Part 2

But this leads us to speak of Russia, the new protector of Oriental Christians. If the other European governments had in due time, either independently or in concert with England, lifted as constant and sincere a protest as hers at the court of Turkey against the wrongs of these Christians, and had required with one voice that the government should administer its laws impartially to all its subjects, irrespective of their creed, we might have heard less of this new protectorate, and should, by an act of justice and mercy, have foreclosed the present flimsy pretexts of Russia. But the weakness of Christian zeal, our indifference between Christ and Belial, and the absence of Christian concord, have prevented this. And by our “lâches” we have furnished the pretexts against which we now exclaim. But let us consider for a moment who the helper and helped are. Even granting that the professions of Russia were true in the letter, there is surely no one so blindly charitable as to believe that, however sincere the ill-informed masses in Russia may be in the fanatical excitement to which they have been goaded, the Czar or his advisers have either tears of compassion on their eyelids or indignation in their hearts, at the wrongs of Oriental Christians. Without entering into the maze of diplomacy, or attempting to interpret treaties intentionally Delphic, it may suffice to observe, that the general plea now urged by Russia formed no part of her original demands, but was resorted to lest those should be satisfied. The Czar has two characters. He is, in the first place, the spiritual head of the Russian Church. But he is not, and knows that he is not, the spiritual head of the whole Greek Church; still less of the Armenians, Nestorians, or any other Oriental body of Christians; and least of all of those united to Rome. Each Oriental Church has its own proper patriarch or other supreme head. And the Czar has no more right, on any religious ground, to throw down the gauntlet as the champion of those other Churches, than the Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury. That they are neither Romanist nor Protestant is no ground, provided they are not Russian. That their faith or rites are more akin to, nay, even identical with his own, is no ground. He has no authority, human or divine, for taking such: a place as the universal champion of the East. He never pretends that members of the Russian Church are among the persecuted, save a few pilgrims; yet he does not limit his care to these. He is, indeed, in the second place, the Autocrat of all the Russias. But there is no pretence that any part of his dominions has been seized or invaded. Therefore, neither as temporal nor as spiritual head has he a vestige of claim to interfere individually, on the abstract ground of right. All that he could do would be to unite with other Christian powers in representations to the Porte. To the necessity of making these, the other Christian powers are now awakened; too late, indeed, to prevent the solitary aggressions of Russia, but assuredly not too late to bring out the utter groundlessness of her pretensions.

It has always been the artful endeavour of the Czar to place his opponents at a disadvantage, by bringing them at each step into a position in which they shall appear aggressors. He crosses the Pruth, professing not to declare war thereby, but merely to take a precautionary pledge for the fulfilment of treaties. And because Turkey justly regarded his act as a declaration of war, he calls Turkey the aggressor. He insists on fighting out with Turkey alone a quarrel in which all European powers have, by his acts, become interested. And because they act on this conviction, he calls them aggressors for interfering in a private quarrel. He has forced the fleets of Europe to occupy the Euxine, as he the Proviuces. And, after seeing them where they would not be if neutral, and being told how far their defence of the weaker part would go, he seeks by the question of a simpleton to throw on us the stigma of being the first to declare war. But the cloven foot has been unmistakeably revealed, by his rejection of the proposal of the Four Powers to insist on and obtain a protectorate for all Christians under Turkish sway. And, in assigning, as the ground of that rejection, that he will not suffer any interference with his sole right of protection, he virtually arrogates to himself a right which they who are its objects disallow, which no treaty ever did or could confer upon him, and which the other powers of Europe cannot permit him to plead. In fact, his claim of protectorate would cover almost every class but the only one of which he is protector. He cannot be claiming from Turkey a right to protect the Russian Church. That right is not interfered with by Turkey, or any one else. And, of those whom he does claim to protect, every class, however hostile to Turkey, would infinitely prefer the rule of Turkey, mollified by Christian diplomacy, to the temporal rule of the Czar. To this last his religious protectorate would infallibly lead. For, if the two characters of spiritual and temporal head are inseparable in his person in Russia, who shall separate them in Turkey, whenever he has the power to exhibit both? Moreover, why rest in the mere protectorate of Christians? What if the Jew also should become an object of pity to the Czar, and he should extort Syria from the Turk for the Jew, who has certainly a better claim to Palestine than the Greek to Turkey?

It may, however, be argued, that all speculations as to abstract rights are superseded by treaties, the terms of which must be kept, and by which Turkey and other powers have recognised the right of Russia to insist in such as her present demands, and to occupy the Provinces as she does.

