London, Tuesday, March 22, 1853 

The most important event in the contemporaneous history of 
parties is Disraeli’s deposition from the leadership of the “great 
Conservative” minority.” Disraeli, it has transpired, was himself 
prepared to throw overboard his former allies eight or nine weeks 
before the dissolution of the Tory Cabinet,/and desisted from his 
resolution only at the urgent instance of Llord Derby. He in his 
turn, is now dismissed and has been formally replaced by Sir John 
Pakington, a safe character, cautious, not jaltogether wanting in 
administrative ability, but a mournful man otherwise, the very 
incarnation of the worn-out prejudices and| antiquated feelings of 
the old English squireocracy. This change in leadership amounts 
to a complete, and perhaps to the final transformation of the Tory 
party.— Disraeli may congratulate himself|on his emancipation 
from the landed humbugs. Whatever be our opinion of the man, 
who is said to despise the aristocracy, to hate the bourgeoisie, and 
not to like the people; he is unquestionably the ablest member of 
the presént Parliament, while the flexibility of his character 
enables him the better to accommodate himself to the changing 
wants of society. 

In reference to the Refugee question I os you in my last,’ that 

after Lord Palmerston’s speech in the Hose of Commons, the 
Austrian journals declared it to be useless to ask for redress from 
a Cabinet corrupted by Palmerstonian influence. But scarcely was 
Aberdeen’s declaration in the House of Lords telegraphed to 

Vienna when the aspect of things changed again.*> The same 
journals now assert that “Austria trusts to the honor of the 
English Cabinet,” and the semi-official O0esterreichische Correspon- 
denz publishes the following from its Paris Correspondent: 

“Lord Cowley, on his return to Paris, stated to the Emperor of the French,* 
that the diplomatic representatives of England at the Northern Courts had been 
formally instructed to employ all their efforts to deter the Northern Powers from 
forwarding a collective note to the British Government, and to urge, as the ground 
for such abstention, that that Government would be the better enabled to comply 
with the demand of those powers, the more it could keep up, in all eyes of England, the 
appearance of acting freely and voluntarily in the matter... 

“The British Ambassador, Lord Cowley, urged the Emperor of the French to 
place implicit confidence on the British Cabinet, the more so as the Emperor would 
always be at liberty to take any steps he might consider proper in the event of that 
confidence not having been justified... The Emperor of the French, while 
reserving to himself full freedom of action for the future, was induced to put the 
sincerity of the British Cabinet to the proof, and he is now endeavoring to persuade the 
other powers to follow his example.” 

You see what is expected from “ce cher Aberdeen,’ as Louis 
Philippe used to call him, and what promises he must have made. 
These promises are actually already followed up by deeds. Last 
week the English Police drew up a list of the Continental refugees 
residing in London. Several detectives, in plain clothes, walked 
from square to square, from street to street, and from house to 
house, making notes on the personale of the refugees, address- 
ing themselves in the majority of cases to the publicans in the 
neighborhood, but entering in some instances, under the pretense 
of the pursuit of criminals, the very domiciles and searching the 
papers of some exiles. 

While the Continental Police is vainly hunting after Mazzini, 
while at Nuremberg the magistrates have ordered the closure of 
the gates in order to catch him—no man being hanged there 
before he is caught, according to the old German proverb— while 
the English press publishes reports after reports as to his supposed 
sojourn, Mazzini has for the past few days been safe and sound at 
London. 

