A GLANCE AT TURKISH HISTORY.
Had history recorded the increase and decrease in the numbers of mankind with the attention it has bestowed in chronicling the names of the worthless dynasties which have devoured the wealth of nations, and annihilated the accumulations of national industry, the history of the Turks would occupy a prominent place in the annals of the human race. No other people has made such extensive conquests. They subdued China before the Moguls, and they formed a considerable part of the armies of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, which subdued Russia and ravaged Syria. Even at the present day, though fallen from their ancient power, they are spread over a considerable portion of Europe and Asia, from the Adriatic and the Danube to the lake Baikal and the sources of the Lena. Their original seats are supposed to lie round the Altaï mountains. The Turkish nations of the present day, besides the descendants of the Seljouks, the Turkomans, and the Othomans, who dwell in the sultan’s dominions, are the Usbeks, the Ugours, the Kirgises, the Baskirs, the tribe called Nogay Tartars, and the so-called Tartars of Astrakan and Kasan. The real Tartars, or Moguls, are a different people, and the Kalmuks on the Volga are of Tartar, not Turkish race.
The only modern European nations which pretend to be mentioned in Scripture, are the Turks and Russians. Historical antiquaries tell us that Togarmah is used for Turk; and they affirm, that the Targhitaos of Herodotus, whom the Scythians called the founder of their nation, and the son of Jupiter, is identical with the Togarmah of Moses and Ezekiel.[7]
The Russians can boast of much more precise notice in Scripture than their enemies the Turks. Though their name is omitted in our translation, it occurs in the Septuagint three times, and under the peculiar ethnic denomination in which it reappears in the Byzantine historians. The word is Ῥὼς, and on this name Gibbon remarks, “Among the Greeks this national appellation has a singular form as an undeclinable word;” but he does not mention that it is found in the Septuagint. The second and third verses of the thirty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel, according to the Greek text, read thus: “Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of the Russians (ἄρχοντα Ῥὼς), Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, I am against thee, O chief prince of the Russians, Meshech and Tubal.” And again, in the first verse of the thirty-ninth chapter: “Therefore, son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of the Russians, Meshech and Tubal.”
The Russians are said also to be noticed in the Koran, though not with the same distinctness, under the name of Al Rass. In the chapter Al Forkan, which is the twenty-fifth of Sale’s translation, it is said, “We have prepared for the unjust a painful torment. Remember Ad and Tamud, and those who dwelt at Al Rass.” In the chapter called the letter Kaf, which is the fiftieth of Sale’s translation, we also find: “The people of Noah, and those who dwelt at Al Rass, and Thamud, and Ad, and Pharaoh, accused the prophets of injustice.”
The earliest authorities, however, who furnish us with an account of the Turkish nation as it now exists, with the distinct nationality and language preserved to the present day, are the Byzantine historians, Menander and Theophylactus Simocalta. The latter historian gives a very interesting account of the condition of the Turks in the sixth century of our era. They were then the sovereigns of a great city called Tavgas; they were the most valiant and populous of nations; they lived under the protection of just laws, and carried on an extensive commerce. Tavgas is supposed to be the name of a Chinese city, which was then one of the seats of the Turkish government, for there is no doubt that somewhat before this period the Turks had conquered a considerable part of the north of China. Indeed, traces of the language of these early conquerors are still preserved, which are identical with the Turkish spoken to-day at Constantinople, for time has effected less change in the Turkish than in any other European language. Collateral evidence concerning the power of the Turks in central Asia during the latter part of the fifth, and early part of the sixth centuries, is afforded by the history of the life and travels of Hiouen-thsang, recently translated by Monsieur Julien, whether that work be really the composition of a Chinese contemporary, or only a Chinese compilation from earlier Arabic authorities.[8]It is certain that about the commencement of the sixth century the Turks ruled all central Asia, as far south as the Hindookoosh, including the ancient Sogdiana and Bactria.
The first political intercourse between the Turks and a European state occurred towards the middle of the sixth century. The great khan of the Turks sent an embassy to Justinian I., to persuade the Roman empire to refuse an asylum to the Avars. The dominions then ruled by the great khan formed the first of the three great Turkish empires which have exercised an important influence on the social condition of the Christian nations, both in Europe and Asia. The second of these empires was that of the Seljouk Turks, which caused the crusades, and ruined the Byzantine empire. And the third was that of the Othoman Turks, which destroyed the Greek empire, and has long been the master, patron, or tyrant, of the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria.
