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Leader (1850-1860), 17th May 1856, Edition 2 of 2, Page 18, UBICINI'S LETTERS ON TURKEY. LeOot* on, ...

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      Signs Of The Times. ' Signs Of The Times...

      Urn * , b « t number five millions in the United States ; in"Tahiti then- ^ combination has resisted the military violence of France ; from Ae ¦ & ndwmh ffrouo their self-existent Church sends . missionaries to the Oceanic isles . fiwmwKl-the political hierarchies of the Old World have almost ceased to S gate ' them ? el ^ s ; those of Eng land and Scodand have scarcely ad-™ ncef Erring two hundred and . fifty years the Dutch and the German -Reformed Churches still less , the Lutheran Church not at all . Yet , simul-? £££ & not only the Romish , but every other hierarchy is mmg-as a coverniii power ; everywhere the clergy pretend to a divine right over conscience . Notwithstanding that the nations in general aspire to complete liberty of the mind , the ecclesiastical orders redouble their exertions to suppress that liberty . In Auttria the Concordat has been signed . In France and in Russia the dominant Church confides in the perseeutins scotrrge . In Sweden a Protestant community lias ordained a decree of persecution against Romish converts . In Mecklenburg a bitter and systematic violence is exhibited against the Baptist

      congregations In Schaumburg-Lippe and Hesse-Cassel , penal religious laws have been enacted . In Prussia the spirit of ancient bigotry finds its last victim in the Jew . In Great Britain does not the clergy assume to control the beliefs and manners of the people ? They forget that the rights of congregations ¦ were in the early Christian Church more distinctly upheld than the privileges of the ecclesiastical order . Free episcopacy scarcely survives in Europe . By what Chevalier Bunsen styles " a truly apocalyptic transformation , " the basis of the Decretal Law , which confers on the priest authority over individuals and congregations , has been substituted for that of the apostolical canons , which declared the superior rights of the laity towards the Church . The signs of the times are the example of this encroachment , originating in corruption , forgery , " and a base and

      self-interested deception . Thus in Baden , which has a population less than two-thirds Catholic , the clergy claim against the civil power a prerogative which has been abandoned in France and * Bavaria , and which was , until 1850 , abandoned in Austria . But the Government , instead of opposing the priesthood on national and popular grounds , has sought to create , in a close bureaucracy , a bulwark against the Church . It has relied upon a system of centralization , a tutelage extending to the minutest details of life , and recognizing no independent action , except its own , which , remarks Chevalier Bunsen , is incompatible with the training of the people to freedom . It has permitted no voluntary congregational action , , and has provoked the dire hostility of the Church without engaging the sympathy

      of the nation . The contest is undecided ; the negotiations with Rome have been seeret , but enough is known to show that the bishops have not -withdrawn one detail of their demands , while the Government , representing the rights of all the Protestant States in Germany , fears to call for popular assistance against that supremacy of the canon law which may be the prelude of a Concordat . Two hundred and forty European bishops—among them all the eighty-five of France—have expressed their sympathy with the bierarchists ; the Pope has decided in their favour ; his decision is ranked ¦ with the oecumenical decrees ; the Catholic powers , therefore , areinvited by the organs of the clergy to invade Baden and assert the infallibility of the Church .

      This conflict , extending throughout Europe , bears on marriage , on education , on property , on all the interests of social life . The champions of absolute Church authority have undertaken a warfare against the aspects of civil legislation , against the essential elements of national existence , against intellect , and free research in the domain of history . The natural sciences have escaped their grasp , but they still assume to keep the keys of philology , of mental and religious philosophy . They pretend to regulate the marriage-law , in spite of the protest which in Belgium , the Netherlands , Prussia , and Great Britain , has been raised against the principle , which has no sanction in the canons of the primitive Church . All that Austria had gained by a hundred years of progress , recorded in more than fifteen thousand aulic decrees , has been swept away by the Concordat , and the same virulent influence has destroyed her improved methods of national education , and of the superintendence of Church property . Connected with these pretensions is the conspiracy against conscience , illustrated by

