hard to say, whether the cultivation of the soil, the riches of nature, or the structures of human industry in this beautiful region, are most to be admired. An unrivalled system of agriculture, from which every nation in Europe might take a lesson, has long been established over its whole surface, and two, and sometimes three successive crops annually reward the labours of the husbandman. Indian corn is produced in abundance, and by its return, quadruple that of wheat, affords subsistence for a numerous and dense population. Rice arrives at maturity to a great extent in the marshy districts; and an incomparable system of irrigation, diffused over the whole, conveys the waters of the Alps to every field, and in some places to every ridge, in the grass lands. It is in these rich meadows, stretching round Lodi, and from thence to Verona, that the celebrated Parmesan cheese, known over all Europe for the richness of its flavour, is made. The vine and the olive thrive in the sunny slopes which ascend from the plain to the ridges of the Alps; and a woody zone of never-failing beauty lies between the desolation of the mountain and the fertility of the plain."