The first Turkish empire took its rise from the oppression of the Avars, who were the dominant people in Asia, and who are supposed to have been a mixed race of Mogul and Turkish origin. The oppression of the Avars was submitted to as long as the body of the Turkish people was confined by its circumstances to an agricultural and pastoral life. The population being dispersed in small communities, which lived without much intercommunication, was composed of as many isolated tribes as there are springs in the plains they inhabitated; and these tribes were as incapable of acquiring common motives of action as the population of the islands in the eastern seas. But the scene changed in the fifth century. The Turks who dwelt on Mount Altaï grew rich by mining operations and manufactures. They became the principal traders in iron and steel, and the manufacturers and merchants of the arms and armour required in the Avar empire. But the government soon endeavoured to appropriate the wealth which it saw was created by the industry of its subjects to administrative purposes. Taxation was increased, and monopolies were established, to enable the court of the Avar emperor to display the power of centralisation. Governmental pageantry, court spectacles, and military pomp, consumed the wealth of the people in the unknown capital of this vanished empire; while the Turkish people, now inspired by common feelings, called for an administration that would dig wells, and construct cisterns and caravanserais in the desert. The Turks were now united by the lessons which their trade had disseminated through every province. With improved intercourse they had gained a more enlarged experience, and acquired national feelings. They at last rose in rebellion; and before the middle of the sixth century, the first great Turkish empire was founded by Toumen the blacksmith, the ancestor of Genghis Khan, and Timor the lame. This empire extended from the Caspian sea to the ocean. The great Khan of the Turks, Askel, who sent an embassy to the Roman emperor Justinian I., is supposed to have been the son of Toumen.
In the year 568 another embassy arrived at Constantinople from the great Khan Dizaboulos, with a letter for Justin II., written in the Scythian character, which, whatever it was, was not unknown to the learned interpreters of the Roman foreign office. One great object of Turkish diplomacy had been to get possession of the whole of the silk trade with Europe, but the Turkish ambassadors had been astonished to find that Justinian had already succeeded in introducing the culture of the silk-worm in the Roman empire, and that the imperial court was rich in native silk, manufactured in Asia Minor and the islands. The ambassadors of Dizaboulos, however, concluded the first formal treaty between the Turks and the emperors of Constantinople; the bond of union between the courts of Mount Altaï and Byzantium was hostility to Persia, and very profound and enlightened views concerning the maintenance of the balance of power in the East, while the tie which then connected the interests of the Turks with those of the Romans and Greeks was commerce.
The long wars between the Persian and Roman empires, and the arbitrary measures of the Persians, had stopped all commercial communications between India and Europe through the Persian dominions. The countries on the shores of the Mediterranean had in consequence been compelled to draw their supplies of Indian and Chinese produce, and the productions of the Spice islands, of which there was then an immense consumption, by way of the Red Sea. This trade, even as early as the time of Pliny, was so extensive as to excite the wonder of that aristocratic Roman. In the sixth century it had greatly increased, and both Arabia and Ethiopia were in a most prosperous condition, from the great profits it poured into those countries. In the year 523 the king of Ethiopia was able to collect a fleet of thirteen hundred ships in the Red Sea, and to obtain abundant supplies for a large army on the coast of Arabia, where a single ship and a company of infantry would find it difficult to procure provisions for a week. After the reign of Justinian this commerce rapidly declined. The increase of piracy on the coast near the entrance of the Persian gulf, and the wars of the Ethiopian kings in Arabia, were simultaneous with the poverty, depopulation, and destruction of capital in Africa and Italy, caused by the Vandal and Gothic wars of Justinian. At this crisis, when Alexandria and Rome were rapidly declining, the security which the extent of the Turkish empire and the policy of the great Khan afforded to merchants, turned a great portion of the Eastern trade towards Constantinople. The Indian traders began to prefer the caravan journey through the deserts of central Asia, to the tedious and dangerous navigation of the Red Sea. By sea they could no longer venture to visit the intermediate ports from fear of pirates, while on the land journey they could carry on a profitable trade in slaves, and in exchanging the precious metals, at many stations on their way. The great importance of the slave trade at this time in central Asia is proved by the circumstance that the emperor Tiberius II.,A.D.578–582, formed a corps of fifteen thousand mamlouks, composed entirely of purchased slaves, imported into the Roman empire by the traders engaged in the Indian or the fur trade. Had the supply continued, and had the successors of Tiberius II. pursued the same policy, the Roman empire would in all probability have been overthrown by Turkish mamlouks, as that of the caliphs of Bagdat was by following a similar military system at a later period.
