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 conscription
is carried on in Turkey, nothing can possibly
be more infamouslly 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.