Prince Menchikoff, after reviewing the Russian forces stationed 
in the Danubian Principalities, and after an inspection of the army 
and fleet at Sebastopol, where he caused manoeuvres of embark- 
ing and disembarking troops to be executed under his own eyes, 
entered Constantinople in the most theatrical style on Feb. 28, 

attended by a suite of 12 persons, including the Admiral of the 
Russian squadron in the Black Sea,? a General of Division? and 
several staff officers, with M. de Nesselrode, Jr.,as Secretary of the 
Embassy. He met with such a reception from the Greek and 
Russian inhabitants as he were the orthodox Czar himself entering 
Tsarigrad to restore it to the true faith. An enormous sensation 
was created here and at Paris,by the news that Prince Menchikoff, 
not satisfied with the dismissal of Fuad Effendi, had demanded 
that the Sultan should abandon to the Emperor of Russia, not only 
the protection of all the Christians in Turkey, but also the right of 
nominating the Greek patriarch; that the Sultan had appealed to 
the protection of England and France; that Colonel Rose, the 
British Envoy, had dispatched the steamer Wasp in haste to Malta 
to request the immediate presence of the English fleet in the 
Archipelago, and that Russian vessels had anchored at Kilia, near 
the Bosphorus.‘ The Paris Moniteur informs us that the French 
squadron at Toulon had been ordered to the Grecian waters.‘ 
Admiral Dundas, however, is still at Malta. From all this, it is 
evident, that the Eastern Question is once more on the European 
“ordre du jour,” a fact not astonishing for those who are acquainted 
with history. 

Whenever the revolutionary hurricane has subsided for a 
moment, one ever-recurring question is sure to turn up: the 
eternal “Eastern Question.” Thus, when the storms of the first 
' French revolution had passed, and Napoleon and Alexander of 
Russia had divided, after the peace of Tilsit, the whole of 
Continental Europe* betwixt themselves, Alexander profited by 
the momentary calm to march an army into Turkey, and to “give 
a lift” to the forces that were breaking up from within that 
decaying empire. Again, no sooner had the revolutionary move- 
ments of Western Europe been quelled by the Congresses of 
Laybach and Verona, than Alexander’s successor, Nicholas, made 
another dash at Turkey. When a few years later, the revolution of 
July, with its concomitant insurrections in Poland, Italy, Belgium, 
had had its turn, and Europe, as remodeled in 1831, seemed out 
of the reach of domestic squalls, the Eastern Question, in 1840, 
appeared on the point of embroiling the “great Powers” in a 
general war. And now, when the shortsightedness of the ruling 

Le Moniteur universel, No. 79, March 20, 1853.— Ed. 

pigmies prides itself in having successfully freed Europe from the 
dangers of anarchy and revolution, up starts again the ever- 
lasting topic, the never-failing difficulty: What shall we do with 
Turkey? 

Turkey is the living sore of European legitimacy.’ The 
impotency of legitimate, monarchical government, ever since the 
first French Revolution, has resumed itself in the one axiom: Keep 
up the status quo. A testimonium paupertatis, an acknowledgment of 
the universal incompetence of the ruling powers, for any purpose 
of progress or civilization, is seen in this universal agreement to 
stick to things as by chance or accident they happen to be. 
Napoleon could dispose of a whole continent at a moment’s notice; 
aye, and dispose of it, too, in a manner that showed both genius 
and fixedness of purpose; the entire “collective wisdom” of 
European legitimacy, assembled in Congress at Vienna, took a 
couple of years to do the same job, got at loggerheads over it, 
made a very sad mess, indeed, of it, and found it such a dreadful 
bore that ever since they have had enough of it, and have never 
tried their hands again at parceling out Europe. Myrmidons 
of mediocrity, as Béranger calls them,* without historical knowl- 
edge or insight into facts, without ideas, without initiative, they 
adore the status quo they themselves have bungled together, 
knowing what a bungling and blundering piece of workmanship 
it is. 

But Turkey no more than the rest of the world remains 
stationary; and just when the reactionary party has succeeded in 
restoring in civilized Europe what they consider to be the status quo 
ante, it is perceived that in the meantime the status quo in Turkey 
has been very much altered, that new questions, new relations, 
new interests have sprung up, and that the poor diplomatists have 
to begin again where they were interrupted by a_ general 
earthquake some eight or ten years before. Keep up the status quo 
in Turkey! Why, you might as well try to keep up the precise 
degree of putridity into which the carcass of a dead horse has 
passed at a given time, before dissolution is complete. Turkey goes | 
on decaying, and will go on decaying as long as the present system 
of “balance of power” and maintenance of the “status quo” goes 
on, and in spite of Congresses, protocols and ultimatums it will 
produce its yearly quota of diplomatic difficulties and international 

squabbles quite as every other putrid body will supply the 
neighborhood with a due allowance of carburetted hydrogen and 
other well-scented gaseous matter. 

