The Press. — London, England, 1855-05-26 00:00:00

486 Lowe, inclined to close the door and keep it shut ; and both parties agreed to support an Administration whose language is ambiguous through calculation, and their conduct uncer tain through policy. Opposed to slis combi nation is the Conservative party, "pealing to the plain sense and honest feeling of the na tion to declare that it has no loner faith in negotiation—that it wilt no longer Wait on the caprices of Russia in the council chomber of Vienna, but direct all its energies to conquer the honourable peace it desires. To which party will the country accord its support? CONSCRIPTION OF CHRISTIANS IN TURKEY. THERE cannot be a better proof of the little knowledge realty possessed by our present rulers of the nature and interests of the State which they have allied themselves with France to maintain, than their procuring the exten sion of the conscription in Turkey, so as to embrace the several Christian populations. Had their object been to further to the utmost the views of Russia, and convert " the sick man's " illness into a mortal crisis, they could have taken no step so entirely adapted to that end ; for, if the measure were submitted to, the result would be, that of the army which in Turkey holds in its hands the destinies of the empire, one half would be persons en tirely in the interest of Russia, while if, as assuredly will prove the case, the measure be resisted by the Christians, a civil war will be established which will rend Turkey to pieces, and make its early dissolution inevitable. We speak from an intimate personal knowledge of the feelings and spirit of the population in question, acquired on the spot ; and we are sure that by events our prediction will be jut tified, when we state that if so insane a mea sure be persisted in as the extension of the conscription to the Christian population of Turkey, it will be resisted by them to the death throughout every district where their numbers are so considerable as to make resist ance possible. The idea that the pride of the Christians will be gratified by the measure is plausible enough, but a very slight knowledge of human nature will be sufficient to show its erroneous ness. A man may have martial feelings without being desirous of seeing his village invaded, and his relatives and himself carried off by force to serve as privates on a ration of bread and lentils and a nominal pay of three halfpence, and an actual pay of about three farthings, a day in the Turkish army. The English are a sufficiently martial race, but no one can suppose for an instant that they would tolerate a forced impressment of three hundred thousand men to serve on such terms in the ranks in Turkey. In all coun tries, indeed, the conscription is hateful to the population ; and the high price paid in France for a substitute shows what sacrifices families will make there to escape from it. Forty eight pounds sterling is a common price to pay for one, even iu peace time, and in the wars of the first NAPOLEON there have been instances of men offering four hundred. But in France the conscription has this in favour of it, that it operates on a people filled with the highest spirit of patriotism and the most enthusiastic admiration for military glory ; that it is carried out with a fairness and equality towards all classes which leaves no ground for the impeachment of its justness ; and that it opens a path to the lower classes to those honours in the State which even the most successful prosecution of any other career would fail of obtaining for them. In Turkey the case is wholly different. The martial tribes, such as the Kurds, the Bedouins, the Turcomans, and the Druses, resist the conscription sword in hand, and every attempt to collect the quota demanded from them is found fruitless ; while the men who fall within the meshes of the recruiting parties are for the most part men of peaceful natures, who care little for a Government which they only know by its oppressions. As to military glory, they have as little idea of it as the poorest-spirited occupier of a tailor's THE PRESS. shopboard iu England. Then, again, as re gards the manner in which the con scription is carried on in Turkey, nothing can possibly be more infamousl l y partial and corrupt than the proceedings the officers to whom the raising of the levies is intrusted. The conse, "pence that every one of the smalles glitical influenoo, or with money enough in Ins pocket to bribe the officials, escapes the pressgang, and the ;Night of the conscription Falls by consequent,* *4 treble force on the poor and industrious cultivator, on whose in dustry a family are too often dependent. As to the conscription opening a path to honour in the Stole in Turkey, it is perfectly well understood there that all the higher commis sions in the army are bestowed on influential Turks or their Mamelukes. The highest grade to which the bravest and best-behaved conscript can hope, except in extraordinary instances, to rise is that of captain, the pay of which is four hundred piastres a month, or about three pounds sterling, being half what is paid to a Maltese menial at Balaklava at present, and even of half of that pay, the Turkish officer is cheated by those above him. That there are thousands of highspirited Christians in Turkey is a fact undoubted, and with proper management there is no reason why these should not, at a time like the pre sent, be induced to come forward and assist the Sultan. With the aid of proper ap pliances, it would be easy to raise in six months ten thousand mounted soldiers, of as daring a spirit as was ever possessed by sol diers, among the Maronites of the Lebanon and the various Arab Christian tribes. But it is not a conscription that will obtain such men ; on the contrary, they were preparing their arms to resist a conscription when it was last threatened them, which was a little before the present war broke out. The firman for extending the conscription to Christians was ready for issue in 1852, but a revolt of the Druses, caused by this very question, and a knowledge that if the firman were issued all the Maronites