8
Henry Elliot, perhaps because he had lived so long in the dishonest atmosphere of the Porte, does not appear to have offered any remonstrance. It was merely another Firman; the promise of another Sultan, which had proved delusive. Abd-ul-Aziz was Sultan when the despatch (No. 33) from which I have quoted was written; he was in his grave when our Ambassador returned to the subject on June 8th. Sir Henry Elliot has always shown himself more solicitous for the preservation of the Turkish Empire than for the just administration of the Sultan's power; and, accordingly, although regarding the exclusion of the non-Mussulman people from the army as
"The one great badge of distinction existing between the two races,"[1]—admitting that "the Christians have become aware that until it is swept away their nominal equality with the Mussulmans cannot be complete and real"— seeing that the clauses "of the Hatti-Houmaïoun of 1856, drawn up under the advice of the Western Powers," have hitherto remained a dead letter," he urges that "it is not necessary that the conscription should at once be put in force among the Christian population; but the military schools should at once be opened to them, and they might be received either as volunteers or as substitutes for Mussulmans drawn as conscripts."
I have no doubt that the Christians of Turkey would object to a conscription which would appear to make them tools of the misgoverning rule to which they are subject, and from which they have at all times suffered grievous wrongs. It is difficult for a free people to estimate the degrading consequences of ages of oppression, of exclusion from any association with the governing authority. Yet we have had many illustrations of the cruel lust of tyranny, of the miserable results of this divorce from power, and none more striking than that narrated by the Special Correspondent of the Times which appeared in the issue of the 7th Feb., 1877. A zaptieh one of the soldier-police who form part of the alien garrison of
- ↑ Correspondence, No. 442.