To this it must be replied, that one of the very questions at issue is whether such compacts as those alleged exist, whether they are capable of the interpretation put upon them by Russia, and whether they justify the occupation of the Provinces? As to the latter, Russia pleads the precedent of her previous occupation, unquestioned by the European powers. But, instead of justifying the one by the other, we should rather deny the justice of both. On the former occasion the cause of Russia may have been good. But the goodness of the motive can never legalise an illegal act. The former occupation should not have been allowed. By not being awake, we let in the wedge, and we are now suffering the penalty of having listened to the dangerous doctrine that the end sanctifies the means. Let us disown so bad a precedent. The thing which Russia seeks to do is, single-handed, to extort from Turkey pledges, or the fulfilment of alleged pledges, as to her own internal administration, the giving or fulfilling of which would be a surrender of her national integrity, in order virtually, though not yet nominally, to use her as a province and thoroughfare. This must not be. If the administration of Turkey becomes a public nuisance, it must be abated by the public verdict of nations; but it may not be corrected by a single nation which, while it has no peculiar right to interfere, has a peculiar interest in spoiling the offender. If Russia has already injured Turkey, and stolen a march on Europe by treaty, now is the time, when the operation of treaties is suspended, to see that the evil is not repeated or prolonged, but repaired. And if, having not yet done it, she now attempts it, every lover of fair play must forbid her. Let us not forget, while treaties are talked of (and, in so far as advantageous, so religiously asserted), that the position of Turkey in Europe has the sanction of treaties without number, framed not in ignorance of what she was, but knowing it well. If the nations of Europe had persisted in refusing to acknowledge such an intrusive and persecuting power, and had provided, as the first condition of conceding to it, by diplomatic recognition, a place in the European commonwealth, that it should afford to its Christian subjects the same advantages as they should have enjoyed under Christian rule, or at least that it should administer equal laws to Christians and Turks, the case would now be widely different. But it was not so. Europe took Turkey as she found it. And whatever immunities have since been granted by Turkey to Christians, these have in so far been acts of free grace, that they were no original conditions of the entrance of Turkey into the European federation. In short, it is far too late to put Turkey on her trial as a candidate for her place. It was never said to the Turk, We shall take proof of you for a century or two by your conduct, before we admit you. He has, on all secular grounds of public law, as good a right to his place as we have to ours. We may, indeed, be bound by no treaty to maintain Turkey, but we are bound by justice to see that it is fairly dealt with. At all events, let us do one thing or the other. Abolish Turkey with one consent, if you will, provided you know what next to do. But if you deem its abolition undeserved, if you cannot put Greece in its place, or agree how to divide the spoil, defend it from all thieves and robbers in the meantime. Here justice and interest are at one.

We may regret that the Turk is there; but we dare not turn him out by the shoulder in our indignation. We must wait till that Higher Power which sent him shall withdraw him.

No European confederacy, then, still less any single nation, can force Turkey out of Europe by resolving to impose new conditions on it, which it will not, or cannot accept. Yet we do not counsel the folding of the arms in a resignation which borders on fatalism. It may come to pass that Turkey, like any other nation, may so change for the worse its original character, and may so sin against that common law of nations which is more sacred than any statute or treaty, that, as madmen are put by their neighbours in a strait waistcoat, and they who offend against society are sent to Coventry, Turkey may provoke surrounding Governments to vote it out of Europe.[1] “Necessity has no law.” But has Turkey so acted? On the contrary, however far its conduct towards Christians in the East may fall short of that ideal standard by which Russia now takes a fancy to measure it, has there not been for a long time, with occasional exceptions, a marked and steadily progressive improvement in the exercise of its now declining government, as regards them? It would need some sudden and flagrant excess to justify the arming of Europe against it, still more to warrant the zeal of such a solitary champion as the Czar.

But is there no other power which threatens to become, rather than Turkey, a public offender? Are the instinctive and constant apprehensions of all Europe on the side of Russia pure hallucinations? Are they not so strong as to survive every fresh apprehension from France? Is not every help which Russia has lent against revolutionary principles accepted with suspicion, as insincere; with a grudge, as dearly bought; with dread, as dangerous to European liberty? Whatever ties may bind the court of Russia to others, is it not notorious that the hatred of the whole German people to Russia is such, that no German monarch dare tax the loyalty or the pockets of his people in behalf of Russia, and each may count upon both, against her?

