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 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 1 o u D o u : 
 
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 lo. ST. BBIDE'8 AVKNT: T STREET, E.C
 
 JirtI lite Striiite 
 
 A SUGGESTION AXD A WARXIXG TO TURKISH 
 
 BONDHOLDERS AXD RUSSIAX 1IOXEY- 
 
 LEXDERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 FR. BARON DE WOLFFERS, PHIL. AND LL.D., 
 
 Knight of the Order of Merit of Bavaria, Officer of the Order of 
 the Saviour, Commander of the A'ichun Iftitmr. 
 
 JOHN KEMPSTER & CO., 
 9 AND 10, ST. BRIDE'S AVENUE, FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 1875.
 
 Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury.
 
 PEEFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 THE day after the first edition of our pamphlet left the press 
 the Daily Telegraph published a letter from Henry Stanley, 
 dated from Mtesa's Capital, Uganda, April 15th, 1875. 
 
 To our great satisfaction the worthy successor of Living- 
 stone commends warmly the mode of colonization proposed 
 by ourselves for Turkey, and almost in the same words. 
 
 We extract the following passages from the gallant travel - 
 lers's letters : 
 
 " Mtesa has caused the ten commandments of Moses to be written on a 
 board for his daily perusal for Mtesa can read Arabic as well as the 
 Lord's Prayer and the golden commandment of Our Saviour," ' Thou shalt 
 love thy neighbour as thyself.' This is great progress for the few days 
 that I have remained with him, and, though I am no missionary, I shall 
 begin to think that I might become one if such success is feasible. But, 
 oh that some pious, practical missionary would come here ! What a field 
 and a harvest ripe for the sickle of Civilisation ! Mtesa would give him 
 anything he desired houses, lands, cattle, ivory, &c., he might call a pro- 
 vince his own in one day. It is not the mere preacher, however, that is 
 wanted here. The Bishops of Great Britain collected, with all the classic 
 youth of Oxford and Cambridge, would effect nothing by mere talk with 
 the people of Uganda. It is the practical Christian tutor, who can teach 
 people how to become Christians, cure their diseases, construct dwellings, 
 understand and exemplify agriculture, and turn his hand to anything, like 
 a sailor this is the man who is wanted. Such an one if he can be found 
 would become the saviour of Africa. He must be tied to no Church or 
 Sect, but profess God and His Son and the moral law, and live a blamless 
 Christian, inspired by liberal principles, charity to all men, and devout 
 faith in Heaven. He must belong to no nation in particular, but the 
 entire white race. Such a man or men Mtesa, King of Uganda, Usoga, 
 Umgoro, and Karagwe a kingdom 360 geographical miles in length by 
 50 in breadth invites to repair to him. He has begged me to tell the 
 white men that if they will only come to him he will give them all they 
 want. For the mission's use it should bring with it a supply of hammers, 
 saws, augers, chisels, axes, hatchets, adzes, carpenters' and blacksmiths' 
 -in* < tin Waganda are apt pupils ; iron drills and powder for blast- 
 v\d.~. a ( uupli' of guoil-sized anvils, a forge and bellou - 
 an assortment of nails aad tack, a plough, spades, shovels, pickaxes, and
 
 11. 
 
 a couple of light buggies as specimens, with such other small things as 
 their own common sense would suggest to the men whom I invite. Most 
 desirable would be an assortment of garden seed and grain ; also white- 
 lead, linseed oil, brushes, a few volumes of illustrated journals, gaudy 
 prints, a magic lantern, rockets, and a photographic apparatus. The total 
 cost of the whole equipment need not exceed five thousand pounds sterling. 
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY." 
 
 We have been most happy to see Stanley's plan meet in 
 England with the sympathy and encouragement it fully de- 
 serves, but far from lessening the interest which England 
 may feel in our plan of colonising a part of Turkey ; it con- 
 secrates, if I may say so, its practicability, and we have 
 shown that it was a political necessity. Mr. Stanley states 
 that the colonisation of King Mtesa's vast dominions could 
 be realised at an expense of five thousand pounds sterling, 
 and bring great profit to our industry and commerce. 
 Wonders would be done in Turkey by following our plan, 
 with,say 15000 or 20,000 not spent but simply advanced on 
 the best security, and it would seem from a correspondent of 
 the Echo, in a letter dated Constantinople, November 4th, that 
 the nucleus of the colony could be found already in Turkey 
 itself under the following circumstances : 
 
 The correspondent is informed that the greatest misery 
 prevails at Sophia amongst the workmen, engineers, and 
 foremen, who are engaged by the government for the Sophia 
 Railroad, the works of which have been discontinued. 
 Foreigners have no means of returning, and what they will 
 do throughout this harsh winter, when they are at times in 
 trouble for a morsel of bread I do not like to think of. 
 
 Probable as it is that these destitute men are Englishmen, 
 it would be an act of national justice and charity, in the right 
 moment and the right place, to enlist them for a colony des- 
 tined to reflect credit on its founders, and become a lasting 
 benefit for England. As to what we said about ultramontane 
 propaganda in non-christian parts, we find it illustrated in the
 
 111. 
 
 following extract from a Paris correspondent of the Daily 
 Telegraph of November 17th, 1875. 
 
 The Conseil General of Algiers is alarmed at the zeal of 
 missionaries in Kabylia. The Prefect treats these fears as 
 absurd, and the Archbishop denounces them as impious. A 
 correspondent of the Journal des Debats tells us some of the 
 facts which create uneasiness. It seems that ten years since 
 Marshal Macmahon, then Governor General, had to complain 
 of a dangerous zeal in proselitysing. The matter was referred 
 home. On one hand, devout ladies in Paris preferred 
 neuvaines for the Marshal's enlightenment, on the other 
 the government, instructed the Archbishop to moderate his 
 activity. 
 
 When the famine happened, many Arab parents trusted 
 their children to the priests. A great number of orphans 
 also were received by them. These children the Archbishop 
 refused to give up when their friends claimed them. Upon 
 appeal to the courts he was defeated, but the fruits of victory 
 remained with the Church, for the Archbishop exacted repay- 
 ment of all expenses before surrendering the children, and 
 few Arabs could or would discharge the debt. Very many 
 orphans were sent to Marseilles, and others were established 
 in the large mission farms. In Kabylia leave was given to 
 set up maisons de charite relieving houses as they may be 
 called. But to each of these a school has been added. Re- 
 ligious opinion is declared sacred therein, but the scholars 
 learn hymns addressed to the virgin, and they are taught the 
 Catholic faith upon demand. The discontent aroused amongst 
 a Moslem population by these doings has stirred the Conseil 
 General to vote 20,000 francs for a secular school in Kabylia. 
 It is said that an emigration has begun towards Tunis and 
 Morocco ; some notable families, who had shown good will
 
 IV. 
 
 to France, have gone, At the same time it is alleged that the 
 priests fail entirely in their efforts, whilst causing such a 
 serious agitation. 
 
 That the Turkish Government is good willed, results from 
 the following communication which reached Berlin, on 
 December 5th : 
 
 ' The Circular Note sent by Reshid Pasha to Turkish diplomatic agents, 
 states that the Ottoman Government is resolved to introduce and carry 
 out all internal reforms, and will gladly accept advice from the Great 
 Poweis in respect to such reforms. 
 
 We insisted on seeing as it were fresh blood infused in the 
 veins of Turkish administration by the accession of able and 
 honest Englishmen to high and influential posts in Turkey, 
 to do away with the leper which gnaws at the heart of the 
 state, and which is most strikingly and voraciously character- 
 ised by the Constantinople correspondent of the Daily Tele- 
 graph, quoted by that contemporary in its number of 
 December 1st of this year. 
 
 " As the military power of the Turks has waned, and as a 
 bureaucracy has grown up with all the faults and none of the energy 
 and vigour of that institution in civilised countries, the condition of the 
 Christians in Turkey has deteriorated from year to year. They have not 
 even gained by the successes of some among their own number. The 
 emancipation of the Greeks has merely given freedom to a race of plun- 
 derers by profession, who are avenging themselves for long years of servi- 
 tude by fleecing alike their ancient masters and their former comrades in 
 slavery. Nor have the Christian peasants profited by the rise of many 
 Armenians to power ; for these wolves in sheep's clothing are to the full 
 as grasping, as luxurious, and as unscrupulous as the most overbearing 
 and sensual of the Turks, and they have introduced into the Empire, and 
 into the palaces of its rulers, an extravagance and a reckless profusion of 
 which the older Turks knew nothing, and out of which the Armenians 
 have known well bow to make enormous profits at the expense of the 
 suffering thousands who have long groaned under a taxation which is 
 now intolerable. 
 
 After all that has been written on the acquisition by 
 
 England of the shares of the Khedive in the Canal of Suez, 
 
 there remains the simple fact, that England, by its purchase, 
 
 has established her influence over Egypt on a largerbasis 
 
 han before.
 
 v. 
 
 And why should not private enterprise do for England in 
 Turkey what the English Government realized in Egypt ? 
 
 The ground is quite prepared as it results from a corres- 
 pondence in the Daily Telegraph, under the 24th of Nov. : 
 
 " The Sultan has on more than one occasion tried to do good. When he re- 
 turned from England, he was bitten with a desire to improve the agriculture 
 of his country. At the same time his visit to the Zoological Gardens had 
 aroused in him the desire, which is never long dormant in an Eastern 
 Prince, for a collection of wild animals. He determined to establish on 
 the hill which overlooks Ortakein an institution which should combine 
 the solid usefulness of the model farms at Windsor with the bizarre de- 
 lights of the Regent's Park. In obedience to his will there soon arose, 
 at a convenient distance from his favourite residence, a range of farm 
 buildings at sight of which Mr. Mechi would have hid his diminished head 
 and thrown down his bucolic pen for ever. The choicest breeds of cattle 
 and sheep, the finest strains of poultry, the most efficient forms of agri- 
 cultural implements, and the latest and best devices for making two blades 
 of grass where but one had grown before, there found representatives. 
 There also were gathered all the zoological monstrosities of the East, 
 treasures of which a Jamrach might be jealous, beasts of which a Buck- 
 land might boast. 
 