The first Turkish empire was not of long duration. The Khazar kingdom, whose relations with the Roman and Persian empires in the hour of their decline give it an important place in history, arose in its western fragments, and inherited a considerable portion of its power and commercial influence. But the Khazars, though called Turks by the Byzantine historians, Nicephorus the patriarch and Theophanes, are supposed by modern scholars to have been a people of mixed race.
There are several points connected with the history of the rise and fall of the first Turkish empire which are interesting, as marking an era in the progress of civilisation. At no previous period in the history of mankind were greater changes made in the commercial, political, and religious ideas of mankind. Religion was then closely connected with political organisation. Christianity was identified with the Roman government; the religion of Zoroaster with Persian domination. The fact that both Christianity and the religion of Zoroaster were declining in the sixth century is unquestionable. Historians have not clearly explained the causes of a revolution so degrading to human nature. In Arabia, in central Asia, and in Spain, an extensive conversion to Judaism heralded the extraordinary rapidity with which the lizard-eaters of Arabia, led by the followers of Mahomet, exterminated the religion of Zoroaster, and converted the majority of the inhabitants of Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Africa to Mohammedanism. It is evident that an internal canker in the social condition of the Christians in the Roman empire, and of the inhabitants of Persia, prepared the way for the desolation of many of the richest provinces of the ancient world.
The second Turkish empire was founded by the Seljouks in the eleventh century. Its power grew up on the political decline of the caliphate of Bagdat and of the Byzantine empire. The dominions of the caliphs had been dismembered, and Bagdat itself had been plundered by Turkish mamlouks, before it was conquered by Togrulbeg with his Seljouks. The Byzantine empire, which, by the creation of a systematic and legal administration, had reinvigorated the expiring energies of the eastern Roman empire, had declined into a pure despotism, and the rulers of Constantinople were rapidly devouring the wealth and diminishing the numbers of their subjects by financial oppression. The exploits of Togrulbeg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah, may be read in the pages of Gibbon, which have secured them fame wherever English literature is known. Many traces of their handiwork are visible at the present,—monuments of what is called their glory. When they entered the countries between the Persian Gulf, the Caspian, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean, they found them filled with cities, which, though declined in splendour and wealth by the loss of their municipal administrations, in consequence of the rapacious centralisation of the Roman, Byzantine, and Mohammedan empires, were nevertheless still well inhabited, and surrounded by a numerous agricultural population. But with the coming of the Seljouks, “the verdure fled the bloody sod.” They were a nomade people, and their armies were composed of nomadic tribes, who drew their supplies from the flocks and herds which moved with them. The inhabitants of cities were their enemies unless they became their tributaries; and in order to preserve a garrison in the countries they conquered, it was necessary for them to exterminate the cultivators of the soil in the richest and most central plains of their dominions. An encampment of tents could only be secure from surprise by being surrounded to the extent of a day’s journey by untilled pastures. Similar desolation has been effected in agricultural countries for ignobler objects. In England the traveller may still see the effects of an arbitrary act of devastation, perpetrated about the same period, by William the Conquerer, in the New Forest; and in wandering through Asia Minor many of our readers have probably passed over districts as fertile as the plains of Poland and Moldavia, on which wheat never grows, but which the page of history informs us were inhabited by an industrious agricultural population, until the towns were destroyed, and the population exterminated, by Kutulmish the lieutenant of Alp Arslan, and Suleiman his son, the lieutenant of Malek Shah. The Seljouk empire was soon divided into the three secondary kingdoms of Roum or Iconium, of Syria, and of Persia. It was subdued and rent into fragments by the successors of Genghis Khan, and in the fourteenth century the Othoman empire arose amidst its dismembered provinces.
Othman, the eponymous hero of the Othoman empire, entered the Seljouk empire of Roum with his father, who was the chieftain of a small tribe consisting of four hundred families. In the year 1289 he was appointed governor of the town of Karady-hissar by Aladdin III., the last Seljouk Sultan of Iconium. The market held on Friday at Karady-hissar was a trading mart of great local importance. A judgesat in the centre of the people to decide every question that arose without delay, and without appeal. Othman frequently occupied the judicial seat. It happened that, as he was presiding, an important dispute was brought before him for decision, in which a Christian of Belokoma in the Greek empire complained of the injustice of a Seljouk noble of Kermian. Othman decided in favour of the Christian, and the equity of the sentence extended his fame, and gave additional importance to his government. Years rolled on. Many emirs established themselves as independent princes, and have given their names to several provinces in Asia. Sultan Aladdin III. died in the year 1307, and Othman secured to himself a position as independent as any of the Seljouk emirs. Just before his death, he conquered Brusa from the Greeks, and laid the foundation-stone of the Othoman empire.