Are we so blinded by the spirit of selfish reaction, and so contracted by the spirit of party, as to see none but those proximate evils which the brute can feel, to apprehend danger from nothing but rebellion, and to see wickedness in none but the radicals of Western Europe? Or are we such devotees to the mere catchwords of Christianity, and so given up to believe the religious phrases which political craft takes up into its mouth, (in order to instigate its friends and paralyze its foes,) as to be blind to the realities of things, and deaf to the claims both of interest and of justice? Is our vision so filled with the Antichrist who denies God, that we have no corner for him who confesses Him? Or have we so pinned our faith to the Antichrist of Rome or republicanism that we have no watchfulness left for the great Antichrist of the North, who has lifted his paw to appropriate the spiritual crown of Christ; whose name stands parallel with that of God in the hearts of his serfs, and on the buildings of his realm; and who, at the time dictated by Scythian cunning, will mount his chariot, to drive like a modern Jehu in his zeal for the Lord? Are we Englishmen prepared, after contesting it with those who have paved the way into the East under cloud of night, to look on when the journey is undertaken in broad day? Are we prepared to hail the tyranny of the knout, and the treachery of the bribe, as a blessed substitute for the Bash of the scimitar and the grasp of the spoiler? Are we who, when the fancy took us to be suspicious, could Hardly listen to the pacific assurances of France, ready to swallow any assurance from a government, which is the impersonation of craft, and the tallowy unmoved countenance of which never yet betrayed its passions or projects? Do we believe that those who bide their time in silence are less dangerous than those who anticipate it with bluster? Do we dream that Russia has become such an unwieldy mass, as to endanger us only by its fall? Or do we regard the hordes of the North, which have more than once overrun Europe in savage disorder, as being incapable of doing so again in imperial order? If we do, it is time that we thought otherwise.

Now is the time. War is a sad calamity everywhere, and a shameful thing among Christian nations. Let us beware of being those to bring it recklessly on. But, if it must come, let us beware of avoiding it by ruin to ourselves or others. Russia has, by her own act, set us free from our own former relations to her. Let us see to it that our new relations be more secure. Let her not make the Black Sea a “mare clausum.” Let her not make the Baltic a “mare clausum.” Let her not make the Danube a “fluvium clausum,”—a European pipe with a Russian plug. Let her not make Bornholm a Russian arsenal, the Cattegat a Russian strait, Scandinavia a Russian province, Denmark a Russian landing-place, or Persia a Russian highway. Rather let the Caucasus be secured against future butchery, and Courland, Liefland, and Finland be restored to their natural owners.

Meantime, let none, who must not, meddle in the fray. But let none, who ought, waver. Let them take the right side, and do it heartily; for while decision saves blood, indecision may forfeit all. We may push neutrality into self-contradiction. And while we strike at a distance, let us not lay ourselves bare at home. There are such things as political feints. Moreover, if Austria, through poverty or gratitude, or Prussia, through family ties, shall be won or neutralized by Russia, let them remember that they do it at the almost certain risk of intestine rebellion, and of being despoiled in Italy and on the Rhine by foreign conquest.

Though we believe in the sure word of prophecy, we must beware of its private or premature interpretation. And while we ought not, on the one hand, to be paralysed in doing our duty by prophetic anticipations, neither dare we, on the other, excite ourselves to any breach of duty by a desire to see these realized. God will remove all oppressive powers which stand in His way. But there are wicked powers enough in the earth to do His work of judgment, whether on His Church or on her enemies. We may not be our own saviours. We may not arise, in self-will, to carry out God’s counsels. It is our part to expect His salvation in the way of strict duty. Men may speculate about the drying up of the Euphrates and the restoration of the Jews to their land, as they please. We shall best commend ourselves to God, not by skilful calculations as to the rate at which or the manner in which the chariot of His Church, as the mystery of His Coming Kingdom, rolls along the highways of His providence, but rather by ourselves abiding in the chariot, and trusting to the goodness of its Guide. And the sole true foundation on which we can build up the nobler superstructure of holiness, is scrupulous righteousness between nation and nation, between man and man. He only that has clean hands shall prosper in his deed.

One word more: The votaries of reaction insist that Turkey shall be blotted out as the gathering-place of all revolutionary spirits. But why is it so? Not because the policy of Turkey is revolutionary, but because he who has been the fulcrum of reaction has, by declaring war against Turkey, opened Turkey for them as a door by which they can attack him, and has justified Turkey in using them. Bad, nay blasphemous, as revolutionists may be, he who would hunt them out of the earth, must have an unclean conscience himself. He must feel that he has not been the Shepherd of his people, and that he has more coveted the fleece than loved the flock.

[1] See last paragraph, page 31.

London:—Printed by G. Barclay, Castle St. Leicester Sq.

End of Project Gutenberg's Shall Turkey Live or Die?, by Thomas Carlyle