“2. Rites in communion with Rome, viz. Latin Catholics, Uniate Armenians, Uniate or Melchite Greeks, Uniate Chaldeans, Uniate Syrians, Uniate Copts, Uniate Bulgarians and Maronites.
“3. Protestants of every description—Anglicans, Presbyterians, English and American Methodists, Baptists, etc.
“4. Four different types of Jews, five of Metoualis, and six of Druses.
“The Moslem finds it most difficult to understand and distinguish the difference between the to him amazing variety of sects all professing the Christian faith; this is one of the causes of the sterility of Christian missions in the East. The Turk lumps them together as giaours and regards them all with contemptuous indifference, wondering, indeed, why they did not remain in their own countries to convert each other, or at least to arrive at a common agreement as to what is the Christian faith before thrusting their antagonistic creeds upon the contented Moslem. Nevertheless, he is very tolerant of what he considers their eccentricities, and provides a guard at the Holy Sepulchre at Eastertide to prevent the Greek and Latin Christians from massacring one another for the love of God.
“In travelling through Palestine they are as free as in any of our Indian provinces. The laws may not be perfect—very few are—but they are found adequate in most cases to protect life and property. It is true that they were not always so. About a hundred years ago, and, indeed, until the middle of the nineteenth century, there was as little liberty in Turkey for the Christians as there is at the present day in Russia except for the Orthodox Greeks. But all that has long been changed in the Ottoman Empire. Seventy years ago Sultan Mahmoud thus publicly expressed himself:
“‘I desire that in future a Moslem shall only be distinguished as such at his mosque, the Christian at his church, and the Jew at his synagogue.’
“In these words he manifested his intention to regenerate the Empire by the complete emancipation and assimilation of the races under his rule; he announced the inauguration of a new era of reform. But it was his son and successor, Abdul Medjid, who actually introduced the new system, the ‘Tanzimat,’ by the proclamation of the ‘Hatti-Sherif of Gulhanè’ on November 9, 1839. This was followed by the establishment of the Criminal Code in 1840 and the Commercial Code in 1850. Both of these were chiefly based upon the Code Napoléon and have worked well. But the most important enactment of all was the publication of the firman of 1854 which guaranteed the perfect equality of Christians and Moslems before the law. These were the first-fruits of the Sultan’s efforts to carry into effect the reforms promised by the Hatti-Sherif of Gulhanè. The next stage of the Tanzimat was reached after the Crimean war by the Hatti-Humayoun of 1856, which extended the reforms to the civil and military administrations, etc.” Thus far the authority I have quoted.
When we bear in mind the conservative nature of Orientals generally and their hatred of any departure from their national practices and traditions, it is truly wonderful that the changes brought about in the internal constitution of the Empire by these decrees have not resulted in a violent upheaval of the Moslem population. It is a remarkable proof of the respect and veneration in which the Sultan is held by his subjects that they should have submitted so peacefully to such a startling revolution in their national life.
It is most unlikely that any other nation would endure for a moment the encroachment on its status, the abuse of its hospitality, which the Turks have long submitted to at the hands of different European nations. No other nation would, in the long run, allow foreign newspaper correspondents to perpetrate the misrepresentations which have been indulged in for years past at Constantinople, unless, as in England, it felt it could afford to ignore calumny. One thing, however, is certain, that neither in France, Germany, Austria, nor Russia would the persistent campaign of misrepresentation which was carried on for years by foreigners enjoying the hospitality of the Turks, paying no taxes and in some cases making their fortunes in Turkey, be tolerated. All the above-mentioned countries can furnish cases in which foreign newspaper men have been summarily ordered to leave the country within a few hours for comparatively trivial offences. In the United States foreign journalists of such a type would probably find more serious consequences await them than mere banishment. No less noteworthy are the disgraceful facts connected with the promiscuous naturalization of Turkish subjects. Thus when I was in Constantinople in 1897, it was openly stated that the Greek Envoy, Prince Mavrocordato, in order to reward a man who carried his gun for him during a shooting expedition, made him a present of a Greek naturalization paper. The latter thus became a Greek subject, and as such entitled to all the immunities which foreigners have been entitled to under the well-known Capitulations, thanks to the easy-going tolerance of the Turks. The Armenians, being the most cunning of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, are the most successful in perpetrating these naturalization frauds, now and then with the connivance of foreign Powers.
In the course of my many visits to Constantinople I have repeatedly been made acquainted with instances of questionable newspaper correspondents who came up to the Palace with the scarcely veiled intimation that it was to be a case of pay or slander. During the Armenian disturbances in 1896 a French female journalist went up to the Palace and openly declared that she intended to be paid or to write up “atrocities.”