Let us look at the question at once. Turkey consists of three 
entirely distinct portions: the vassal principalities of Africa, viz. 
Egypt and Tunis; Asiatic Turkey, and European Turkey. The 
African possessions, of which Egypt alone may be considered as 
really subject to the Sultan, may be left for the moment out of the 
question; Egypt belongs more to the English than to anybody else, 
and will and must necessarily form their share in any future 
partition of Turkey. Asiatic Turkey is the real seat of whatever 
strength there is in the Empire; Asia Minor and Armenia, for four 
hundred years the chief abode of the Turks, form the reserved 
ground from which the Turkish armies have been drawn, from 
those that threatened the ramparts of Vienna, to those that 
dispersed before Diebitsch’s not very skillful manoeuvers at 
Kulevcha. Turkey in Asia, although thinly populated, yet forms 
too compact a mass of Mussulman fanaticism and Turkish 
nationality to invite at present any attempts at conquest; and in 
fact whenever the “Eastern Question” is mooted, the only portions 
of this territory taken into consideration, are Palestine and the 
Christian valleys of the Lebanon. 

The real point at issue always is, Turkey in Europe—the great 
peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid 
territory has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of 
different races? and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which 
is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, 
Wallachians, Arnauts,” twelve millions of men, are all held in 
submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period it 
appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks 
were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in 
such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these 
nationalities. But when we see how lamentably have failed all the 
attempts at civilization by Turkish authority—how the fanaticism 
of Islam, supported principally by the Turkish mob in a few great 
cities, has availed itself of the assistance of Austria and Russia 
invariably to regain power and to overturn any progress that 
might have been made; when we see the central, 1.e. Turkish 
authority weakened year after year by insurrections in the 
Christian provinces, none of which, thanks to the weakness of the 
Porte and to the intervention of neighboring States, is ever 

completely fruitless; when we see Greece acquire her independ- 
ence, parts of Armenia conquered by Russia—Moldavia, Wal- 
lachia, Serbia, successively placed under the protectorate of the 
latter power,—we shall be obliged to admit that the presence of 
the Turks in Europe is a real obstacle to the development of the 
resources of the Thraco-Illyrian Peninsula. 

We can hardly describe the Turks as the ruling class of Turkey, 
because the relations of the different classes of society there are as 
much mixed up as those of the various races. The Turk is, 
according to localities and circumstances, workman, farmer, small 
freeholder, trader, feudal landlord in the lowest and most barbaric 
stage of feudalism, civil officer, or soldier; but in all these 
different social positions he belongs to the privileged creed and 
nation—he alone has the right to carry arms, and the highest 
Christian has to give up the footpath to the lowest Moslem he 
meets. In Bosnia and the Herzegovina, the nobility, of Slavonian 
descent, has passed over to Islam, while the mass of the people 
remain Rayahs, i.e. Christians. In this province, then, the ruling 
creed and the ruling class are identified, as of course the Mos- 
lem Bosnian is upon a level with his co-religionist of Turkish 
descent. 

The principal power of the Turkish population in Europe, 
independently of the reserve always ready to be drawn from Asia, 
lies in the mob of Constantinople and a few other large towns. It 
is essentially Turkish, and though it finds its principal livelihood 
by doing jobs for Christian capitalists, it maintains with great 
jealousy the imaginary superiority and real impunity for excesses 
which the privileges of Islam confer upon it as compared with 
Christians. It is well known that this mob in every important coup 
d’état has to be won over by bribes and flattery. It is this mob 
alone, with the exception of a few colonized districts, which offers 
a compact and imposing mass of Turkish population in Europe. 
And certainly there will be, sooner or later, an absolute necessity 
of freeing one of the finest parts of this continent from the rule of 
a mob, compared to which the mob of Imperial Rome was an 
assemblage of sages and heroes. 