This new Turkish empire is remarkable for its rapid progress and firm consolidation, but still more so for the singular fact that it never reposed on a national basis. The four hundred families who accompanied Othman’s father into the Seljouk empire never became the nucleus even of an Othoman tribe. The Othoman empire threatened Europe with conquest; the Othoman armies were long invincible; the Othoman administration was superior to every contemporary government on the European continent; but, during the period of Othoman greatness and power, there was no such thing as an Othoman nation. Of the forty-eight grand-viziers who conducted the administration from the taking of Constantinople to the death of Sultan Achmet I. in 1617, only three or four were of Othoman or Seljouk families, while more than thirty were either renegades or children of Christian parents brought up in the Mohammedan religion. The other born Mussulmans were not even of Turkish race. Few absolute monarchies have preserved their pristine vigour with the same unimpaired energy as the Othoman, and none have passed triumphantly through greater disasters. Few national governments, indeed, could have survived the fearful ordeal of the defeat at Angora, and the conquest of Asia Minor by Timor. Neither Timor nor any of his contemporaries supposed that it was possible to re-constitute the Othoman government; and, indeed, the ease with which it regained its power over the Greek Christians and the Seljouk emirs, is a singular political phenomenon.
This vitality was due to the institutions implanted in the government as the very breath of its life, by Orkhan the son of Othman, the greatest legislator of modern times. As a lawgiver, Orkhan was something between a Lycurgus and a Loyola. At all events, he puts the modern constitution-makers of Europe to shame. They strive to improve the rotten fabric of their political institutions by patching the old despotic garment of Roman law with the new cloth of representative institutions, forgetting that the rabid appetite of centralisation swallows the old garment and the new patches far more easily than the boa-constrictor can swallow a blanket. The institutions of Orkhan were superior to the Code Napoleon and its progeny, in as far as they were framed on the exigencies of the time, and modelled on the demands of a progressive state of society—not borrowed from an extinct people in a different social and political condition.
We have no space to enumerate Orkhan’s institutions. It is sufficient for our purpose to notice the keystone of the fabric which raised a small band of emigrants from Mesopotamia, before three generations had elapsed, into the founders of one of the great empires of the earth. A tribute of Christian children, imposed by Orkhan on the people he conquered, was the basis, the cement, and the keystone of the Othoman empire. Never before were the laws of humanity and the principles of justice so systematically violated for so long a period with such success. The Othoman empire really dates from the year 1329, for it was in that year that Orkhan assumed the power of coining money, placed his name in the public prayers, and promulgated his laws. From that time he was regarded as the founder and the legislator of a new state, and not as the ruler of a Seljouk emirat. Orkhan made his household the nucleus of his empire. The strength of his dominions was, by his legislation and policy, concentrated within his palace walls. Under his roof was united a college, conducted with all the order and talent of a college of Jesuits, and a range of barrack-rooms, in which a discipline prevailed as severe as that of Lycurgus.
The history of the institution of the tribute children, and the formation of the corps of janissaries, is this: The Mohammedan law authorises—and, indeed, commands—every Mussulman to educate unbelieving children who have fallen into his power as orphans, in the Mohammedan faith. As the military usages of the Seljouk empire gave the Sultan a fifth of all the spoil taken in war, Orkhan soon became possessed of a numerous household of Christian slaves, whom he might have sold like the other Seljouk emirs, and hired mercenary troops with the produce, or filled his palace with concubines and poets, and devoted himself to the pursuit of pleasure and fame. Orkhan sought instruments to gratify his ambition, and to extend the dominion of the Koran. His wars as the ally of the rebel emperor and hypocritical historian Cantacuzenus, furnished him with a large supply of slaves from the Greek empire. The base ambition and rapacity of the rival emperors of Constantinople, induced them to allow Orkhan to insert a clause in his treaties, authorising him to transport Christian captives to Asia through the Greek territory. But it was difficult, by means of war, to secure a constant supply of healthy and intelligent children of the tender age required for their conversion, since the Mohammedan law strictly prohibits the forced conversion of prisoners who have attained the age of twelve. Orkhan’s great object, however, was to obtain a constant and regular addition to the young neophytes in his household. Either from his own impulse, or at the suggestion of his brother, Aladdin, who acted as his prime minister, or of his relation, Kara Khalil, who was his most intimate counsellor, he at last resolved to impose a fixed tribute of children on every Christian district he conquered. The measure was highly approved by all pious Mussulmans, and, strange to say, it met with little opposition from the Greek Christians. The empire of Constantinople had been so long the scene of civil war, and its provinces were so desolated by the fiscal oppression of the imperial administration, that famine prevailed among the Greek population in Asia and Europe for several years; and many parents saw no mode of saving their children from starvation but by sending them to the serai of Orkhan. The tribute of Christian children established by Orkhan was extended and systematised by his son, Murad I., and formed the keystone of the political and military power of the Othoman empire, until the corruption of the corps of janissaries by the introduction of other elements. The tribute of Christian children, however, continued until the year 1685, when it was formally abolished.