 " For a time the hobby prospered, and, if the model farm could have 
 been steadily maintained with something less of luxury, and with a closer 
 application to the real wants of the country, it might in tke long course 
 of years have done much good ; but after a while the Sultan grew weary, a 
 murrain robbed the establishment of its choicest cattle, whose carcases 
 infected the hillsides for months, and the undertaking came to an end. 
 The buildings are still kept up. as no buildings which belong to the Sultnn 
 are suffered to fall out of repair : but the Wild beasts have for the most 
 part been removed to Beicos. and little remains of the original enterprise 
 save a few patches of cultivated land which have not yet lost the fertility 
 they acquired when the good work was young and prosperous." 
 
 How easily could the representatives of the English-Turk- 
 ish bondholders get possession of these neglected establish- 
 ments, and from that splendid beginning go on with their 
 work of civilisation and progress. 
 
 But Turkey is a land of promise for the plan we propose. 
 Let us hear what a correspondent of the Standard relates : 
 (See that paper of December 10th). 
 
 " Turkey ought to be the favoured seat of the goddess of agriculture. 
 Its long ranges of hills and valleys, which succeed each other without 
 interruption, and its climate, which is so varied as to be favourable alike 
 to the products of the temperate and to those of the torrid zone, give it 
 such advantages as hardly any other empire possesses. But despite the 
 charms of its climate and the fertility of its soil, agriculture langni>ln^ 
 under the want of capital, the ignorance of the cultivators, and the ab- 
 sence of roads. Even where roads exist, as for instance along the entire
 
 VI. 
 
 line of railway from Constantinople to Adrianople, the fertility of the soil 
 and the facility of transport are entirely neutralized by the want of skill 
 and capital on the side of the cultivators, and by the exactions of the 
 agents of the Government. Some branches of agriculture which might be 
 profitably cultivated have been altogether neglected. Oats are not grown, 
 barley being used instead of oats as food for horses and cattle. Roots are 
 almost unknown, so that fat cattle are equally unknown, whilst many 
 perish annually through the insufficiency or the bad quality of their pas- 
 ture. Kice, which is largely consumed throughout the empire, and which 
 would grow well in many districts, is for the most part imported from 
 Egypt and Italy. Wheat is grown in considerable, though not in sufficient 
 quantities, but much is wasted in the threshing, or perhaps I should say in 
 the treading, for the agricultural machinery of Turkey does not yet in- 
 clude that very old-fashioned implement, a flail. When the wheat is 
 threshed, or trodden out, the means of grinding it are of the most primi- 
 tive kind, and the greater part of the flour which we consume in Constan- 
 tinople has travelled in the shape of grain from Odessa to England, and 
 returned hither after receiving the necessary preparation." 
 
 The entire agricultural system of the country is at fault. In former 
 days a Turkish landed proprietor divided his land into three portions, and 
 allowed each to lie fallow in turn. By this means he obtained fair crops 
 without the aid of manure. Now, the unhappy rayah labours at his small 
 plot from year to year, and has no idea of enriching it by aid of manure, 
 thought an abundance of that kind of matter, which is useless only when 
 it is in the wrong place, lies in heaps in his native village, and infects the 
 hamlet instead of enriching the fields. When his overworked land will no 
 longer yield a crop he goes forth to the neighbouring forest, where, un- 
 happily, he has a right of clearance, and burns down hundreds of valuable 
 trees. Having, by much labour, obtained an additional plot of arable land, 
 he begins once more to crop it, until it is exhausted, aftor which he sets to 
 work again to destroy another portion of the forest and to misuse the soil 
 which he wrests from it. It is beliexed by competent judges that the 
 wholesale destruction of the Turkish forests during the last thirty years 
 has sensibly affected the climate of the country, and threatens to induce a 
 serious deficiency of moisture. Certain it is that a remarkable increase has 
 taken place in the price of firewood in Constantinople, and that the friends 
 of Turkey are beginning to console themselves for this augmentation in 
 the price of a necessary of life with the reflection that when there is no 
 more wood or charcoal for the stoves and the niangals, the Turks will be 
 forced to work their coal mines, and thus pave the way for the introduc- 
 tion of a hundred industries which depend for their existence on coal. 
 Waiting this desirable consummation the forests perish, the industries are 
 not born, and agriculture lies bound hand and foot." 
 
 And it is not only agriculture that offers a large field to 
 English enterprise, there are many excellent openings in and 
 about Constantinople itself, out of which the bondholders 
 could reap immense profits. We refer again to a correspond- 
 ence in the Daily Telegraph of November 24th. 
 
 ' There is a fine field for moderate honest tradesmen, and an hotelkeeper 
 with a conscience and an appreciation for the wants of his guests would 
 soon make a fortune. We want gas, we want water, we want roads and
 
 vu. 
 
 pavements, we want better means of transport from place to place ; and 
 we could pay a fair price for these advantages if any enterprising person 
 would confer them on us. But the past history of enterprise in this city 
 is not encouraging. One only has succeeded, and it is perhaps 
 a curious circumstance that the Sultana Valide is largely interested 
 in it The steamboats which ply on the Bosphorus throughout the 
 day, and which are commodious and admirably well conducted re- 
 turn a good interest to the shareholders, and her Highness is the 
 largest holder of shares. The tramways, on the other hand, though the 
 carriages are always full, are unremunerative, the undertaking having 
 been swamped at the outset by the overfinancing of its capital. Again, 
 the concession for the erection of wharves and warehouses, which are 
 sorely needed, has been nullified by the interposition of all sorts of petty 
 obstacles : whilst the scheme for the water supply hangs fire because it is 
 supposed that the water will be too pure to suit the popular taste. Lastly, 
 the enormous traffic across the Golden Horn, which yields an almost fabu- 
 lous revenue in tolls, is condemned to pass over two rickety and absolutely 
 dangerous bridges, the efforts of the Municipality to provide new bridges 
 having culminated at last in a determination to pull down one which was 
 on the verge of completion. The man who hopes to accomplish any un- 
 dertaking in this country must bring with him an iron will and a patience 
 compared with which that of Job would seem mere fretful irritability. He 
 should also bring with him, or make up his mind to acquire, a knowledge 
 of the Turkish language. Without this he is lost indeed. Let him not 
 believe that a knowledge of French only will serve his turn. A knowledge 
 of French will enable him to communicate with the Armenians and Greeks 
 and Levantines, but it will not bring him face to face with the real holders 
 of power in this country. If he listens to the Christian members of this 
 community, he will go away with the idea that he need not learn the 
 Turkish language, but that is merely because they want to keep the key 
 of the house in their own pocket. The real holders of power in this 
 country are the Turks, and very few of them speak any language but their 
 own. It is said that the present Grand Vizier has no one in his house who 
 can speak any language but those of the country. Many of the Europeans 
 who come here in search of information with regard to the country are al- 
 together led astray by their ignorance of the language. Mr. Butler 
 Johnstone apparently has gone away with the impression that Midhat 
 Pasha is the cleverest man in Turkey, merely because he and Midhad Pasha 
 speak French, and could understand each other, Here, too, has been Mr. 
 Arthur Kinnard in search of the materials for a speech. Here, too, is my 
 Lord Stratheden, picking up the crumbs which Mr. Kinnard left on the 
 ground ; and here, again, is my Lady Strangford, with a mission for the 
 construction of a railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and with a small staff 
 of obedient colonels and captains and professors, who ride over Asia Minor 
 on dromedaries to do her bidding. But all these people are checked and 
 hindered at every turn by their ignorance of the language and by their 
 consequent inability to tali openly with the masters of the country. There- 
 fore let the man who aims at the regeneration of Turkey make up his 
 mind at the very onset of his undertaking to acquire a knowledge of its 
 language." 
 
 The Turkish bondholders have held meetings and come to 
 certain resolutions, but alas all their endeavours will prove 
 nothing but 
 
 Ludere par impar eguitare in arundine longa
 
 Vlll. 
 
 and come what may, in ten or twenty years those who lent 
 their money to Turkey will be obliged to recur to our or to a 
 similar plan. What would be easy now will be very difficult 
 later, and, mayhap impossible, for the Russian Black Eagle 
 may then have made new efforts to seize upon the prey he 
 covets since more than a century. 
 
 What we wrote in regard to the Russian moneylenders, 
 receives a striking illustration in a correspondence of the 
 Daily Telegraph, stating that the 
 
 " harvest in Russia this year is exceptionally bad, and the grain crop 
 throughout the empire may be taken as a whole at from 10 to 30 per cent, 
 below what is called a fair medium crop. In the neighbourhood of Odessa, 
 and in the province of Kherson, there is not sufficient grain for the support 
 of the peasants during the winter. The same is the case in the province 
 of Tamhof, one of the richest grain -producing regions of Eussia, being in 
 the celebrated black-soil country. Last year there was a bad dry autumn, 
 which ruined much of the winter wheat. This was followed by an un- 
 usually long winter and an adverse spring, which ruined not only the 
 grain, but the hay. Besides this the cattle disease broke out in many 
 places, so that in Podolia cows are selling for two roubles, and in Kief 
 horses for three ; while in Voronezh the celebrated bitink stallions, which 
 ordinajily bring 200 roubles, are now selling for no more than 20. The 
 failure of the harvest has not been able to affect the exports of grain this 
 year, for these are drawn from the last year's crop, but next year we may 
 expect to see shipments sensibly diminish. The suffering in some places 
 has already begun to be great, but, owing to the delay in the receipt of 
 Government statistics, the exact state of the case cannot yet be known. 
 The provencial and district, diets have done something to relieve the dis- 
 tress, but the Government will be obliged to come to the rescue by forbear- 
 ing to collect arrears of taxes, and in many cases remitting the taxes 
 entirely for a year or two. The bad harvests which afflict the South of 
 Russia are now almost periodical at intervals of three or four years, and 
 are traced by many to the gradual exhaustion of the soil, the wanton des- 
 truction of forests, and the lack of moisture. It is therefore urged upon 
 the Government to take measures for tree-planting on a large scale, and 
 for constructing irrigating canals a work which can be easily done. In 
 fact, one or two irrigation companies have alread sought charters, but the 
 usual departmental delays have hitherto prevented their receiving them." 
 