Among the other nationalities, we may dispose in a very few 
words of the Arnauts, a hardy aboriginal mountain people, 
inhabiting the country sloping toward the Adriatic, speaking a 
language of their own, which, however, appears to belong to the 
great Indo-European stock. They are partly Greek Christians, 
partly Moslems, and, according to all we know of them, as yet very 
unprepared for civilization. Their predatory habits will force any 

neighboring government to hold them in close military subjection, 
until industrial progress in the surrounding districts shall find 
them employment as hewers of wood and drawers of water, the 
same as has been the case with the Gallegas* in Spain, and the 
inhabitants of mountainous districts generally. 

The Wallachians or Daco-Romans, the chief inhabitants of the 
district between the Lower Danube and the Dniester, are a greatly 
mixed population, belonging to the Greek Church and speaking a 
language derived from the Latin, and in many respects not unlike 
the Italian. Those of Transylvania and the Bukovina belong to the 
Austrian, those of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire; those of 
Moldavia and Wallachia, the two only principalities where the 
Daco-Roman race has acquired a political existence, have Princes 
of their own, under the nominal suzeraineté of the Porte and the 
real dominion of Russia. Of the Transylvanian Wallachians we 
heard much during the Hungarian War"; hitherto oppressed by 
the feudalism of Hungarian landlords who were, according to the 
Austrian system, made at the same time the instruments of all 
Government exactions, this brutalized mass was in like manner as 
the Ruthenian serfs of Galicia in 1846,'' won over by Austrian 
promises and bribes, and began that war of devastation which has 
made a desert of Transylvania. The Daco-Romans of the Turkish 
Principalities have at least a native nobility and political institu- 
tions; and in spite of all the efforts of Russia, the revolutionary 
spirit has penetrated among them, as the insurrection of 1848 well 
proved.’? There can hardly be a doubt that the exactions and 
hardships inflicted upon them during the Russian occupation since 
1848 must have raised this spirit still higher, in spite of the bond 
of common religion and Czaro-Popish superstition which has 
hitherto led them to look upon the imperial chief of the Greek 
Church as upon their natural protector. And if this is the case, the 
Wallachian nationality may yet play an important part in the 
ultimate disposal of the territories in question. 

The Greeks of Turkey are mostly of Slavonic descent, but have 
adopted the modern Hellenic language; in fact, with the exception 
of a few noble families of Constantinople and Trebizond, it is now 
generally admitted that very little pure Hellenic blood is to be 
found even in Greece. The Greeks, along with the Jews, are the 
principal traders in the seaports and many inland towns. They are 
also tillers of the soil in some districts. In all cases, neither their 
numbers, compactness, nor spirit of nationality, give them any 

political weight as a nation, except in Thessaly and perhaps 
Epirus. The influence held by a few noble Greek families as 
dragomans (interpreters) in Constantinople, is fast declining, since 
Turks have been educated in Europe and European legations have 
been provided with attachés who speak Turkish. 

