Art. 6. You are forbidden to publish petitions in which individuals or associations complain of acts of mismanagement, or call the Sultan's attention to them.
The Turkish officials, to whom the Christian is supposed to appeal in cases of grievances, are exceeding corrupt, committing even more crimes than their inferior accomplices, whose administration is an abominable scourge. A few years ago one of the missionaries in Erzeroum told me that while he was on one of his mission tours he came across a poor Christian shepherd who had just been attacked by the Kurds and despoiled of thirty sheep from his flock. The next day, upon the missionary's return to Erzeroum, he called upon the commander of the army to complain of the outrage, and discovered fifteen of the thirty sheep in his yard!
Under the ruinous management of these mercenary officials, the country which God made so rich in resources has become poor. These men have transformed their official privileges into prerogatives of tyranny, and there is no bound to their avarice. Such is the system of political economy practiced in the internal affairs of the provinces in the name of Padishah by officials who are "lofty in adulations and calumny, perfidy and treason." In the eyes of the Turkish government, suspicion of her non-Mussulman subjects is equal to proof, intention to mischief, and the intention is not less criminal than the act. This was the attitude of the government in relation to the recent Sassoun massacre. As soon as the Pasha of Bitlis sent word to Constantinople that the Armenians were in rebellion, without waiting for proof, the Turkish troops were sent to the scene with orders to suppress the revolt—orders which they knew they must interpret as