      Chevalier Bunsen m a luminous retrospect extending through the annals of Egypt , Greece , Rome , Germany , Russia , Italy , and Austria . Against the revival of this crusade , " the whole civilized Christian world is joined in a holy league ; ' * yet it is proclaimed by the Catholic Church , and , with a blind contempt of opposition , the Church acts as ^ though the Europe of the middle ages and the Europe of the nineteenth century were one . Chevalier Bunsen ' a speculations on the signs of the times lead from a conspicuous point in the perspective of our own age , through centuries of history , parallel with the fortunes of many empires . Contrasting what passed in the world with what is , his analysis lends him to this belief , that Europe is witnessing a struggle for the highest blessingjs of life , a conflict of moral and intellectual forces , admitting of no delay or interruption . In his view the spirit of association that spreads in all parts of the globe is the aurora that lightens over mankind ; the hierarchy is the departing shadow that bangs low upon the earth before it is dissipated , as a cloud of the night . It is in this strain of noble argument , of faith and courage that the Chevalier Bunsen has written his lost work : the most remarkable that has appeared , in modern times from the pen of a statesman .

      474j The Leader. [No. 321, Saturday^

      474 j THE LEADER . [ No . 321 , Saturday ^

      Ubicini's Letters On Turkey. Leoot* On, ...

      UBICINI'S LETTERS ON TURKEY . LeOot * on , Tmrkepi an Account of the ReUgioua , Political , Social , and Commercial condiiimn qf the Ottoman Empire . Translated from the French of M . A . Ubicini , by Lady JSwthope . 2 vol » . Murray . Sn * e » th * outbreak o £ the Russian , war , M . Ubicini's pictures of Ottoman civilisation , have had m marked effect on the formation of opinion in England . To ham lira * volnme of Letters on Turkish institutions and mnnners he has km > w added a second erics on the Christian subjects Of the Porte . Lady JBasthope , in a somewhat confident preface , is severe on English ignorance abd Greek mendacity , and summons ns to discard at once our former ideas

      of Turkish polity and Kay ah degradntion , in favour of M . Ubicini ' s views It is easy to quote Montesquieu , still easier to quote the edict of Gulhane " but from Montesquieu we learn nothing of the actual state of Turkey , nor has it been shown that the princi p les of the edict of Gulhane have been put into practical operation . Lady Easthope entirely mistakes her ground when she instances the Arabic numerals and the Alhambra to vindicate the art and culture of the Turks , as the Arabian race is perfectly distinct from the Turkish , has nothing in common with it , except the Faith , and hates it bitterly . We do not see , then , what is gained for the Ottoman by this de « fence of the Arab . But we have not undertaken to write against Lady Eastbope ' s propositions . It is with M . Ubicini's Letters that we are concerned , and we are thankful for this translation , in which we discern , however , the traces of different hands of unequal competency .

      The book is systematic , and brings together the whole of the author ' s observations on the territories , populations , laws , and religions , of the Ottoman Empire . In the first volume , M . Ubicini , after a general sketch , analyzes the Tanzimat of Mahmoud , which did not signify the establishment of new political forms , but a return to the purity of the Prophet's original system . This chapter includes an account of the public departments , and the administrative arrangements of the empire . The Koran , inspiring the body of laws ; the Ulema interpreting them ; the Dervishes practising a monastic asceticism ; the political power , deposited with the sultan , but restricted by inviolable laws ; the legislative power , devoted to the purification of the codes ; the judicial power , distributed into civil , criminal , and mixed tribunals ; the educational system , the imperial libraries , journalism , literature , property , finance , industry , and commerce , supply the materials of M . Ubicini's Turkish series . In the Rayah Letters he treats of the nature and effects of the Mussulman conquests in Roumelia ; the state of Greece under the Byzantine dynasty ; the successive Christian insurrections ; the Greek church and nation ; the Armenians ; the Armenian Roman Catholics , Latins ,