The tribute children were generally collected between the ages of seven and nine. They were at first lodged in the Sultan’s palace, and carefully instructed in the principles and forms of the Mohammedan religion under the ablest teachers, selected by Orkhan, who studied their dispositions and mental capacities. They then entered on a course of elementary knowledge and gymnastics. As their mental capacities were developed, and their physical strength increased, they were divided into several classes. Some, destined to become “men of the pen,” were educated in legal and administrative knowledge, and from them the officials in the civil and financial administration were usually selected. Many became secretaries of state, judges and viziers. Another division was disciplined as “men of the sword,” and the celebrated corps of janissaries was at first composed of select individuals from this body. This college of conquering missionaries, when formed by Orkhan, consisted of only one thousand, but before the end of his reign it had increased to three thousand; and when Mohammed II. took Constantinople, the number had attained twelve thousand. The tribute children were also numerous in the ranks of the cavalry, artillery, and police soldiers of the empire. Never, indeed, was so terrible an instrument of absolute power created so rapidly and so completely beyond all external influence as that which Orkhan formed. The tribute children were all members of the household of the Othoman Sultan. They had no ties of family or country, and felt no responsibility but what they owed to the prophet and the Sultan. At the beck of the Sultan, and with a fetva of the mufti, they were ready to strike down the proudest noble of the Seljouks, to shed the purest blood of the Arabs, and to trample on all the hereditary feelings and prejudices of the courts of the Caliphs. Against the Christian nations they were animated with the most fervent zeal; for it was a principal part of their education to infuse an enthusiastic wish to extend the empire of Islam. Thus Orkhan made Christian parents the most active agents in destroying the Christian religion. It is impossible to reflect on this lamentable occurrence without feeling that, had the Greek emperors and the orthodox priests of the period given their subjects and their parishioners as good an education as Orkhan gave his slaves, the attacks of the Turks might have been triumphantly repulsed.
That the system of education pursued in the palace of Orkhan must have derived some of its excellent qualities from the family system of Othman’s household, cannot be doubted. The Othoman tribe was not morally corrupted, like the society of the Seljouk Turks; the history of their empire bears strong testimony to the fact during several generations. The Othoman sultans were, during the early period of the empire, educated on the same system, and in the same manner, as the tribute children, and no state can show such a long succession of hereditary sovereigns remarkable for great talent. The Othoman institutions testify the sagacity of Orkhan and Murad I. more than their rapid conquests. Bayezid the Thunderbolt, though his rash pride caused the defeat of Angora and the ruin of the empire for a time, was liberal and generous to his Christian subjects, whom he admitted freely to his society. Mohammed I., who restored the empire ruined by his father’s ambition, was a staunch friend and a kind master, though, in his hostilities, as old Phrantzes says, he was as obstinately persevering as a camel. Murad II. distinguished himself by his attention to the administration of justice, and swept away many of the abuses which, under the Greek emperors, had exhausted the fortunes of the Christians. If any of his pashas or judges oppressed the Christians in his dominions they were severely punished. Mohammed II., the conqueror of Constantinople, united the activity of youth with the sagacity of age, both as a warrior and a statesman. He possessed considerable literary and scientific knowledge, and had made great progress in astrology, then the fashionable science both among Christians and Mussulmans. He was fond of reading, and spoke the Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Greek, Latin, and Sclavonian languages with fluency. Such is the character of the early sultans for six generations, as transmitted to us in the pages of their mortal enemies, the Byzantine Greeks. Other authorities tell us that these infidels were ready to receive suggestions for the improvement of their army and their civil administration, and that they were indefatigably engaged in submitting new ideas in the civil administration, and new inventions in the art of war, to the most rigorous examination. Activity and intelligence were stimulated in every branch of the public service by the example of the prince. The consequences form the staple of early Othoman history. New combinations in war and politics presented themselves daily to every Turkish pasha, which called for a prompt decision; and as it was incumbent on him to transmit a report of the reasons which had determined his conduct to an able and despotic master, he soon learned prudence in counsel as well as promptitude in action. For two centuries we find nothing vague and indefinite in the operations of the Othoman sultans, or of the pashas intrusted with the command of their armies. The first modern school of generals and statesmen was formed in the Othoman empire.
