CHAPTER XIV.
Political Position of the Turks—Religion of the Osmanlis—Absence of Vice among the Lower Orders—Defect of Turkish Character—European Supineness—Policy of Russia—England and France—A Turkish Comment on England—The Government and the People—Common Virtue—Great Men—Turks of the Provinces—European Misconceptions.
The more I see of the Turks, the more I am led to regret their melancholy political position. Enabled, by the introductions which I had secured, to look more closely into their actual condition from the commencement of my sojourn among them, than falls to the lot of most travellers, I have been compelled from day to day to admit the justice of their indignation against those European powers, which, after deluding them with promises that they have failed to fulfil, and pledges that they have falsified, have reduced them to anchor their hopes, and to fasten their trust, upon a government whose interests can be served only by the ruin of the Ottoman Empire, and the subjugation of its liberties. Take them for all in all, there probably exist no people upon earth more worthy of national prosperity than the great mass of the Turkish population; nor better qualified, alike by nature and by social feeling, to earn it for themselves.
The Osmanli is unostentatiously religious. He makes the great principles of his belief the rule of his conduct, and refers every thing to a higher power than that of man. I am aware that it is the fashion to decry the creed of the Turk, and to place it almost on a level with paganism: but surely this is an error unworthy of the nineteenth century, and of the liberality of Englishmen. The practice of a religion which enforces the necessity of prayer and charity—which is tolerant of all opposing modes of worship—and which enjoins universal brotherhood, can scarcely be contemptible. And while the Christian, enlightened on the great truths that are hidden from the Mahomeddan, is compelled to pity the darkness of a faith which admits not the light of the Gospel, he must nevertheless admire the votary who, acting according to his ideas of duty, follows up the injunctions of his religion with a devout zeal, and an unwearied observance that influence all his social relations; and this is a merit which even their enemies have never, I believe, denied to the Turks.
From this great first principle emanates the philosophy both of feeling and action that distinguishes the Osmanli from the native of all other countries; and this philosophy renders him comparatively inaccessible to those petty, but myriad excitements of selfishness and political bigotry which keep the more active and ambitious spirit of European society for ever on the qui vive. I am by no means prepared to deny, that from this very quality arises the extreme intellectual and moral inertness which induces the Turks to rely more on extraneous assistance than on their own efforts, in all cases of emergency: I am merely endeavouring to prove that they possess within themselves the necessary elements of social order, and national prosperity.
The absence of all glaring vices, even among the lowest ranks of the community; save indeed such as they have inherited from their more civilized allies, and appropriated with the same awkwardness as they have done their costume, speaks volumes for the Turkish people. A Turk never games, never fights, never blasphemes; is guiltless of murder; is innocent of theft; and has yet to learn that poverty is a crime, or even a reproach; or that the rich man can shut his doors against the mendicant who asks to share his meal.
Were I desired to point out the most glaring defect of the Turkish character, I should unhesitatingly specify the want of sincerity and good faith. I am obliged to concede that the Turk is habitually false—that he sacrifices his truth to fine phrases, and to set terms—that he is profuse of promises, and magnificent in words. But it is nevertheless certain that he himself looks upon all these splendid pledges as mere compliment; and scarcely appears to reflect that a Frank may be induced to lend to them a more weighty meaning. I had not been long in the country ere I learnt to estimate all this hyperbole at its just value; and once having done so, I found reason to feel grateful for many unexpected and unsought courtesies. Profit by the first kindly impulses of a Turk, and you will be his debtor; but trust nothing to his memory, for he will fail you.
Let not individual bad faith, however, be too harshly blamed in a people who have suffered so severely as the Turks from the same vice, in their best and dearest interests; on the part, not only of individuals, but of nations—of those civilized and enlightened nations, to which they looked alike for precept and example; and which they have found wanting.
Naturally haughty and self-centered, the Osmanli placed his honour and his liberty in the hands of his European allies. They were pledged to preserve both—and it was not until the Banner of the Crescent was trailing in the dust; and a half-barbarous power bearding the Sultan in his very halls of state, that the unwelcome truth burst upon him that his trust had been misplaced. The discovery was made too late—made when he had no alternative—the supineness of the Turk was no match for the subtlety of the Russian; it was a combat unequal in all its bearings; and dangerous to the Osmanli in all its relations. The natural result followed: Turkey was bowed beneath a force too mighty for her to resist; the partial civilization of the North produced its effect on the comparative barbarism of the East; and the Turk, dazzled and deluded, bewildered by the speciousness of a policy that he could not fathom, and consequently did not suspect; abandoned by the European powers on whose assistance he had relied; and unable singly either to resist the covert threats, or to reject the proffered friendship of this voluntary ally, fell into the snare which had been laid for him, and betrayed his want of internal strength to his most dangerous enemy.