"Remains the real 'bone of contention'—Constantinople. Europe has generally assumed that, with this queen of the Golden Horn added to her dominions, the great Muscovite power would become irresistible; men and statesmen have made it an article of faith. I am far from believing in such results; at the same time, it would be unwise to allow Russia the chance. The problem to be worked out is this: How, when the Eastern half of Europe is almost wholly Slav, to exclude the Slav from Stamboul—to create another island like Roumania, breaking the Slavonic flood? Practically it was solved many years ago. Volney narrowly escaped the Bastille for advocating a Franco-Russian coalition against Turkey. When the Emperor Joseph I. of Austria had shaken the equilibrium of Europe by his alliance with Catharine II., the great traveller saw the political necessity of his project, namely, a Christian State having command of the Bosphorus. The Duke of Wellington, as has been told, recommended it in the same words, and the Russians have never refused to accept the measure. What says the Turk himself? 'For Turkey, Roumelia is the Past, Anatolia is the Future.' Pleasant prospect, by-the-by, for poor Anatolia! And what say his serfs? 'Avoid the Turk if you can; for either he eats you out of very love, or in his rage he tears you to pieces.'
"I would abolish the very name of Constantinople, whose hateful sound reminds us of religious cruelty and hypocrisy. Let us substitute a kingdom or principality of Byzantium,—a Hanse town mediatized by Europe. Her territory would extend northwards, through Eastern Roumelia, to the Balkans, and westwards to Rhodope, a fair and fertile country, somewhat larger than increased Servia. Protected by the Great Powers, she would be governed by a prince chosen from amongst the ruling families of Europe. She would be neither Greek, nor Bulgarian, nor Jewish, nor Armenian, nor Roumelian, nor Frank, but something of all. The Hellene would make her illustrious by his political aptitude and literary gifts; the Israelite and the Armenian would enrich her by banking and commerce; the Bulgarian and the Roumelian would be her hewers of wood and drawers of water; and, finally, the Frank would connect her with the civilization of the West. I know nothing in Europe which shows a finer combination of intellect and labour than this would be. No stronger dyke could be opposed to the Muscovite flood.
"Turkey would thus be confined to Asia Minor proper, with Broussa or Koniah, the old Iconium, for a capital. Her new frontier, bordering on Russia and Persia, would remain untouched, and southwards she would be barred by a line drawn from Alexandretta, viâ Aleppo, to the Euphrates. She would thus cease to be an incubus on Europe, especially on South-Eastern Europe, whose 'neutral armaments' must last till relieved of her hideous presence. Thus the evil effects of her extended influence, which exists by acting upon the hates and fears of her neighbours, would presently be abated, leaving behind them the battle and the wrack. Thus her hopeless misgovernment and her inveterate maladministration would at once be confined within comparatively narrow limits. The old and venerable kingdoms, the Syria of the Seleucidæ, for instance, which her iron heel has trodden and trampled into wastes and deserts; where ruins are the sole remnants of a glorious and memorious past; where even hope, man's last delusion, can hardly cheer the prospect of the future, would soon recover a prosperity now all but forgotten. Christendom would once more be free from the deadening presence of that Mohammedan Mongol, whose hateful boast it ever was that—
'Where once the Sultan's horse has trod,
Grass neither grows, nor shrub, nor tree.'
Ay, truly quoth Mazeppa—
'The year before
A Turkish army had marched o'er;
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod,
The verdure flies the bloody sod.'
"'This is a mere spoliation of Turkey,' I hear some one cry. Well, yes; the Osmanli rose to empire by spoiling others, and it is now his turn to be spoiled. What he won by the sword he must keep by the sword, or the sword will snatch it from him. His presence in Europe is in these days an anachronism; it might be tolerated for good, certainly not for evil. He is fit only for Asia Minor, where, untrammelled by rival Plenipotentiaries and unscrupulous Ambassadors, he can throw off the tights that embarrass his limbs, and become once more the 'man on horseback.' There, at least, he can clean abolish his Irádes, his Tanzimát, and other bastard forms of constitutionalism, which, combined with so-called reforms, have destroyed the old forms without substituting anything new; which have weakened his material powers, spoiled his temper, and debased his character. There he can revert to those mediæval institutions that made the race what it was; to the eternal 'non possumus,' to the 'Pacha of many Tales,' to the slave and the concubine, to the eunuch and the mute, to the bowstring, the bastinado, and the bag for the light o' love. There la gent qui porte le turban may cultivate its mixture of childishness and senile cunning; its levity of mind, cloaked by solemn garb and mien; its mental indolence, with spasmodic efforts by way of change; and its conscious weakness warring with overweening arrogance. But Europe will no longer bear in her bosom this survival of the Unfittest. Apage Sathanas! Return, Tartar, to that Tartary whence thou earnest. These are the words of St. Louis, and they shall be heard."
[He also wrote later on—]