 Without her agriculture Russia's banner would fall to the 
 ground ; we have shown how that backbone of Russia's force 
 is eaten up by gangrene, and that Russia is doomed to be- 
 come more and more impoverished on its certain way to 
 bankruptcy. Yet at Petersburg they dream of conquests, of 
 extending Russian sway far and wide, for the curse of man-
 
 kind, for there is nothing more perverse than Russian rule, 
 whether of German or Muscovite origin, and England must blush 
 every inch of ground lost to her interest, and consequently 
 lost to civilization, by becoming a prey to Russian barbarism. 
 
 Russia, after having been the instigator, is now the key- 
 stone of a new Triple Alliance, in which Austria plays 
 certainly the part of a dupe, whereas in Berlin they know 
 what they are at ; for it is the play of new-born Germany to 
 lull Austria with the prospects of agrandisement in the East, 
 that it may be driven the easier out of its Western German 
 possessions. The Hungarian minister Andrassy is too narrow- 
 minded to see through the plans of the farsighted German 
 Chancellor, who knows very well that Austria has lost on 
 Germany that hold she had supreme, when her preponde- 
 rating influence, wielded the German Union (Bund) in 
 Frankfort, before and till 1848. But it was in Frankfort and 
 at that revolutionary period that Prussia came to the consci- 
 ence of her protestant supremacy, and from that moment the 
 doom of the ultramontane Habsburgs as German sovereigns 
 was sealed. 
 
 Since that time also, Austrian statesmen have lost their 
 compass, and have been tossed about by events and circum- 
 stances which they could neither influence nor control. 
 
 It was a great act of wisdom on the part of the present 
 English cabinet to keep aloof from the pact of the three 
 emperors, for in the same time they sit before the green cloth 
 more embarrased than the augurs of yore, to look serious at 
 each other, England has really the ' cards in hand, and all 
 will depend on her for the game to play. 
 
 Since we wrote the first edition of this pamphlet, England 
 has made a clever move towards consolidating materially her 
 interest in the Canal of Suez, and in the affairs of Egypt,
 
 X. 
 
 without in the least compromising herself by any false step 
 in the direction of an annexation. 
 
 Although certain English papers, renowned for their fickle- 
 ness and for their reckless turncoating, have seemed, out of 
 calculated ignorance, to give up Turkey as a hopeless in- 
 curable invalid, England and her statesmen know better- 
 The Sultan is not the " sick man " whom Nicholas mentioned 
 disdainfully to Lord Seymour, nor would Englishmen ex- 
 claim, with French levity and superficial knowledge of the 
 facts les Turcs sont campes en Europe ! 
 
 Turkey, numbers in Europe four millions of Mussulman, 
 and six millions of non-Mussulman subjects ; but those four 
 million are like ten to every single non-Mussulman ; they are 
 the lords of the land, they are the army, they are the govern- 
 ment. The mussulman world looks upon Constantinople as 
 upon its capital, and on the Sultan as its head, and God for- 
 bid that the Mussulman Rule should ever be replaced by 
 Russian rottenness on the Danube or the Bosphorus. The 
 integrity of Turkey is as necessary to Europe, as are the first 
 and foremost conditions of Europe's welfare, nay as are the 
 most essential conditions of its progress and civilisation. 
 
 To consider The Turks as camped in Europe ? indeed ! 
 Austria was camped in fact in Italy all the time her cursed 
 rule made the fair Peninsula a hell, she was really camped, 
 for beyond the camp and the barracks in which she was en- 
 trenched, she was ^ powerless. Not so Turkey. But did the 
 powers who now pretend to interfere in the affairs of Turkey 
 ever interfere when Austria crushed Italy under her brutal 
 heel ? Does a^body think to interfere between the Pope 
 and the measures of Prince Bismark. Would England allow 
 anybody to interfere between herself and Ireland ? 
 
 The Turkish empire justly resents the pretensions of the
 
 XI. 
 
 powers to establish a guardianship over it, and if they do it 
 under pretence of the Turkish debt, Austria aught to con- 
 sider that she repudiated her's more than once in the most 
 shameless way ; and as to Russia, we have shown, and show 
 in the following pages, what her bondholders may expect. 
 
 If any country wanted a guardianship for financial reck- 
 lessness, for wretched misgovernment, it is Russia. But 
 what would haughty Russia say, if any power tried to inter- 
 fere for the oppressed Poles, or in favour of her illtreated 
 Catholic and Jewish subjects ? 
 
 England's statesmen know very well, that Russia does not 
 care the least for the non-Mussulman subjects of the Sultan. 
 She wants a specious pretence for her ambitious views for 
 her projects of conquest and aggrandisement ; and therefore 
 England will never let Turkey be humiliated but, keeping 
 on the side of justice she will, by respectful and well-meant 
 advice, bring those measures to bear for the welfare of the 
 Turkish Empire, which no menaces, no threats, no hypo- 
 critical cajolery could impose upon the Sublime Porte. 
 
 It depends on England to achieve, that the treaty entered 
 into between the three powers, renewed from the whilome 
 Holy Alliance of sinister memory, that that treaty come to 
 no other result than spoiling the parchment on which the 
 ill-omined document is written. 
 
 It is because our plan of colonisation could mightily concur 
 to such a desired aim that we brought it before the public far 
 from any thought of imposing a protectorate of whatever 
 kind on the Porte. Coming to the aid of a good friend and 
 trusty ally, by encouragements, by example, by good advice, 
 by going hand in hand with him, would make Turkey bless 
 England, and double her power in the world just where it is 
 her duty to strengthen it most, in erecting an insuperable
 
 Xll. 
 
 bulwark against ambitious Russia, and encroaching Austria, 
 warning at the same time Germany, tacitly of the dangers of 
 persisting in a system which estranges the great nation of 
 thinkers from the western world, and drives it to political 
 adventures which must needs end in bitter deceptions. 
 
 Let us now clear up, before it arises, a misunderstanding 
 which, at the outset, would compromise our whole project. 
 
 When an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotchman, 
 Frenchman, or a German emigrates to the United States or 
 Australia, to settle there permanently, he becomes ipso facto 
 citizen of the state which he chooses for his new country. It 
 is not the case in England, because here foreigners having no 
 right to acquire property, the permanent settlement of a 
 great many of them is out of question, the more so, as almost 
 insuperable obstacles are thrown in the way of naturalisation, 
 and the settlement of Foreigners begins only after a genera- 
 tion, when English born children of Foreigners acquire the 
 rights of English subjects. 
 
 No country can tolerate a state in the state as it is the 
 pretention of Rome to be wherever she can gain foot. All 
 states who shut their eyes to that fact can no longer boast of 
 their rule prudence. 
 
 As to Turkey, it is clear that the members of our colony 
 would become, by the fact of their settlement, as proprietors 
 of Turkish soil, new subjects of the Sultan. And as such, 
 their postion would be an enviable one, for the Christian sub- 
 jects of Turkey have acces to all the positions in the Empire 
 however exalted, and by their skill, industry, honesty and 
 intelligence, they would acquire an influence which would 
 benefit both their adopted country and themselves. 
 
 Those who could misunderstand our meaning in that re- 
 spect, had better to remain strangers to the enterprise.
 
 X1H, 
 
 Wisely has England rendered the colonisation of her Empire, 
 by Foreigners, almost an impossibility in the first generation, 
 for that colonisation in relatively so small a community as the 
 English was and is yet, could have become a disguised in- 
 vasion. 
 
 We see it in America, where Irish settlers, on one side, and 
 German settlers on the other, menace the very principles on 
 which the constitution of the United States is based, and that 
 to such an extent, that President Grant, as we see by his last 
 message, takes alarm at it. 
 
 We therefore maintain, not only that our colonists must 
 become Turkish subjects, but that Turkey ought to oppose 
 our scheme, if it were not thoroughly submitted to this con- 
 dition sine qua non. 
 
 We want, in the vital interest of England to stave Turkish 
 independence, Turkish rule instead of undermining it. 
 
 The intervention of the Powers, duped by Russia, has done 
 mischief enough already, and it is high time to counteract 
 Russian misrepresentation. 
 
 Russian gold exercises on the Press of Germany, and even 
 France, an influence, which we can only call deplorable. 
 England alone never recurs to such means ; when the govern- 
 ment wants to convey their opinion, it is in an English 
 straightforward way, so that friends and foes alike may know 
 what they are at ; and England possesses the immense ad- 
 vantage that, let her cabinet be Whig or Tory, her principles 
 in Foreign affairs are invariable, and her traditions carried out 
 and upheld by the statesmen of both parties, with equal fair- 
 ness, equal energy, and equal patriotism. 
 
 England is now the only Power on which Turkey can rely 
 without distrust, for England always strove manly for the 
 independence of Turkey, and never recognised the conquest
 
 XIV. 
 
 of any part of Turkish territory by Foreign Powers ; and for 
 that reason, an English colony would be admitted with good- 
 will, with trust and confidence to the advantages of Turkish 
 subjects, and be privileged in enjoying the privileges which 
 the rights of a Turkish subject confer. 
 
 P.S. The proceeding pages were in the press, when the 
 Standard of December 21st inst., brought us the following 
 correspondence from Constantinople, December 14th, than 
 what could be more conclusive in support of our plans and of 
 our warning to the English bondholders of Turkey ? 
 
