In this light, the Crusades, by whatever zeal for God called forth, exhibited, apart from all their attendant moral evils, an evident obliteration of moral duty by fancied religious obligation, and a trampling on natural rights in search of a spiritual object, wrongly apprehended and wrongly pursued. The deliverances of Europe by Martel on the one hand, and Sobieski on the other, from subjection to Mahomedan rule, although they effected so signal a rescue for the faith, derived their justification, as political events, not from the fact that the oppressive power was Mahomedan, but from the simple fact that it was an oppressive power.
The anomalous situation of the Pope, as being at once a claimant of œcumenic supremacy and one of the temporal heads of Europe, has shown itself in the anomalous attitude which he has assumed towards the Turk. As long as he was true to his own principles he never consented to stand in diplomatic relations to the Porte. In assuming to act as the sole spiritual and temporal head of all Christendom, he refused to acknowledge a heathen intruder into his supposed domain. But the wrong way in which he expressed this refusal was, by withholding, as a temporal sovereign, that diplomatic recognition to which the Sultan, as another temporal sovereign, no longer at war with him, was entitled. And the recognition which he has lately given was the result, not of true insight into the distinction between his own spiritual and temporal characters, but of decaying zeal for God. His former motive was a right one; but the conduct which it dictated was mistaken. With the failure of the motive his conduct has changed. But his insight is not improved.
The Christian nations of Europe, even those that acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, withheld their diplomatic recognition of Turkey, not on purely religious grounds, but because Turkey remained, as it were, habitually a politically inimical power. Gradually the enmity subsided. And, in consequence, although the religious obligation, if true, remains in its full force, every Christian government now finds itself in diplomatic relations with the Porte, on the simple ground of secular parity among civilized nations, be they English, Russian, Chinese, Persians, or Turks.
Yet while the political recognition of Turkey is right, there may be wrong grounds for doing a right thing—a right thing may be overdone—and the diplomatic relations of a Christian with a heathen nation ought, from the nature of things, never to be so intimate as those with a Christian government. In these respects England does seem to have erred. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact, that the almost unbroken amity of England with Turkey has arisen from our commercial and territorial jealousy of other powers—that self-interest has reconciled us to intimate contact with those who count all Christians “dogs”—and that to talk continually of “our good friend and staunch ally, the Turk,” argues either a blunting of our spiritual aversion to a blasphemous form of Paganism, or a lulling of conscience for mammon’s sake. Nor is it an uninstructive example of the truth, that brethren at strife are the most irreconcileable of all men (Prov xviii. 10); that the same nation which shrinks with sacred horror and blind alarm from diplomatic relations with Rome, (not on the ground that Rome should not be, or is not, an European state, but on the ground that the head of that state is at the same time usurping a false spiritual place,) should, without any qualm of conscience, give the hand of political brotherhood to a government, the whole code of which is based upon the words of an impostor who has superseded Christ. At the same time we cannot accuse England of securing the favour of Turkey at the expense of the Christians who are subjected to Mahomedan rule. There never was a more unjust reproach than that raised by certain religionists against England, that she appears at the court of the Sultan as a Christian power taking the side of the oppressor against his Christian subjects. Navarino is a witness to the reverse.
Be the cause of the Greek nation good or bad, none have been its warmer or more sincere supporters than the English. So powerful an element in our motives for the support of Greece, was the desire to emancipate Christianity from a Mahomedan yoke, that, in order to attain this end, England ran the risk of weakening, by the emancipation of Greece, the bulwark which she found in Turkey against the advances of Russia. And for a long series of years no part of the policy of England has been more unvarying than her resolution, expressed by deeds, to employ her just influence at the Porte in the most unwearied and enlightened disinterestedness, by embracing—often at great sacrifices and risks, and with singular success—every opportunity to plead the cause of the Christian population in the East, although belonging to a different section of the Church from her own. In this respect she may well bear comparison with any other power, especially with one which, although it seeks to Wind the pious by vaunting itself the protector of Oriental Christianity, has done little or nothing for the co-religionists of its own subjects, save to entice them, through a proposed ecclesiastical union, into a political subjugation which they abhor.
But this leads us to speak of Russia, the new protector of Oriental Christians. If the other European governments had in due time, either independently or in concert with England, lifted as constant and sincere a protest as hers at the court of Turkey against the wrongs of these Christians, and had required with one voice that the government should administer its laws impartially to all its subjects, irrespective of their creed, we might have heard less of this new protectorate, and should, by an act of justice and mercy, have foreclosed the present flimsy pretexts of Russia. But the weakness of Christian zeal, our indifference between Christ and Belial, and the absence of Christian concord, have prevented this. And by our “lâches” we have furnished the pretexts against which we now exclaim. But let us consider for a moment who the helper and helped are. Even granting that the professions of Russia were true in the letter, there is surely no one so blindly charitable as to believe that, however sincere the ill-informed masses in Russia may be in the fanatical excitement to which they have been goaded, the Czar or his advisers have either tears of compassion on their eyelids or indignation in their hearts, at the wrongs of Oriental Christians. Without entering into the maze of diplomacy, or attempting to interpret treaties intentionally Delphic, it may suffice to observe, that the general plea now urged by Russia formed no part of her original demands, but was resorted to lest those should be satisfied. The Czar has two characters. He is, in the first place, the spiritual head of the Russian Church. But he is not, and knows that he is not, the spiritual head of the whole Greek Church; still less of the Armenians, Nestorians, or any other Oriental body of Christians; and least of all of those united to Rome. Each Oriental Church has its own proper patriarch or other supreme head. And the Czar has no more right, on any religious ground, to throw down the gauntlet as the champion of those other Churches, than the Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. That they are neither Romanist nor Protestant is no ground, provided they are not Russian. That their faith or rites are more akin to, nay, even identical with his own, is no ground. He has no authority, human or divine, for taking such: a place as the universal champion of the East. He never pretends that members of the Russian Church are among the persecuted, save a few pilgrims; yet he does not limit his care to these. He is, indeed, in the second place, the Autocrat of all the Russias. But there is no pretence that any part of his dominions has been seized or invaded. Therefore, neither as temporal nor as spiritual head has he a vestige of claim to interfere individually, on the abstract ground of right. All that he could do would be to unite with other Christian powers in representations to the Porte. To the necessity of making these, the other Christian powers are now awakened; too late, indeed, to prevent the solitary aggressions of Russia, but assuredly not too late to bring out the utter groundlessness of her pretensions.