would join them, caused the Ministry at Constantinople to keep the docu went in abeyance. Men of this stamp are not to be enlisted by force : they are ready enough to fight, but it must be at the instigation of their own feelings and according to their own fashion. In the year 1852, for instance, the Druses collected in three weeks an army of eight thousand well-armed volunteers, pledged to fight the whole of the forces that the Turks could send against them, rather than furnish their quota of three hundred men to the con scription. But in this point Asiatics are not peculiar. How many British sailors during the lust war fought to the detitli on board the American cruisers, though their only cause of leaving Great Britain had been to avoid being pressed to perform the same duties under the British ensign? Men, all over the world, will go where they will not be driven ; and the more highspirited they are, and the more fitted by nature for martial achievements, the more especially does the remark apply to them. We do hope, then, that if this measure of the extension of the conscription to Christians in Turkey be found--as we are sure it will be found—likely to prove everywhere most diffi cult, and in many parts impossible, of execu tion, our Minister at the Porte will not lend his countenance to any further progress with it. To do so would not only be to play the game of Russia, but to alienate from England and France the sympathies of all the Christian populations of Turkey for ever. To free them from the prohibition to bear arms—if any such general prohibition exist, which we doubt—may be soothing to their dignity; but it is a matter of some practical importance for every one to know that, a 3 a rule, the Chris tians throughout Turkey are all possessed of arms, and know well how to use them at pre sent. As to engaging them in the regular army of the State, their late exemption from conscription was viewed as a most valuable privilege, instead of as an indignity. To gain such men to fight for it, the Turkish Government must not look to the conscrip tion—it must conciliate their chiefs with pre sents and with honours ; and it must offer them a rate of subsidy sufficient for the main tenauce of themselves and their followers, SATURDAY, together with a prospect of glory, and its, in their eyes, most valuable concomitant, plunder. Let the Turkish Government, under the in spiration of its allies, tot ip this manner, and it will have no reason to complain of the packwardneis of the Christian populations, Ud especially of that part of them which is e most martial and the most opposed, by livery rsligions and potiti* feeling, to the popremiky pf Russia. 4µt by some such method only can their *id in arms be secured : the attesapt to levy soldiers from them by conscription must and will prove fatal. HOME POLICY. AMONGST Lord PALMERSTON'S more gigantic experiments upon the patience of the people of England the lesser evils of his Adminis tration almost pass unnoticed. Nonchalance about such old-fashioned little matters as " Church and State," and all that belongs to them, is not, indeed, so immediately disastrous as it is at Vienna or in the Crimea; bat, perhaps, in the long run it may turn out that the Premier's indolent laissez alter is as mis chievous at home as it has unquestionably been abroad. It is not so much that the Established Church is openly assailed, or " heavy blows and deep discouragements " inflicted wilfully on our national Protestan tism; it is, that the whole time and manner in which such matters are discussed in the House of Commons—we had almost said its ecclesiastical and social morale altogether— have been lowered very nearly to the flippant indifference with which its leader regards them. Great or little principles, or details, it is all one to his Lordship. Sir J. PAKINOTON brings forward a careful, comprehensive scheme for the education of the poar; open to amendment, doubtless, but still a scheme. Mr. MiLNER GIBSON immediately promises another. The Government must do something ; so Lord JOHN RUSSELL stands sponsor to a bill so ludicrously meagre that any member of average capacity could extemporise something more profound currente calamo in ten minutes. Again, a motion is brought forward for the opening of the British Museum, &c., on Sun days, involving what is felt on both sides to be the whole question (to put it on its lowest grounds) whether the English or the conti nental notion of the Sabbath shall be recog nised henceforward in the country. Lord PALMERSTON'S philosophy amounts about to this : " No, no, Sunday ought to be observed " respectably' ; let it alone." Then, again, the feeling of at least one-half the nation is as strong as anything well can be against our continuing to support a seminary of Romish missionaries with public money. A deputa tion on the subject waits on Lord PALMERSTON; the Premier "regrets he cannot receive them; " in fact, he knows all they have to say already; " can't take the trouble." Then, again, two or three charitable societies for church-building, schools, and the like, have hitherto had collec tions made for them in the churches under " Queen's Letters." It is not alleged that the letters amount to a command, or are enforced where there may be an unwillingness to comply with them; but a few of his Lordship's per sonal friends express an objection to them, and they happen to be the same persons he has just been snubbing about Maynooth ; so trouble is saved again, and the Queen's Letters thrown into the fire. We might multiply instances of this sort of impertinence ad infinitum, but we must hasten to the last and most mischievous of them all. The church rate question is not perhaps the greatest, but at all events it is the most press ing social one of the time. It fares no better than the rest in his Lordship's hands. Here, as before, everybody else is in earnest. Sir W. CLAY is ready with his Radical measure; the Archbishop Of CANTERBURY and Mr PACKS with rational ones; and a thoughtful, able article in the Edinburgh had led the world to think that at last Government had made up its mint Not a bit of it. Lord P i tLMERSTON .