 No further progress has been made since I last wrote towards the accu- 
 mulation of funds for the payment of the January dividends, and people 
 begin to hint that no more money can be got in from the country, or that 
 the little which may arrive is imperatively required for the war and for 
 other purposes. It is a fact that all the vilayets are heavily in arrear, and 
 that the arrears cannot be got in. It is the normal condition of the tax- 
 gatherers to be in arrear, and if they are heavily pressed they have no choice 
 but to admit their insolvency. In the vilayet of the Danube last year the 
 tithes only yielded 53 per cent, of their estimated amount. The greater 
 part of the remaining 47 per cent, was left in the hands of the tax- 
 gatherer. At present the vilayet of Angora, one of the richest in the 
 Empire, is heavily in arrear. ft was expected to remit 240.000 Turkish 
 pounds before the end of this month, but as yet it has only remitted 22,000 
 (twenty-two thousand out of two hundred and forty thousand) Turkish 
 pounds on account. The mutessanif s and the caimacans of the province 
 have been urged to exert themselves for the recovery of the remainder, 
 but no one expects to succeed. It is my firm belief that Turkey can pay 
 the bondholders nothing for four or five years, and that if they wish to see 
 their money at any future time they had better give her the easiest possi- 
 ble terms, and allow her at least that amount of time for the liquidation 
 of the heavy amount of internal debt which cripples every interest in the 
 country, and for the development of her vast natural resources. She can- 
 not create her agriculture, or work her mines, or call back to life the in- 
 dustries for which she was once famous, without a liberal application of 
 money, and, of course, that money will not bring an immediate return. 
 So long as she is forced to impose an excessive taxation on her subjects, 
 and to withhold the money which is due to all her private creditors, it 
 will be impossible for her to make any satisfactory and permanent pro- 
 vision for the liquidation of her public debt. Her internal difficulties 
 will increase from day to day ; province after province will fall away from 
 her, and the bondholders, after being tantalised from quarter to quarter 
 with trifling instalments of their money, will see the remainder disappear 
 from them altogether." 
 
 The Daily Telegraph brings in its number of the 22nd of
 
 XV. 
 
 Dec., a letter dated Constantinople, Dec. 14th, containing the 
 following : 
 
 " I have ridden out to-day for some fifteen miles into the interior, and 
 through a district which, if it had been in the neighbourhood of any other 
 European capital, would have been tended like a garden. As my eye 
 ranged over long lines of hillg and valleys, innocent of the plough, and 
 cropped only by a few lean kine and ragged ill-nurtured sheep, I thought 
 of the trim market-gardens by which London and Paris are surrounded, 
 and of-the wealth which English and French labour knows how to ex- 
 tract from a soil less fertile and under a sun less propitious than those 
 with which Providence has blessed the Turk. It is customary for sciolists 
 who know nothing of their subjects to say that agriculture in Turkey 
 does not prosper because it has no roads and no markets ; but here, at the 
 doors of Constantinople, we have roads of fair quality, and a market 
 which craves supplies, and which will continue to lack traffic and to lan- 
 guish in the absence of produce, so long as agriculture lies bound hand 
 and foot in the fetters which ignorance, bigotry and chicanery have forged 
 for her. There is not on the face ef the earth a more lovely country 
 than this." 
 
 In further support of our project we leave the above im- 
 partial statements to our readers without comment. 
 
 That our opinion concerning the presumptuous intervention 
 of the Powers in the affairs of Turkey is not an isolated one, 
 results from a leading article in the Daily Telegraph of Dec. 
 28th, purporting that, 
 
 " The constant intervention of the Consuls or Ambassadors, sometimes for 
 the purpose of removing a really henest Governor, is an element of annoy- 
 ance to the Porte, and a source of insuperable difficulty in the work of 
 government, but is for that reason greatly cherished by certain of the 
 Powers. The extra-official consular and ambassadorial interference not 
 the mere legal action of the consular courts constitute an imperium in 
 iiii/ii'i-io which, as useful to ambitious purposes and as loosening the homo- 
 geneity of the Ottoman Empire, will not be readily given up, whatever 
 professions of solicitude for the welfare Of the rayahs it may be found 
 convenient to make for the benefit of a badly informed European opinion. 
 
 and, concluding, the Daily Telegraph adds : 
 
 " We trust the Porte will have the firmness, with the countenance of Eng- 
 land, to reject every plan of quasi-tutelage and partial or joint protecto- 
 rate, and declare that she will rather lose altogether in fair fight a small 
 and unimportant district than consent to hold it on terms which would 
 imperil her sovereign rights over every province in her dominions."
 
 tdi\\t 0f 
 
 fT^HE Daily Telegraph, commenting upon the 
 memorandum issued by the Turkish Govern- 
 ment on the 20th of October last, suggests 
 that the investors in Turkish Loans are con- 
 tributing several millions sterling a-year towards 
 the regeneration of the Eayas, and adds, "FROM 
 
 THIS NOVEL POINT OF VIEW, IN FACT, THE REGENERATOR 
 
 OF TURKEY is THE FOREIGN BONDHOLDER." 
 
 These words of the Daily Telegraph may have 
 been meant to be half or wholly ironical ; yet, 
 taken seriously, they contain a great truth, in 
 fact, the key to the whole situation. They indi- 
 cate the basis on which the Foreign Bondholders 
 must act, in order, not only to recover their due,
 
 but also to contribute mightily, in the evident in- 
 terest of England, towards the political restoration 
 of the Turkish Empire. 
 
 If the millions lent by England to Turkey were 
 lost to-morrow for ever, and yet the legitimate in- 
 fluence and necessary power of the Turkish Empire 
 restored, the loss would he a small one to the 
 English nation, compared to the lasting benefit 
 which would accrue to England from that restora- 
 tion. 
 
 We hope to prove this in the following 
 pages, after having ventured to give the present 
 bondholders some serious advice as to the means 
 of consolidating and making good their claim, and 
 at the same time attaining the goal of what Eng- 
 land must always consider as the surest guarantee 
 of her safety in the East. 
 
 It is an axiom in the now generally acknow- 
 ledged principles concerning the liabilities of 
 nations, a doctrine, in fact, which constitutes a 
 regular system with its determined laws and neces- 
 sary issues, that no country can pay its debts other- 
 wise than from its own resources ; and that, if these 
 resources do not keep pace with its liabilities, such a
 
 country is on a sure and direct way towards bank- 
 ruptcy. 
 
 It is for the present useless to comment on 
 the recklessness with which bankers, brokers, and 
 the public in general, induced by the prospect or 
 fallacious promises of large profits, have embarked 
 their money in Turkish Loans. 
 
 If they had been wise, or simply prudent, they 
 would have satisfied themselves, before parting 
 with their money, as to the real basis on which the 
 demands for credit on the part of the Turkish 
 Government were founded ; and would have re- 
 quired to know where and to whom their savings 
 were going, securing at the same time a guarantee 
 for the profitable and reproductive employment of 
 them. 
 
 We know very well that to ask such a guarantee 
 would have sounded like an undue interference 
 with the affairs of a country seemingly befriended 
 by England, and would have offended its dignity. 
 But, considered from the side of practical business 
 and sound sense, is it just, we ask, is it right that a 
 Government should be authorised to put their hands 
 into people's pockets under fallacious representa-
 
 6 
 
 tions, and promises which they know themselves 
 unable fully to fulfil ? 
 
 We have already witnessed so many changes 
 for the better in the official management of human 
 affairs during a quarter of a century, that we may 
 in a few years expect greater changes still in that 
 direction ; and that the time will soon come when 
 we shall possess Foreign Offices whose chief busi- 
 ness and care will be to control all matters con- 
 cerning and affecting the international interests of 
 the community, and enact such guarantees for inter- 
 national loans as will make the money advanced 
 to foreign Governments almost as secure as if it 
 were in the lenders' pockets. 
 
 But that time has not yet come, and meanwhile 
 the best thing we can do is to advise the deluded 
 English shareholders TO HELP THEMSELVES. They 
 have happily to deal with a well-disposed Govern- 
 ment and an honest people. The Turks can be 
 certainly upbraided with having imprudently spent 
 the money they so easily obtained ; they are far 
 behind us in all that belongs to science, industry, 
 and a well-regulated Government ; but they are 
 strictly honest, and whatever may have been
 
 alleged against them by the abettors of Eome 
 since the Crusades, and nowadays by Ultramon- 
 tane zealots, they are essentially tolerant. 
 
 They do not try to make proselytes, and they 
 are particularly hostile to proselytism ; if you 
 put aside certain forms, they are Christians in the 
 broader and humane acceptance of the word ; but 
 they hate the idolatry of Kome. 
 
 If any person looks closely and without prejudice 
 at the barrier between Islamism and Christianity 
 (in the pure and Protestant sense of the word), 
 the separation between both appears simply a 
 thin wooden partition, which has been wickedly 
 represented as a barrier of impassable rocks by 
 Komanism, because of the superiority of the Islam 
 over their own gross idolatry. 
 
 There is almost no barrier at present left be- 
 tween us, for polygamy is disappearing fast from 
 among them, and all Turks who lived at the school 
 of Western civilization, were so wrapt up in admira- 
 tion of our female society, that I myself often 
 heard them curse the motives and prejudices 
 which prevented them from contracting marriages, 
 especially in England.
 
 8 
 
 We have read of late in the papers the fatal 
 result of the fascination exercised by an English 
 lady on a promising Hindoo student of our indus- 
 try. This is not an isolated case, and we are con- 
 vinced that frequent intermarriages will bring in 
 a few years the Eastern world near us, on the 
 ground of Protestantism ; for all the eminent Turks 
 in Constantinople and elsewhere give their children 
 a splendid education, making their daughters 
 thoroughly unfit for the secluded humiliation of 
 the harem, which will soon be thrown open by the 
 emancipation of women, and by the thorough 
 establishment of monogamy as a necessary con- 
 sequence of that emancipation. 
 
 Let us not forget that polygamy was TOLEEATED 
 by Mahomet, but not imposed by any law of 
 the Prophet, who was compelled to yield to an 
 inveterate custom of the East, almost as old as the 
 oldest records in the Bible. 
 
 We were obliged to enter into these seeming 
 trifles, because they become very serious symptoms 
 if observed nearer, and, in fact, will greatly contri- 
 bute to prepare the ground for the edifice of which 
 I shall now endeavour to sketch the main outlines.
 
 9 
 
 As Turkey can only by her own means disburden 
 herself from her immensely accumulated debt, it 
 is clear at once to all who know Turkey, that those 
 means are at present inadequate to her wants, and 
 that the only way left open to the shareholders is, 
 to help Turkey to find new means for her present 
 wants, and develop her old ones. 
 
 It is beyond doubt that the Turkish Government 
 and the Sultan will be compelled to introduce the 
 strictest economy at Court, and in all branches of 
 administration ; yet, even then, they will not find 
 in the already over-taxed peasantry the consider- 
 able resources needed for her present financial 
 difficulties. 
 
 And as the Turkish Government must, on that 
 account, feel disposed to meet the shareholders 
 more than half-way in acceding to all proposals 
 by which Turkey would see her burden alle- 
 viated, both would easily come to an under- 
 standing, based on large concessions on the part 
 of the Sultan. 
 
