Weekly Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1853-1861, 1855-03-22
Present Condition of the Turks.

We extract from the number of the Edin-
burg ReVie,o, Lord CARLIsLEs melancholy but
truthful picture :
Among the lower order of the people,
there is considerable simplicity and loyalty
of character and fair disposition to he obi
ging and friendly.
Among those who emerge from the mass
and have the opportunities of helping them
selves to the good things of the world, the ex-
ceptions from thorough paced corruption and
eXtortion are most rare and in the whole
conduct of public business and routine of Of
fetal life, under much apparent courtesy and
undertaking good breeding, a spirit of servili-
ty, detractiOn, and vi ictiveness appears con-
stantly at work The bulk of the people is
incredibly, uniformed and ignorant | am
told that now they fully believe that the
French and English fleets have come in the
pay of the Sultan and when the Austrian
special mission of Count Leningen arrived in
the early part of this year, and led, by the
way, to much of what has since occurred,
they were persuaded that its object was to
obtain the permission of the Sultan to the
young Emperor to wear his crown. Upon the
state of morals, debar myself from entering
Perhaps the most fatal, if not the most faulty
bar to national progress, is the incredible
Incidence which prevades every class
alike, from the Pascha, putting his perfumed
narghile in his laticed kiosk on the BOsphOrus
to the man in the ragged turban who sits cross
legged with his unadOrned tehibouque in front
of mOuldy cOffee-shop in the meanest viii
lage In fact, the conversation of every man
whom | meet, who is well-informed on the
state of the population, with very few exeep-
tions, might be taken down as an illustration,
often very unconsciously on their part, of the
sense usually assigned to the prediction in the
Apocalypse of the waters of the Euphrates
being dried up.
On the continent, in the islands, i is the
Greek peasant who works, and rises the
Turk reclines, smokes his pipe, and decays.
The Greek village increases its population,
and teens with children; in the Turkish viii
lage You find roohess walls and cumblng
mosques Statesmen who do nOt.s1 these
matters with their own ewes, if told of the
rotten state of the Ottoman Empire, are apt
to say, they do not at all perceive that =
this PrIIsSian General inspected their army
the other day, and was highly pleased with its
efficiency this English Captain went ON
DodIu tuelI Meet, anu StW lnelu "oih 'ioi'
guns, and said that it could not be better done
in any English ship, Their military
hospitals are perfect models of arrangement
and good order believe all this to he
true, and can will conceive that in one
or two campaigns, on a first great outburst,
the Turks might be victorious over their Rus,
sian opponents but, when you leave the par
tial splendo-s of the capital and the great state
establishments, what is it you find over broad
surface of a land which nature and climate
have favored beyond all Others, once the
home of all art and all civilization Look
yOurself-ask those wholive there-deserted
villages, uncultivated plains, bandtti- haunted
mountains, torpid laws, corrupt administra-
ton, a disappearing people" (Pp. 182-l84...