We now come to the race that forms the great mass of the 
population and whose blood is preponderant wherever a mixture 
of races has occurred. In fact it may be said to form the principal 
stock of the Christian population from the Morea to the Danube, 
and from the Black Sea to the Arnaut Mountains. This race is the 
Slavonic race, and more particularly that branch of it which is 
resumed under the name of Illyrian (Ilirski), or South Slavonian 
(Jugoslavenski). After the Western Slavonian (Polish and Bohe- 
mian), and Eastern Slavonian (Russian), it forms the third branch 
of that numerous Slavonic family which for the last twelve hundred 
years has occupied the East of Europe. These southern Slavonians 
occupy not only the greater part of Turkey, but also Dalmatia, 
Croatia, Slavonia and the south of Hungary. They all speak the 
same language, which is much akin to the Russian, and by far to 
western ears, the most musical of all Slavonic tongues. The 
Croatians and part of the Dalmatians are Roman Catholics, all the 
remainder belong to the Greek Church. The Roman Catholics use 
the Latin alphabet, but the followers of the Greek Church write 
their language in the Cyrillian character,’ which is also used in 
the Russian and old Slavonic or Church language. This cir- 
cumstance connected with the difference of religion, has con- 
tributed to retard any national development embracing the whole 
south Slavonic territory. A man in Belgrade may not be able to 
read a book printed in his own language at Agram? or Betch,’ he 
may object even to take it up, on account of the “heterodox” 
alphabet and orthography used therein; while he will have little 
difficulty in reading and understanding a book printed at Moscow, 
in the Russian language, because the two idioms, particularly in 
the old Slavonic etymological system of orthography, look very 
much alike, and because the book is printed in the “orthodox” 
(pravoslavni) alphabet. The mass of the Greek Slavonians will not 
even have their bibles, liturgies and prayer books printed in their 
own country, because they are convinced that there is a peculiar 
correctness and orthodoxy and odor of sanctity about anything 
printed in holy Moscow or in the imperial printing establishment 

of St. Petersburg. In spite of all the panslavistic efforts of Agram 
and Prague enthusiasts,’* the Serbian, the Bulgarian, the Bosnian 
Rayah, the Slavonian peasant of Macedonia and Thrace,has more 
national sympathy, more points of contact, more means of 
intellectual intercourse with the Russian than with the Roman 
Catholic south Slavonian who speaks the same language. Whatever 
may happen, he looks to St. Petersburg for the advent of the 
Messiah who is to deliver him from all evil; and if he calls 
Constantinople his Tsarigrad or Imperial City, it is as much in 
anticipation of the orthodox Tsar coming from the north 
and entering it to restore the true faith, as in recollection of 
the orthodox Tsar who held it before the Turks overrun the 
country. 

Subjected in the greater part of Turkey to the direct rule of the 
Turk, but under local authorities of their own choice, partly (in 
Bosnia) converted to the faith of the conqueror, the Slavonian race 
has, in that country, maintained or conquered political existence in 
two localities. The one is Serbia, the valley of the Morava, a 
province with well defined natural lines of frontier, which played 
an important part in the history of these regions six hundred 
years ago. Subdued for a while by the Turks, the Russian war of 
1806*° gave it a chance of obtaining a separate existence, though 
under the Turkish supremacy. It has remained ever since under 
the immediate protection of Russia. But, as in Moldavia and 
Wallachia, political existence has brought on new wants, and 
forced upon Serbia an increased intercourse with Western Europe. 
Civilization began to take root, trade extended, new ideas sprang 
up; and thus we find in the very heart and stronghold of Russian 
influence, in Slavonic, orthodox Serbia, an anti-Russian, progres- 
sive party (of course, very modest in its demands of reform), 
headed by the ex-Minister of Finances GaraSanin.” 

There is no doubt that, should the Greco-Slavonian population 
ever obtain the mastery in the land which it inhabits and where it 
forms three-fourths of the whole population (seven millions), the 
same necessities would by and by give birth to an anti-Russian, 
progressive party, the existence of which has been hitherto the 
inevitable consequence of any portion of it having become 
semi-detached from Turkey. 

In Montenegro, we have not a fertile valley with comparatively 
large cities, but a barren mountain country of difficult access. 
Here a set of robbers have fixed themselves, scouring the plains 
and storing the plunder in their mountain fastnesses. These 
romantic but rather uncouth gentlemen have long been a nuisance 

in Europe, and it is but in keeping with the policy of Russia and 
Austria that they should stick up for the rights of the Black 
Mountain people (Tsernogorci) to burn down villages, murder the 
inhabitants and carry off the cattle.