 These concessions could be no other than terri- 
 torial. Turkey is the land par excellence for colonis- 
 ation, by the richness of her soil and her vast
 
 10 
 
 mineral resources, hitherto almost unexplored, or 
 at least not utilised. 
 
 Therefore, let the shareholders the English, 
 we mean come together, and name a committee of 
 influential men, whose authority would secure the 
 moral co-operation of Government. 
 
 That committee would send one or two delegates 
 to Constantinople, in order to examine what con- 
 cessions on the side of the Porte would be most 
 profitable to the shareholders and most beneficial 
 to Turkey itself. 
 
 The committee, after having sounded the Govern- 
 ment of the Padishah on its intentions, would fur- 
 ther examine what part of Turkey in Europe, to 
 begin with, is most in need of means of transport 
 and communication, and likely to profit most by 
 them, making those means productive at the same 
 time. 
 
 For that part of Turkey, the committee would 
 come in for a grant of concession of a territory, 
 vast enough to establish a colony of European 
 engineers, mechanics, artisans, and labourers, who 
 would establish tramways for all wheat -corn and 
 horses abounding in Turkey with a gauge as broad
 
 11 
 
 as that of the Turkish railways, in order to be 
 easily converted into the latter if necessary. 
 
 The colonists immigrating from Europe would 
 establish provisory settlements, destined to be- 
 come railway stations, and, later, villages or small 
 towns ; their inhabitants, Christians or Turks, pro- 
 viding, by their custom to the tramways, a bonus, 
 which would be collected by the company of bond- 
 holders, with a royalty to the Sultan. 
 
 Each immigrant workman would receive a piece 
 of ground large enough to live on with his family, 
 and to earn a handsome yearly surplus; and as 
 the association of shareholders would endeavour 
 to secure much more territory than would be 
 necessary in the onset, the thriving workmen 
 could become large farmers, by acquiring with 
 their earned surplus larger portions of ground 
 than that primitively allotted to them. 
 
 The jurisdiction of the colonies would be reserved 
 to the colonists themselves at first, by the election 
 of judges, provisorily named from the elder and 
 most respected men of the community. 
 
 The colonists would receive from the Association 
 tents, or small wooden houses, so planned as to
 
 12 
 
 be easily enlarged when needed ; also aratory in- 
 struments, and seeds for a year. The question 
 of cattle, to be let out to the colonists, would 
 be settled afterwards. 
 
 No taxes of any kind would be levied during the 
 first year ; but, at the end of it, the colonists 
 would be bound to pay a small sum towards re- 
 funding to the Association the advances for the 
 first instalment ; as also in the second year an- 
 other small sum for the same purpose ; and so on, 
 till complete extinction of the debt : besides a 
 small ground-rent on the granted property, and 
 the same for twenty consecutive years, when the 
 colonist would become an absolute and indepen- 
 dent freeholder of the tenement, liable only to 
 moderate taxes, of which the amount would be 
 settled beforehand between the Company and the 
 Turkish Government. 
 
 The colonist working on the tramways would 
 receive his pay half in money and half in cheques, 
 which would be received by the Company in pay- 
 ment of advances made taxes and ground-rent ; 
 as also, later, for the further acquisition of land by 
 the colonists.
 
 13 
 
 The Turkish Government would not only par- 
 take of a reasonable share to be fixed beforehand 
 in the income of the Company from the conceded 
 lands, the tramways, the mines, quarries, forests, etc., 
 but every shareholder, in exchange of the conceded 
 territory, would consent to liberate the Govern- 
 ment of one-half per cent, on the shares of the 
 adjourned debt; which means the one to be repaid 
 provisionally in paper, thus rendering easy for the 
 Sublime Porte the liquidation of her debt. 
 
 Shareholders would be admitted by preference to 
 become members of the Association, and entitled to 
 its benefits, accruing from mines, quarries, forests, 
 means of communication, etc. ; on which, however, 
 a royalty would be stipulated for the Sultan and his 
 Government. 
 
 The colony would be placed under the influence 
 and control of our diplomatic agents in Constanti- 
 nople, who, together with the representatives of the 
 German Empire, are highly respected there ; the 
 latter being moreover interested as much as 
 England in the prosperity and integrity of Turkey 
 as a political power. 
 
 We mean also to say, that if Germany were to
 
 14 
 
 send colonists to the English establishment, the 
 fact would meet with high approval from the 
 German official world. 
 
 It would not he desirable to recruit or admit 
 colonists of the Roman creed, their rites being in 
 the highest degree offensive to Mussulmans, who, 
 at the same time, detest riots and drunkenness, 
 both concomitants, as we all know, of Irish emi- 
 grants, wherever they go. 
 
 The colonists of Roman creed ought to be 
 settled apart, in villages remote from any Mussul- 
 man community ; the more as their priests are 
 dangerous meddlers and busybodies, succeeding 
 absolutely in nothing but in creating difficulties 
 for the countries of which they are subjects, as 
 the French have experienced in Algeria, in China, 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 We want to live in peace with the Moslems, 
 and befriend them; and the English rule in India 
 has shown long years since how such things can 
 be managed. 
 
 Protestant Holland has lived in peace and done 
 good business with Japan under a thousand more 
 obstacles than we ever shall meet with amongst
 
 15 
 
 the relatively civilized Turkish peasantry, who are 
 peaceful, kind, intelligent, and open to all that 
 could alleviate their hard condition. 
 
 And that we can and will do, by the best of 
 proselytism and propaganda : good examples in 
 behaviour, in husbandry, in all those superior arts 
 of which an Englishman is justly proud, and by 
 which he is sure to command the confidence and 
 even moral allegiance of the hitherto diffident 
 and prejudiced Moslem. 
 
 We are not come to preach new doctrines ; the 
 doctrines of England and her statesmen are liberal, 
 especially in all that relates to foreign nations, 
 and they keep pace with the progress of the age. 
 Yet we have of late witnessed a salutary authori- 
 tative interference in foreign rjolitics on the side 
 of England, which will exercise the highest in- 
 fluence over the whole political and financial 
 world. 
 
 Alderman Cotton, the new Lord Mayor elect, 
 has inaugurated a policy which we would call 
 extra-official, if the Lord Mayor of London was 
 not representing the mighty London city with the 
 same authority as the Government issued from
 
 16 
 
 Parliament represents the English nation. He 
 has hanished from the time-honoured festivities of 
 the Guildhall the representatives of those States 
 which have acted dishonestly towards the English 
 nation, hut he has not excluded Turkey; and that 
 was right, for Turkey has only postponed the pay- 
 ment of her debt, for which her resources offer a 
 certain guarantee, if properly managed, as by good 
 and timely advice they have every chance to be. 
 
 The interference on the part of the highest city 
 magistrate, by shutting the gates of the Guildhall 
 against defaulters, on whom the doors of all the 
 magnates of the city are closed, is a warning 
 which will turn to the lasting honour of the Lord 
 Mayor elect, and give the borrowing States a hint 
 which will be lost neither on the borrowers nor on 
 the lenders. 
 
 Let us now animadvert to the probable, al- 
 most certain, result of a vast European colony 
 in Turkey. 
 
 The example of skill and thrift put by English 
 hands to the Turkish peasantry will produce the 
 host consequences. The Turkish peasant, relieved 
 of ruining taxes, will strive to become happy,
 
 17 
 
 wealthy, comfortable, like the men come from 
 the west to teach him how to appreciate and 
 bless better laws, a better administering of them, 
 a juster and more equitable re-partition of benefits 
 between the master and the subject. 
 
 Nor is this all; for the future destinies of 
 Turkey will interest thousands of Englishmen; 
 some from the mere interest of their money, but 
 others, and a greater number, from higher patrio- 
 tic feelings and from foresight in national politics. 
 
 That Kussia is slowly advancing towards Con- 
 stantinople, as well as towards the English Empire 
 in the East, is as evident as is the light of the sun. 
 If ever Kussia ruled at Constantinople, England 
 would descend to the rank of a third-rate power ; 
 for, the possession of Constantinople is the key of 
 the Empire over India and Egypt. From Con- 
 stantinople, the Czar, arrived at the summit of 
 Russian ambition, may cry out in his triumph, 
 Super et Garamantas et Indos preferem imperiumt 
 
 Napoleon I. used to say that Constantinople 
 was the key of European domination. Times have 
 changed, it is true : America has become that 
 which Napoleon could neither have foreseen nor, 
 
 2
 
 18 
 
 if foreseen, understood ; but what he said then is 
 true to this very day. If Eussia reigns on the 
 Bosphorus, English rule is fatally doomed. 
 
 England may he proud of her immense influ- 
 ence in the world, not due, like once the Spanish 
 supremacy, to coined gold, exacted from the new 
 world, hut to her industry, which 'made the world a 
 willing tributary of a supremacy which can never 
 be humbled as long as England is prominent by 
 her energy for commerce, industry, liberty at home 
 and abroad, and for her conscience of rights which 
 she must never abandon, of duties which she must 
 always manfully fulfil, come of it what may. 
 
 It is therefore our duty to consider what is the 
 real state of Eussia, in order to know what we 
 have to hope and what to fear. 
 
 We have, in the way of better views and sounder 
 appreciation of our interests, gained this advan- 
 tage that we would no longer consent to destroy 
 the Turkish fleet, as we did like dupes of Eussia, 
 and of the ill-timed sentimentality of Lord Byron 
 and other so-called Philhellenists, in a second 
 battle of Navarino. 
 
 England has made war against Eussia with
 
 19 
 
 France for ally, and a few days ago one of the 
 most heroic deeds of history has been recalled 
 to the memory of Englishmen, by the cele- 
 bration of the heroic fight at Balaklava. 
 
 And what was the conduct of Eussia and of 
 her whilom adversary, Napoleon III. allied with 
 England, after the conclusion of the Crimean 
 war ? 
 
 The first care of Russia was to gain back by 
 her diplomacy what she had lost in the field ; and 
 her success was complete, for Napoleon III., the 
 2>arvenu, proud of having humiliated Russia, whose 
 Emperor, refusing to call him brother, qualified him 
 simply but reluctantly his friend, was easily duped 
 cnguirlandc, as the Russians call it ; and his enemy 
 became more powerful than ever by the Treaty of 
 Paris, in which the allies gave up everything to 
 the arbitrary caprice of Russia without any earthly 
 guarantee for themselves, as the later results have 
 proved. 
 