      Protestants , and Jews . The result of M . Ubicini's inquiry—including a general repudiation of previous authorities—is , that the regeneration of the Ottoman Empire , the work of the Tanzimat , has proceeded so far , that Turkey may at least be said to have a positive unity and a political existence . He even adopts the theory proposed by M . Charriere , that the Turkish Empire , instead of decaying in Europe , is destined to be detached from Asia , and to become an integral part of the European system , " to the completion of which it is an essential element . " But there is one problem which has not suggested itself to the practical mind of M . Ubicini . Is the vast Roumelian territory , peopled by Greeks , Armenians , Jews , Roumanians , Slavonians , Albanians , and Arabs ; by Abyssins and pagan Zingari , by Christians of Shoa ; by Chaldscans , professing the heresy of Nestorius ; by Chemsiniyes , worshippers of the sun ; Yezidis , whose faith is a Manicheism modified by the doctrines of Zoroaster ; by the

      schismatic Abi-ilahis and Ismailians ; Wahatis , the Protestants of Islam ; Kurds and Turcomans;—is this immense and prolific region , peopled by this agglomeration of races , thirty-five millions in number , to be reconstituted under the sole domination of a minority of Turks , or are the Turks to disappear as a reigning nation , to be replaced by the heads of the Rayahs ? M . Ubicini admits that their constant effort has been , during the four hundred years of their supremacy , to preserve an impassable line of separation between the Christian and the Mussulman . They have also , as Osmanlis , maintained their superiority over all other Mussulmans . Without this distinction , what are the Turks in Turkey ? But the hatti sherif of Gulhane places all denominations of the sultan's subjects on an equality . Either , then , the principles of the hatti-sherif will be carried into execution , and the Turks will abandon the artificial eminence from which they have ruled the empire , or it will be a nullity , and the Christian population , disparaged and exasperated , will struggle to rise by its own efforts , and to supplant the

      dominant nation . M . Ubicini ' s view of the rivalry that exists between the Austrian and Turkish populations is based on the assumption that the Christian races of Turkey will never combine for the attainment of a common end . If by combination he means conspiracy , or concerted action , the statement is perfectly true ; but , upon his own evidence , we must believe that the nations of the Lower Empire , conquered by the Turks , are incessantly growing inora powerful , more opulent , more enterprizing , more ambitious . Without deliberate union , their influence has resulted , throughout the empire , in the gradual enervation of the Turks , who , without culture , with a contempt for industry and trade , with no European sympathies , with an inaptitude for maritime adventure , subsist upon the proprietorship of the land , and upon the little streams that trickle in all directions out of the public treasury . of

      It was injudicious , on M . Ubicini's port , to extol the political virtues the Turkish Empire by exaggerating the vices of the Greek community , lo accept his recapitulation of their qualities would be to regard the Greek as a composition of credulity , turbulence , inconstancy , vanity , and hypocrisy . He discriminates , it is true , between the Hellenic courage , and love of liberty and the Romaic frivolity ; but it should be remembered that upon the erection of Otho ' s little kingdom , some of the districts restored to the 1 ortc were those most conspicuous for the valour and impetuous patriotism ol their inhabitants . To use Gibbon ' s antithesis , and to describe the Greeks as having idle hands and busy tongues , is to ignore the progress ol twenty years , the six hundred ships that constitute the young Grecian marine , the commerce that spreads over the waters and coasts of the Mediterranean . When , too , he dissertates upon the administrative virtues of the Tinks , * falls into a contradiction at least as flagrant as that of the Greek oi JVutvlene : —

      A few yearn ago , some travellers in the island of Mityleno were returning , char med with an excursion they had made to the delicious valley , filled with gardens , kiosks , and country-houses , which akirta the south of the town . Perceiving a family « Greek * seated beneath a plane-tree , enjoying the cool shade , thoy approached ana entered into conversation . The head of tho family informed them thiil his name tt < s Antoniadea ; that one of the three women present was his wifo , tho two others n daughters ; that ho had a son established aa a commercial agent at Smyrna ; that « himaelf had a ahop in the neighbouring town ; and that , hi » affairs having , ty t « ' ° A

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), May 17, 1856, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_17051856/page/18/