It has always been the artful endeavour of the Czar to place his opponents at a disadvantage, by bringing them at each step into a position in which they shall appear aggressors. He crosses the Pruth, professing not to declare war thereby, but merely to take a precautionary pledge for the fulfilment of treaties. And because Turkey justly regarded his act as a declaration of war, he calls Turkey the aggressor. He insists on fighting out with Turkey alone a quarrel in which all European powers have, by his acts, become interested. And because they act on this conviction, he calls them aggressors for interfering in a private quarrel. He has forced the fleets of Europe to occupy the Euxine, as he the Proviuces. And, after seeing them where they would not be if neutral, and being told how far their defence of the weaker part would go, he seeks by the question of a simpleton to throw on us the stigma of being the first to declare war. But the cloven foot has been unmistakeably revealed, by his rejection of the proposal of the Four Powers to insist on and obtain a protectorate for all Christians under Turkish sway. And, in assigning, as the ground of that rejection, that he will not suffer any interference with his sole right of protection, he virtually arrogates to himself a right which they who are its objects disallow, which no treaty ever did or could confer upon him, and which the other powers of Europe cannot permit him to plead. In fact, his claim of protectorate would cover almost every class but the only one of which he is protector. He cannot be claiming from Turkey a right to protect the Russian Church. That right is not interfered with by Turkey, or any one else. And, of those whom he does claim to protect, every class, however hostile to Turkey, would infinitely prefer the rule of Turkey, mollified by Christian diplomacy, to the temporal rule of the Czar. To this last his religious protectorate would infallibly lead. For, if the two characters of spiritual and temporal head are inseparable in his person in Russia, who shall separate them in Turkey, whenever he has the power to exhibit both? Moreover, why rest in the mere protectorate of Christians? What if the Jew also should become an object of pity to the Czar, and he should extort Syria from the Turk for the Jew, who has certainly a better claim to Palestine than the Greek to Turkey?
It may, however, be argued, that all speculations as to abstract rights are superseded by treaties, the terms of which must be kept, and by which Turkey and other powers have recognised the right of Russia to insist in such as her present demands, and to occupy the Provinces as she does.
To this it must be replied, that one of the very questions at issue is whether such compacts as those alleged exist, whether they are capable of the interpretation put upon them by Russia, and whether they justify the occupation of the Provinces? As to the latter, Russia pleads the precedent of her previous occupation, unquestioned by the European powers. But, instead of justifying the one by the other, we should rather deny the justice of both. On the former occasion the cause of Russia may have been good. But the goodness of the motive can never legalise an illegal act. The former occupation should not have been allowed. By not being awake, we let in the wedge, and we are now suffering the penalty of having listened to the dangerous doctrine that the end sanctifies the means. Let us disown so bad a precedent. The thing which Russia seeks to do is, single-handed, to extort from Turkey pledges, or the fulfilment of alleged pledges, as to her own internal administration, the giving or fulfilling of which would be a surrender of her national integrity, in order virtually, though not yet nominally, to use her as a province and thoroughfare. This must not be. If the administration of Turkey becomes a public nuisance, it must be abated by the public verdict of nations; but it may not be corrected by a single nation which, while it has no peculiar right to interfere, has a peculiar interest in spoiling the offender. If Russia has already injured Turkey, and stolen a march on Europe by treaty, now is the time, when the operation of treaties is suspended, to see that the evil is not repeated or prolonged, but repaired. And if, having not yet done it, she now attempts it, every lover of fair play must forbid her. Let us not forget, while treaties are talked of (and, in so far as advantageous, so religiously asserted), that the position of Turkey in Europe has the sanction of treaties without number, framed not in ignorance of what she was, but knowing it well. If the nations of Europe had persisted in refusing to acknowledge such an intrusive and persecuting power, and had provided, as the first condition of conceding to it, by diplomatic recognition, a place in the European commonwealth, that it should afford to its Christian subjects the same advantages as they should have enjoyed under Christian rule, or at least that it should administer equal laws to Christians and Turks, the case would now be widely different. But it was not so. Europe took Turkey as she found it. And whatever immunities have since been granted by Turkey to Christians, these have in so far been acts of free grace, that they were no original conditions of the entrance of Turkey into the European federation. In short, it is far too late to put Turkey on her trial as a candidate for her place. It was never said to the Turk, We shall take proof of you for a century or two by your conduct, before we admit you. He has, on all secular grounds of public law, as good a right to his place as we have to ours. We may, indeed, be bound by no treaty to maintain Turkey, but we are bound by justice to see that it is fairly dealt with. At all events, let us do one thing or the other. Abolish Turkey with one consent, if you will, provided you know what next to do. But if you deem its abolition undeserved, if you cannot put Greece in its place, or agree how to divide the spoil, defend it from all thieves and robbers in the meantime. Here justice and interest are at one.
We may regret that the Turk is there; but we dare not turn him out by the shoulder in our indignation. We must wait till that Higher Power which sent him shall withdraw him.