 Before that issue people had thought that with 
 the death of Nicholas the feud would die out, and 
 that Alexander, his successor, would be tractable 
 and pacific ; but it proved precisely the contrary.
 
 20 
 
 Alexander called the whole nation to arms, sharing 
 in every respect the opinions of his brother 
 Constantine ; and it was only when the protracted 
 ruinous war, the prostration of Russian trade, and 
 the dearth of all commodities, had brought to resi- 
 piscence the Eussian nobility and the commercial 
 community; when all Russia lingered for peace, 
 that the Czar at last gave in, when the conquest of 
 Kars seemed to atone for the fall of Sebastopol, 
 and a secret understanding with Napoleon III. had 
 made him sure of getting the most advantageous 
 conditions of peace. 
 
 What is going to follow is mainly borrowed from, 
 or inspired by, German historians, travellers, philo- 
 sophers, as to what concerns Russia ; and they are 
 well known and deservedly esteemed in England 
 for their conscientious researches, their accuracy, 
 and their veracity in statements. 
 
 After the Treaty of Paris, Russia evidently 
 favours the projects of France on Italy ; not in 
 the interest of Napoleon III., but with the aim 
 of humiliating her hereditary enemy, Austria. 
 
 Russia thought that a simulated cordial under- 
 standing with France would overawe Europe.
 
 21 
 
 England could but with jealousy view it, and 
 Prussia was docile to Eussian dictates. 
 
 Immediately after the conclusion of peace, 
 Alexander went to Varsovia to grant the Poles 
 a constitution, and warn them, at the same time, 
 against what he called dangerous illusions. 
 
 From Varsovia the Czar went to Berlin, on the 
 26th of May, 1865, to strengthen the old and 
 intimate alliance between the Romano ws and the 
 Hohenzollern. 
 
 And, in fact, the Czar could not thank enough 
 the King of Prussia for his neutrality during the 
 war, and for having dissuaded Austria from joining 
 the allies, keeping at the same time aloof from 
 the treaty of the 15th April of the same year. 
 
 And yet that conduct had not been approved 
 hut even blamed by Germany, whose people hate 
 Russia most cordially. 
 
 The Emperor did not go beyond Berlin, but his 
 mother, Nicholas's widow, went soon afterwards 
 to visit her daughter, Princess Olga, who became, 
 later, the queen of Wiirtemberg. The Empress 
 squandered immense sums on the penurious pea- 
 sants of Wiirtemberg, trying to prove that the
 
 22 
 
 Bussian finances had not suffered by the war, a 
 rather transparent fiction, as it was notorious that 
 the money spent by the Empress Dowager had 
 cost fifteen and even twenty per cent. 
 
 But that did not satisfy completely enough 
 Bussian pride and hypocrisy. Alexander had 
 resolved to be crowned at Moscow. The solemnity 
 took place on the 7th of September, 1856, in the 
 presence of all the foreign ambassadors. 
 
 Alexander had assembled for this ceremony 
 200,000 men, the flower of the Bussian army ; and 
 the envoys of foreign powers were compelled to 
 witness the act of defiance thrown in the face of 
 astonished Europe. 
 
 A great number of German princes and princesses 
 had come there, to be eclipsed by the pomp of 
 foreign ambassadors. 
 
 But the humiliation of the latter was to be 
 absolute, complete. 
 
 In midst of the foreigners and of the high digni- 
 taries of the Bussian Court appeared suddenly the 
 representatives of the various provinces which form 
 the immense Bussian Empire imposing figures, 
 who seemed to belong to another age, an heroic
 
 23 
 
 world long forgotten ; men with a proud look and 
 a disdainful mien, but resplendent with jewels. 
 
 The eye met groups like this one hundred 
 horsemen mounting magnificent steeds, and 
 wearing the richest and most varied costumes ; 
 they were headed by an old man completely 
 covered with gold embroideries. It was Prince 
 Schtscherbatoff, marshal of the nobility of the 
 Government of Moscow. 
 
 They were the Boyards of the Empire, in their 
 national costumes, wearing the insignia of their 
 respective dignities. They were the descendants 
 of the mighty men who in olden times governed 
 the Empire conjointly with the Czars, and who 
 were mentioned often in the Ukases as having 
 agreed to what the Czar had decreed under the 
 approbation of the Patriarch. 
 
 Since Peter, nicknamed the Great, the power of 
 these Boyards has been curtailed ; but it is still 
 considerable, for every one commands over thou- 
 sands and some over hundreds of thousands of 
 serfs. 
 
 The partial emancipation of the serfs has struck 
 a deadly blow to their influence, and it is almost
 
 24 
 
 certain that the measures taken by the Czars since 
 three reigns towards that emancipation, were not 
 ordered out of humanity, nor from the desire or 
 foresight of founding a powerful state on the 
 happiness and prosperity of a free- people, but with 
 the aim of crushing the power of the ancient 
 nobility of the Empire, so averse in their national 
 pride to a foreign dynasty. 
 
 But all the vanities and pomp accumulated on 
 
 the 7th of September, 1856 all the embroideries, 
 
 .--all the jewels displayed, covered hideous ulcers, 
 
 affecting the whole body politic of the Empire like 
 
 a leprosy. 
 
 For the Czar bears, in the eyes of the Russian 
 people so jealous and proud of their nationality 
 a stigma which nothing can ever efface. All 
 the members of the present reigning dynasty are 
 descendants of Peter III., who came from Hoi- 
 stein, and was, consequently, a German; and of 
 his wife, Catherine II., who came from Anhalt, 
 and was a German ; so that the Roumanows of 
 to-day have not a single drop of Russian blood in 
 their veins. 
 
 All the dignitaries who surrounded the Czar on
 
 25 
 
 that memorable day were, and are still , night 
 and day open to conspiracies like those which 
 have so often shaken, and sometimes nearly over- 
 thrown, the dynasty of the foreign Czars, who, in 
 the eyes of the Muscovites, are nothing better than 
 usurpers. 
 
 All the powerful magnates of Muscovy hate the 
 Czars ; and their presence in St. Petersburg, the 
 new capital of the Empire, is particularly galling 
 to them, as they pretend that Moscow should be 
 the Imperial residence, as it always had been 
 before Peter I. transferred the seat of the Govern- 
 ment to St. Petersburg. 
 
 Ardent, enthusiastic writers oppose the Govern- 
 ment on a ground which we shall call Moscovitism, 
 and which must cause Alexander many a sleepless 
 night. There is but one element of unity in 
 Russia " the Hanks"; and to keep these ranks 
 
 in order, the Government has but two means at 
 its disposal the KNOUT, and Siberia. 
 
 The Government has, since Alexander II. came 
 to the throne, committed faults which may be con- 
 sidered as the outset of a general cataclysm in 
 Russia.
 
 The emancipation of the serfs was resorted to 
 with a dangerous precipitation, and it resulted in 
 a perilous application of a maxim of Kussian rule. 
 
 In times when serfs were an integral part of the 
 soil, adscripts glebce, the rural commune or parish 
 possessed in common a certain portion of land, 
 considered as communal and collective property, 
 because the lord of the soil, the nobleman, was 
 bound to find his peasants. 
 
 From time to time, the parish distributed her 
 land in such way that the father of a family 
 received a portion, of more or less extent, accord- 
 ing to the men of which he could dispose for the 
 culture of it ; and, conforming to a law founded on 
 long custom, it was determined what quantity of 
 ground was to be allotted to each individual. 
 
 This custom favours extremely the doctrines of 
 socialism and communism, as it corresponds to the 
 principle after which the parish, being at the same 
 time the landlord, has no right to let the individual 
 who lives upon it starve. Another consequence 
 of that system was, that the Government taxed 
 the communes collectively, and not its inhabitants 
 individually ; which induced the parish to deliver
 
 27 
 
 over to the Czar, for his army, her profligate and 
 destitute members, and keep the good working 
 men ; for the more active men there were in the 
 parish the easier became the collecting of taxes. 
 
 At the emancipation of the serfs, the property 
 which had been allotted to the parishes was taken 
 away from them ; the Government maintaining, 
 nevertheless, the duty for them to pay collectively 
 the taxes. This was at once decreeing black and 
 white. 
 
 The Government declares arbitrarily that such 
 and such a parish numbering so many individuals, 
 the whole of them will pay solidarily a fixed amount 
 of taxes, thus enacting the rule that it is not the 
 individual but the whole commune which is liable 
 for them. 
 
 Let us admit and in fact it is the common rule 
 that half of the parish is composed of good-for- 
 nothing individuals ; the consequence must be that 
 orderly hard-working men pay for them. And, 
 supposing a possible and probable case, that the 
 whole parish be composed of a set of loafers, it would 
 necessarily ensue, if only two hard-working men 
 were to live in it, these two would be compelled to
 
 28 
 
 pay for all the rest. No doubt the commune can 
 come down on the good-for-nothings and make 
 them pay, hut she is deprived of her former means 
 of coercion. 
 
 The lazy profligate can do nothing with the land, 
 as he does not cultivate it; and he laughs when 
 they take away from him by law that which is of 
 no value to him. 
 
 It is difficult to find in Eussia people who will 
 consent to become agricultural labourers. Agricul- 
 ture is abhorred in Eussia, and that is another 
 reason why the industrious man must work for the 
 profligate ; for what could a man do with the land 
 he has taken from the profligate for debt, if he can 
 neither cultivate it himself nor have it tilled by 
 others for want of willing hands ? 
 
 And it is thus that the industrious man loses 
 all courage, becoming soon lazy and indifferent 
 himself. 
 
 Since Eussia entered the paths of judicial reforms, 
 she possesses, it is true, Justices of Peace,, whom 
 their high salary makes independent. But the 
 Government places at the side of an act of 
 wisdom, an act of downright folly, by decreeing
 
 29 
 
 that the Justices of Peace be submitted every three 
 years to a popular re-election, and then of course, 
 such as have proved too severe in the opinion 
 of the majority which is composed, as we have 
 seen, of loafers and idlers lose their lucrative 
 position, to be replaced by magistrates esteemed 
 more supple, more corrupt, more disposed to make 
 law a mockery. 
 