The general causes of the decline of the Othoman empire are well known. The janissaries, instead of being tribute children, were transformed into agarde nationale, like what we have seen flourish and disappear at Paris. But the logical principles of a paternal monarchy still exist at Constantinople. The Sultan is connected with his people, but can have no ties of family. He ought not to be the son of a free woman, but the child of a slave, destitute of every family tie, in order that no personal attachments and family sympathies may interfere with the cares of administration.
At the present moment we hear it asserted on all sides, that the Othoman administration is making great progress in restoring energy and intelligence in the government. Yet there are some who insist that the progress is small; that it is an empire without roads, and a government without a people; a central administration which every subject, be he Christian or Mussulman, detests for its financial rapacity and systematic contempt for justice. Inshallah! there is some truth on both sides, but it is not exactly our clue to separate the wheat from the tares, as they resemble one another so much at Stamboul as to confound the skill of European diplomatists. We know to our cost that there is no road either to Brusa or Adrianople fit for a French diligence, and that an abortive attempt was made to form a road from Trebizond to Erzeroum.
The great feature of the Othoman empire at the present day is this, that capital cannot be profitably employed in the improvement of the soil, and, strange to say, this peculiar feature of its social condition is common to the new-created monarchy of Greece, and to no other European state. Trade often flourishes, cities increase in population and wealth, gardens, vineyards, and orchards grow up round the towns from the overflow of commercial profits, but the canker is in the heart of the agricultural population; a yoke of land receives the same quantity of seed it did a hundred years ago, and the same number of families cultivate the same fields. This is the most favourable view of the case; but the fact is, that many of the richest plains of Thrace, Macedonia, and Asia Minor, are uncultivated, and have only the wolf and the jackal for their tenants. In Greece, too, under the scientific administration of King Otho, and with a representative governmentà la Française, we see the plains of Thebes, Messenia, and Tripolitza, present the same agricultural system which they did under the Othoman government, and agriculture in general quite as much neglected and more despised. Now the line of demarcation between civilisation and barbarism really consists in the profitable investment of capital in the soil. The agricultural population is the basis of a national existence, and unless the soil produce two bushels of wheat from the same surface where one formerly grew, and fatten two sheep where one merely gathered a subsistence, a nation gains little in strength and wellbeing though its cities double their population. The political and social problem, with regard to the governments of Constantinople and Athens, which now requires a solution, is, to determine the causes that prevent the cultivation of wheat on the European and Asiatic coasts of the Archipelago, and in the fertile island of Cyprus. The provinces between the Danube and the Don were in a similar condition when Akerman, Okzakoff, and Azof, were Turkish pashaliks; under the Russian government, they supply France and England with grain. Now, the grain-growers of Turkey could furnish half the grain exported at present from the Black Sea, and they could obtain much higher prices for their produce in consequence of the great saving of freight to consumers. Even the fertile districts of Bithynia and Thrace, bordering on the Sea of Marmora, than which there are no finer corn-districts in the world, cannot furnish Constantinople with a regular supply of wheat; and the Osmanlees would often suffer famine in the capital of their empire, unless they were provisioned from the provinces taken from them by theMoskof gaiour.
For our part, we must say that it is not unreasonable to entertain some doubts of the improvement which has manifested itself in the Othoman administration proving permanent, until we see some increase of the agricultural population. When the citizens of Stamboul and Athens begin to colonise the country, it will be time enough to talk of the regeneration of the Othoman power. And unless the population of the kingdom of Otho of Bavaria, which possess all the advantages to be derived from universal suffrage, joined to the inestimable liberty of walking about the streets with pistols and Turkish knives stuck in the belt, begin to abandon its passion for coffeehouses, and find pleasure and profit in the cultivation of the fields, the improvement of the Greek nation will not be generally admitted, even though Athens become a clean, elegant, and flourishing city. There must be an evident increase in the amount of the produce of the soil from a given number of acres, before those who study the political history of nations can be persuaded of the feasibility of the project of restoring a Greek empire.