The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1824-04-21 00:00:00

•
Dervishes, was creqta.m ♦typdiniporprci, ipAerefeers
after ; and, with aairreskstibk pettier, littal man *re*.
and overran all Macedonia and Albania. The haughty
Bajazet was his successor, who defeated the united
chivalry of the Christians near Nicopolis, but was him-
self, in 1401, routed and made captive by the victori-
ous Tamerlane. The Turkish power, though broken by
the Tartar, was, however, far from being subdued,
and rallied again on the death of Timour. Bajazet's
son, Amurath, again led the Ottomans against the
enervated Christians, and in 1444 routed the Hun-
garian forces, with great slaughter, near Varna. The
destruction of the Eastern Empire was completed by
Mehemet 11., who, in 14.56, stormed and took Con-
stantinople. The Turkish empire was subsequently en-
larged, both in Europe, Asia, and Africa, by Bajazet
and Selim and Solyman I. In Asia, this barbarous em-
pire still includes the fine countries of Syria, Anatolia,
Irak, Diarbeck, Kurdistan, Armenia, Roum, and Kara-
mania. In Africa, the Ottoman holds Egypt, part of
Nubia, and Bares ; and the piratical states of Tripoli,
Tunis, and Algiers, are under Turkish protection. The
empire of the Infidel, at least in Europe, will probably be
of short duration : it is now pressed by the revolt of the
Greeks, and the Russian is hovering in Bessarabia, ready
to rush on this falling Power the first opportunity. Had
Catherine and the haughty Potemkin lived, Constantinople
would have been now a Russian city. The taking and
sack of Oczakow in 1788, and of Ismailow in 1790,
were only the intended prelude to the final destruc-
I
tion of this Power. But the French Revolution soon
after bun; on Europe. Potemkin died on the road-
side in the midst of conquest, and the ambitious Catherine
expired soon after. Russia subsequently had to contend
for existence against the power of France, and the Ottoman
Dynasty has existed through the jealousy of the great
Powers of Europe. The spoil is too vast not to arouse
general envy and dissension ; but the days of the Moslem
at length are numbered; Greece must be free, and it is
probable that Austria and Russia have already debated
join
the partition of the Turkish provinces, and will their
arms for she conquest. Whenever they do, the empire
of the Ottoman in Europe is at an end. The black banner
of Mahomet may be raised, and temporary enthusiasm
rally the followers of the Prophet around it: the horse-
tails of the Pachas may stream to the wind, and the sabres
and ataghans of the Spahis and Janissaries flash in the
sunbeams, but their tumultuous and undisciplined
rabble cannot stand against the firm battalions of
the Russian and the Austrian ; and the already im-
mense power of the former will be completed by the
possession of Constantinople, and the command of the
Black Sea. Russia is only waiting the opportunity, and
maturing her strength for the fell swoop ; her eye
rests on these provinces without sleeping. Great Britain
and France united might protect the Greeks, assure
their independence, and prevent this plan of am-
bition from being consummated. But without such
a league Russia will not arrest her march, and we shall
soon see her ravenous hordes burst like famished wolves
from the Pruth on the provinces of Turkey, and swarm
within the walls of Byzantium.

That the Irish are, and for centuries have been, an op-
pressed people, no one who knows anything of their put or
present history will think of disputing. The anxious care
of our best and wisest statesmen of late has been, to adopt
a.conciliating policy—to avoid irritating feelings, already in
a too feverish state—and to introduce, by degrees, that sys
tem of just and equal government, which tends, in its results,
to preserve to the Protestant Establishment a measured and
moderate ascendancy, while it restored to the Catholic his
proper share of consideration and respect, and repossessed
him of those rights to which he was entitled as a British
subject, and which he could forfeit only by a breach of his
allegiance. The present conjuncture of Okra is favourable
to the introduction of a better order of things in Ireland ; it
is rendered more favourable still by the known disposition of
his Majesty towards this equitable and enlightened course of
policy, and by the earnest wish of his Excellency the Lord
Lieutenant to act upon it. Men there are, certainly, of
great aristocratic lead, both here and in Ireland, who move
in an opposite direction. It is, and it always has been,
the aim and effort of this party, under an affected zeal for ,
the safety of the Protestant Church, to strip the Catholic
of the last remnant of his rights; to exclude him from
every place of trust, and to cut him off from all appoint-
ment under the Constitution, to those offices of profit and
influence, which, according to them, should for ever follow
in the Protestant line of inheritance. That this descrip-
tion of persons, inoculated from their cradle with those
selfish and narrow principles, which, for ages, have gone
down with the family pedigree, from father to son—that
they should put forth their seal for religion as their pretext
for intolerance, is not wonderful. The condition and
authority of these persons, though it aggravates their iqjus-
tice, serves to account for it. But that any of that class whose
peculiar duty it is to conduct us from this world to another,
and who should teach us so to worship God as to promote,
to the utmost of our means, the harmony and happiness of
his creatures—that a minister of religion, banishing from

his mind all respect for his sacred station, should lend
himself to the views of a party, and revive, from the pul-
pit, every bitter recollection which can tend to exasperate
the Protestant against the Catholic, and to foment those
unhappy divisions which every good man would wish to
heal,—the guilt of such condueitts deep, and in its conse-
quences may be deplorable. The preacher whose no-popery
harangues have assembled such crowded congregations at
St. Peter's, had better never have abandoned his pursuits
as a novel-writer, than to prostitute his talents to purposes
so dangerous, and seek preferment through a course so un-
worthy. It is a trick of policy which every man of sense'
and integrity must despise, and by which, should be suc-
ceed, he must surrender all claim to self-respect. A preacher
of the Gospel Amulet be the hat to extinguish what. little
of candour and good feeling had survived the rage of
I party, but so it is—" That which the pahner-worm bath
left bath the locust eaten." If this language of the
prophet were mysterious, it could find no better expositor
than Mr. Maturin. To go back to the darkest period of
bigotry, for the purpose of bringing reproach, at this time'
of day, on a particular sect, or of attaching discredit to
their religious creed, is a dishonest and base expedient.
We cannot search the records of past centuries for what
any body of men were, and produce it in proof of what
they are. Such evidence would be rejected as preposterous,
by the lowest Court in Christendom. The proceeding
only thews that those who resort to it have nothing left
to reason upon. As well might we refer to the Popery
Acts of KING WII Luta, as a sample of the reign. of
GEORGE THE Forarn. The great object in recurring
to these forgotten enormities of " the days of other
years," manifestly is, to justify the Orange faction in
refusing to accede to the adoption of any measures
in the least conciliatory, and to work upon the feelings
and prejudices of the more moderate of the Protestant
party, by giving an artificial present exigence to crimes and
horrors which exist only in history, and thus beguiling'
their better judgment through the 'medium of a heated
imagination. The author of Bertram is not ill fitted to
make these experiments on the character of his country-
men, nor, so far as they open a road to power, is he un-
willing to profit by them. It is a perilous temptation to
live upon the breath of an Archbishop, especially under a
state of things in which there is nothing to be expected
but from prostitution and intrigue. We cannot conclude
without observing, that both Mr. MA'iuslM and his Mr-
r aoro Liras; would discharge much better their duty to
their country, by striving to put an end to party
hatred, than by adding to the oppreeslont which have pre.
yoked it.