 It will happen, for example, that an individual 
 shall drive his pigs in a field of com belong- 
 ing to his neighbour, not out of any malice, but 
 because it was more handy for him ; or a servant 
 engaged by contract to a master, will keep away 
 from him and amuse himself for three or four days. 
 The Justice of Peace, proclaiming the minimis 
 non curat Pretor, overlooks such trifles for fear 
 of losing his popularity, which means his daily 
 bread. 
 
 Is it, then, a wonder that the number of gin 
 houses has grown to such an extent that there are 
 districts where we count as many as one for every 
 group of 100 or 125 inhabitants, and that the 
 dealers in gin clear from their houses annual pro- 
 fits usually amounting to 2000 roubles ?
 
 30 
 
 Who could hear of such a state of things with- 
 out the utmost disgust and indignation ? 
 
 No man of honour, no civilized man, except such 
 as the raving Eussian publicist Katkow, who calls 
 THAT order of things the non plus ultra of a well- 
 conducted state, and has such monstrosities printed 
 in his Gazette de Moscoiv, and the Government 
 believes them, or feigns to believe them, and feels 
 disposed to glorify in his own wickedness and 
 folly. 
 
 But the consequences of such a blindness be- 
 come soon conspicuous. 
 
 The serf, ruined by his own laziness and by 
 drink, seeing how some of his comrades had got 
 on better, was reminded of the periodical allot- 
 ment of land. His former landlord was no longer 
 bound to keep him, it is true, but the crown had 
 bought him, and he considered himself logically as 
 the property of the Emperor, and according to 
 that primitive simple conclusion he believes in his 
 right to claim that the Emperor keep him as his 
 former landlord did. And that very man thinks 
 that the Emperor ought to order now and then 
 a re-allotment of land. In short, he deems that
 
 31 
 
 the Czar must take from, the rich the means of 
 keeping drunkards and idlers. 
 
 And it is in a soil thus prepared that the 
 Russian socialist, the revolutionary Bakounine, 
 sows the seed of a doctrine which, as it is 
 developed and spread, becomes the terror of the 
 Russian Government and of the foreign djniasty 
 which rules supreme and absolute in Russia. 
 
 Wherever you look out on Russia, its future is a 
 jfcysterious and dark one to the eye of the states- 
 man deserving that name, and nobody can foresee 
 what evil the order of things obtaining in that 
 enigmatic country may bring on herself and the 
 other States of the Continent. 
 
 The Russian expeditions in Asia, having no 
 other aim than to flatter Muscovite ambition and 
 to blindfold the people, under the pretence of con- 
 quests, must, in the long run, prove sterile ; be- 
 cause Russia has no genius for colonisation, no 
 genius for order, progress, or sound administration. 
 The Russians have aptitudes and ambition, but no 
 higher vocation, no higher aspiration than brutal 
 savage conquest. Love of mankind, of the welfare 
 of nations, is a stranger to them, and their ideas
 
 32 
 
 of liberty do not extend beyond low vulgar license. 
 As to Russian industry, it is so backward that the 
 Eussians themselves, when they speak of indif- 
 ferent products of industry, call them scornfully 
 RUSSIAN WORKMANSHIP. 
 
 And yet, to such a Government, based on no- 
 thing but pomp, vanity, hypocrisy and corruption, 
 we open wide the doors of our strong-boxes ; we 
 give our money to build railways, that she might 
 the easier throw her savage hordes, headed by 
 German adventurers, on Turkey and from Turkey, 
 on the English possessions in India. 
 
 The actual order of things in Russia govern- 
 ment and dynasty must and will be over- 
 thrown by a terrible revolution, fomented by the 
 Muscovite party and aided by peasants imbued 
 with the deleterious doctrines of Communism. 
 
 If Moscovitism triumphs, as it must finally, it 
 will surely repudiate the debts made by a Govern- 
 ment which the Muscovite magnates declare anti- 
 national, foreign, and without any root in the 
 nation. 
 
 There is perhaps not a loan not even a Hon- 
 duras one that inspires us with less confidence
 
 33 
 
 than the Russian loans, completely, absolutely 
 void as they are of every possible or even pro- 
 bable guarantee. 
 
 What resource would the English bondholders 
 have if Russia repudiated her debt ? which, in re- 
 alitj-, she is no more able to pay than overburdened 
 Turkey. None, for the English Government would 
 not wage war on behalf of the robbed and ruined 
 bondholders, although it would have gone to war 
 with China for the murder of an inferior diplomatic 
 agent. 
 
 \Ve predict to the English bondholders the 
 bankruptcy of the present order of things in 
 Russia, because Russia must come, inevitably, 
 to a terrible revolution. 
 
 Exercise too high a pressure on a steam boiler, 
 and it will burst. Indulge in too high a compres- 
 sion of the legitimate wish and demands, or even 
 the honourable prejudices, of a nation, and that 
 nation will fatally explode by a revolution, shatter- 
 ing to atoms the despotism and usurpation which 
 thought themselves secure behind what they 
 deemed an impregnable fortress coercion and 
 enslavement in all its forms. 
 
 3
 
 34 
 
 Russia has already seen many so-called palace 
 revolutions ; let its dynasty beware of " the 
 Forest of Dunsinane," marching fatally on St. 
 Petersburg to storm and destroy the castle of 
 Macbeth. 
 
 After the oppression of dull Metternich's poli- 
 tical, or rather police system, Austria came to a 
 revolution, and overthrew her antique dynasty. 
 The duller Charles X. brought over France the 
 unnecessary curse of a new revolution by the silly 
 ordinances of July, 1830. 
 
 And why was England safe from similar catastro- 
 phes, when the Continent was trembling on its 
 basis ? And why will it remain free from revolu- 
 tions, perhaps for ever ? Because of the superior- 
 ity of her statesmen and the wisdom of her twofold 
 senate. Because the higher classes, instead of 
 stubbornly sticking to principles which time has 
 matured into prejudices, give way to the general 
 ideas and aspirations of their people and the age ; 
 because, instead of acting on the impulse of neces- 
 sity, they honour and exalt their high station by 
 taking the lead of all measures commanded by the 
 spreading knowledge of the conditions of welfare,
 
 35 
 
 both moral and material, for mankind, for their 
 nation, for MAN. 
 
 And as the senate acts in corpore, so do the 
 individual members of the nobility. During the 
 last few days we saw a mighty peer apologize for a 
 blunder which he made by giving vent to an un- 
 tirned prejudice. This apology to public opinion 
 honoured him more than any other act of his 
 career. 
 
 English statesmen at the head of foreign affairs 
 act on the same principle as in their interior policy. 
 It will be the eternal honour of Lord Palmerston, 
 and its greatest and proudest title to the gratitude 
 of all nations, that he, a peer, gave up the ancient 
 Tory traditions in foreign affairs, to support the 
 cause of liberty against despotism all over the 
 world. 
 
 The nearer a country approaches the liberal 
 institutions, and adopts the liberal views of 
 England as possessing a Government strong by 
 the welfare of the people, backed by the latter, 
 and knowing no other pride, indulging in no 
 other boast than its prosperity, to those countries 
 we can entrust our money : France, Belgium,
 
 36 
 
 Holland, Germany, the United States, and, to a 
 certain extent, Italy. 
 
 THAT must be the barometer of all financial 
 men, who, as honest men and Englishmen, con- 
 sider their wealth, not as a hoard they can dispose 
 of arbitrarily, or like the Prodigal Son of Scrip- 
 ture, but as a part of the wealth and weal of the 
 nation, and as such to be managed and spent with 
 foresight and caution. 
 
 If a profligate, a spendthrift, after having got 
 through with his estates, knocked at the door of 
 an industrious banker or merchant for a loan, the 
 man of business would politely hold to him the 
 language of the thrifty ant of the fable to the 
 light-headed grasshopper. 
 
 And yet, when profligate, spendthrift, or deeply 
 devising Governments come to the powerful finan- 
 ciers of the city with an empty purse, and emptier 
 titles and promises, the financiers throw their 
 doors wide open, invite them inside, and beg them 
 to consider their strong-box as belonging, not to 
 the owner, but to the borrowing spendthrift ; and that 
 is the fact, for a Potentate reigning and governing on 
 a volcano, offers no guarantee of solvability ; and we
 
 37 
 
 should like to know if the Muscovite party over- 
 throwing the present Rotnanow dynasty, with the 
 deluded and degraded peasantry at their back, would 
 hesitate a moment to repudiate debts made by the 
 German dynasty, with no other guarantee or value 
 than the paper on which the bonds of debt are 
 printed. 
 
 When the blood runs to the head, is it not the fore- 
 boding of apoplexy ? It does nothing else, and will 
 never do anything else in Russia mayhap for centuries. 
 
 But it depends on us to make the blood run healthily 
 in the body of the Turkish Empire, by bringing it 
 down from the head to all its veins and arteries. 
 
 An English contemporary has given the advice to 
 annex Egypt, as a security of eventual changes at 
 Constantinople, for example, a protectorate of 
 Russia ; and recent events in Asia have shown us too 
 clearly what Russian protectorate means, not in the 
 long, but in the very short run. 
 
 England could not possibly be induced into a more 
 impolitic, nay, more criminal blunder, by which it 
 would plunge herself blindly, headlong, inevitably into 
 a general war. 
 
 Let us once for all consider on what general prin-
 
 38 
 
 ciple of wise and expedient policy Egypt must be 
 maintained as an independent state. 
 
 All the nations of the globe have a common interest 
 in that great and beneficial enterprise, the canal of 
 Suez ; and no nation can consent to let that work of 
 universal utility, with which no one would henceforth 
 dispense, become the exclusive property of any single 
 nation, and the probable object and occasion of a 
 dangerous menacing monopoly. 
 
 Taking in account the particular reasons for having 
 Egypt free and independent, as an impartial watch 
 -over the shortest road to the East, we find, first, that 
 England must not feel disposed to annihilate the most 
 devoted ally she has. 
 
 France would never willingly consent to an 
 annexion of Egypt by England, which cannot feel 
 inclined to make the best of the distress of her neigh- 
 bour to wound him to the heart by such an act of 
 iniquity. 
 
 And what if such act provoked on the part of 
 France, who hitherto stuck faithfully to the English 
 alliance, a resentment which would bring on a political 
 understanding between her and Russia ? 
 
 Those who think that France is maimed are wholly
 
 39 
 
 unacquainted with the real state of things. Prince 
 Bismarck may have thought so, and acted upon it ; 
 but his overbearing may once cost him dear. 
 
 Neither the United States, nor Germany, nor Italy, 
 nor the Minor States, like Sweden, Denmark, Hol- 
 land, and even Spain and Portugal, would give their 
 fiat to the possession of Egypt by England,' who 
 already exercises there all the power it can wish to 
 pretend to ; highly beneficial, we confess, to the wel- 
 fare of Egypt. 
 
 Englishmen explore for her, unknown regions ; ex- 
 tend her sway over barbarous countries ; command 
 and ^discipline her army ; build and man her ships ; 
 establish their railways and manufactures. 
 
 They are consulted in all things, and listened to 
 with deference by the Viceroy. What can England 
 wish beyond it, and what could she do more even if 
 she exercised a complete, established patronage over 
 that State ? 
 
 War and violence have never borne fruits either 
 to^ nations or to individuals. Let us endeavour to 
 become in Turkey what we have become in Egypt, 
 under infinitely greater obstacles ; and let it be not 
 only at the head, but also at the basis of the State.
 
 40 
 
 The only means of doing it is to propagate at 
 Constantinople advices like those which have brought 
 thither Mr. Scudamore, and which would have brought 
 there our great statesman, the Right Hon. W. E. 
 Gladstone, if he had not felt what insuperable diffi- 
 culties he would have to contend with on a ground 
 which was not prepared for the first steps he would 
 feel obliged to take, and which would have probably, 
 in such conditions, met with a failure. But that 
 is, for the present at least, of l^ss consequence. The 
 Sultan, who seems to be a rather money -hunting or 
 cunning gentleman, may have been induced to invite 
 Mr. Scudamore from hearing what vast resources the 
 English exchequer derived from the post and the 
 telegraphs, and have had simply in view an accruing 
 of resources for his Treasury. But what of that also 
 for the present ? Could the Sultan be induced to 
 invite to Constantinople a dozen practical English 
 administrators for the same motives, Turkish sove- 
 reigns, whoever they might be, would learn that it 
 .is their direct interest to enrich and not to rob and 
 impoverish their subjects, whose labour and thrift 
 alone can fill their exchequer and make the sovereign 
 really powerful and respected.
 
 41 
 
 By doing the contrary of Russia, by encouraging 
 instead of discouraging the peasantry, the Sultans 
 would oppose the strongest and safest barrier against 
 Russian encroachments. 
 
 But another political project than that of annexing 
 Egypt has been ventilated in the English press, 
 viz., the favouring the independent aspirations of 
 Roumania, Servia, Montenegro, and the Herze- 
 
 govina. 
 
 Whoever knows these countries well, knows at the 
 same time that it would be equivalent to throwing 
 them as a ready prey to Russia, whose Government, 
 by lavishing money on the prominent beggars of those 
 Principalities, exercises already, in concurrence with 
 Austria, who strives on towards the same goal, 
 a real protectorate over those small but important 
 communities. Guarantees ought certainly to be given 
 by the Porte for a more equitable government over 
 her non-Moslem subjects in those countries, but nothing 
 more. The lowest Turk is far superior to these de- 
 based wretches, whose inferiority and wicked cunning 
 inspires the Moslem with that contempt of which they 
 complain, and which Austrians or Russians, if they 
 ever ruled over them, would feel tenfold stronger.
 
 42 
 
 Years will pass before any light will penetrate into 
 that abyss of darkness and abjection. 
 
 A modus vivendi could easily be found between 
 the Turks and them, provided that modus vivendi 
 were drawn up by England, and not by hypocritical 
 and deceitful Russia, or by sneaky and, in these ques- 
 tions still, Jesuitical Austria. 
 
 "We have seen above what could be done in Turkey 
 at the summit of the State. Let us now go back 
 again to the basis. 
 
 Here, the only remedy are colonies. We hear from 
 
 i 
 
 certain sources that the Mormons, tracked by the 
 Government of the United States, have, as it was 
 advised to them to do long ago, resolved to seek 
 refuge in Turkey, where they will be received, as we 
 are assured, with open arms. The wonders they 
 di'd in converting sterile tracts into fertile land, will 
 certainly plead their cause in Turkey, where the 
 former Sultan had conceded a large territory to the 
 French poet Lamartine, out of which he could never 
 make anything for want of capital and able colonists, 
 which French people are certainly not. 
 
 And would it not be a shame for England to see 
 a non-Christian sect like the Mormons take root and
 
 43 
 
 thrive in Turkey, and they, Englishmen, who devote 
 hundreds of thousands a year for the propagation of 
 the Bible, and of Christian faith, look on to such 
 a probable result with absolute indifference, when 
 they could be realizing the simple plan indicated, and 
 which is realizable by mere small profitable advances 
 and without any possible loss ? 
 
 Such a conclusion seems to us impossible, and con- 
 trary to the genius and to the high religious feelings 
 of the English people. 
 
 The Sultan would be most happy to concede 
 suitable tracts of land for the colonisation of Turkish 
 territory, the more as it would tend to conciliate the 
 most influential of his bondholders. 
 
 But let us not pass lightly over the conditions on 
 which alone such establishments can succeed and 
 thrive. 
 
 Let our first colonists be engineers, mechanics, 
 agricultural labourers, and good religious men; but 
 let these latter not engage in a proselytism which 
 our long experience has taught us to be utterly 
 sterile all over the Mahometan world. Let us act 
 on the principle of that Scotch colony which went 
 out to the lands disclosed to us by Livingstone
 
 44 
 
 with engineers, artizans, labourers, and religious 
 men. 
 
 If our missionaries want to make propaganda, let 
 them work by example ; they are sure to exercise the 
 highest influence over the Turks, whom the overbur- 
 den of taxes makes indolent, but who are intelligent, 
 skilful, and accessible to all that is noble and gene- 
 rous. Let, therefore, all and every one of our religious 
 men study sedulously medicine and surgery, two 
 sciences which will open the door wide of every 
 Turkish family deprived in their hardships of every 
 medical aid. Christ was a Divine physician, and it 
 was by His miracles that He got the strongest hold 
 on the unbelievers. It would be blasphemy to think 
 of reviving His cures by mortal men ; but, by our 
 Creator's endless bounty, man has been, by his in- 
 telligence, capable of revealing and discovering the 
 Divine science for curing, within the bounds of mor- 
 tality, our earthly evils and misery; and to that 
 science and superiority of the West, Turks and 
 Mussulmans in general are more open to begin with 
 than to any other propaganda. 
 
 Let the wives of these missionaries busy themselves 
 Christianly about the welfare of Turkish wives and
 
 45 
 
 children, become their teachers and advisers for hus- 
 bandry, and the like useful arts, which enliven the 
 households of our countries. They will so convert 
 more souls to our truths by the force of example, than 
 all the missionaries could by their well-meant but 
 not readily-understood teaching. 
 
 Let us ascend from the plain to the mountain, 
 instead of descending from the hill to the valley. 
 The former method is the safest. Let us not force 
 ourselves on these people ; they will come to us by 
 the mere magnetic attraction of good example. 
 
 Every Englishman is justly proud of what was done 
 by Englishwomen in the Crimea, with Miss Nightingale 
 at their head. The Turks, to this day, admire and 
 venerate her, whose name in their language is Bulbul, 
 as Lady Montague tells us in her charming letters; and 
 if Miss Nightingale appeared suddenly in the midst 
 of the ranks of the Turkish army, or simply in the 
 streets of Constantinople, and she was named and 
 pointed out, she would meet with the same enthu- 
 siasm as if she were a sovereign, or with devotion as 
 an envoy to this earth from the land of mercy on a 
 mission of charity and self-sacrifice. 
 
 We hope that this appeal will be heard by all noble
 
 46 
 
 philanthropic and high-minded Englishmen and 
 English ladies ; and we are resolved to tell them one 
 great truth, openly, manfully, which a long experience 
 has taught and demonstrated to us. The immense 
 sums expended by England for the propagation of the 
 Scriptures have not attained the aims of the pious 
 and well-meaning donors, because giving a book is 
 not imparting the means of understanding it ; and the 
 spreading of the Holy Bible ought to have ended 
 where it begins, viz., the ground of its reception be 
 duly prepared ; the doctrine first preached by example; 
 and then, the book which consecrates it. 
 
 The Catholic propaganda has never succeeded but 
 with those poor people, especially negroes, who were 
 pagans, and whose paganism they replaced by 
 another, the paganism of Rome. 
 
 Never did the Roman propaganda dream even of 
 liberating from their inhuman masters the slaves, 
 whom, it is true, she had herself enslaved in her 
 superstitions. Their missionaries contented themselves 
 with preaching the slaves' resignation to the despotism 
 of inhuman masters, the negro -drivers, the dregs and 
 abomination of mankind. The Protestant missionary 
 preached the Gospel and emancipation.
 
 47 
 
 In China, the Roman missionaries established a 
 system of baptism which was a regular mockery. 
 Wherever they found a child, they baptized it with 
 the simple sign of the cross, conferring on the lowest 
 and most ignorant the power of doing the same, for a 
 consideration ; and they made mockery of christening 
 new-born children a means of exacting from the 
 Catholic population of Europe England being a 
 large contributor enormous sums, which ran, by 
 some channel or other, to the dark and mischievous 
 work of the Jesuits. 
 
 To give the Roman Church good advice, is trying 
 to wash a negro, and with the same success. 
 
 We do her too much honour in ever noticing the 
 ridiculous pretensions of a body which, like a burnt- 
 out candle-light, throws some vivid flashes before it 
 dies. 
 
 The Protestant faith must and will triumph all over 
 the world, but Protestant missionaries must add human 
 science which, after all, is of Divine origin to theo- 
 logical attainments. They will thus establish on a 
 lasting basis England's supremacy in Divine doctrine 
 as well as in human wisdom.
 
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