Delaware gazette and state journal., 1896-01-23

not as figure of speech, The Chris
tian who tills the fields OF the Turkish
landlord is not bound to the soil by
law, merely because he is Christian.
But he is bound to it by law, because
he Is his masters debtor aud he would
be in his grave il he were not in debt.
He has not enough to keep body and
soul together. He is paid for his labor
in kind and cheated not deceived,
but cheated-to his eyes, to such an
extent that he receives scarcely corn
enough to supply himself and his wife
during two months with bread alone.
And he is generally burdened with a
family Of four or five. He is therefore
compelled to borrow, and having con
tracted debt, is forced to remain in
his creditors service till he has paid
this creditor being his lord and
master. If he attempts TO leave the
district he is brought back and beaten
by the police, and then more merci-
lessly beaten by his owner. Every
year, of course, new debts are con-
tracted, the debtor being always the
landlord, and helotism for life is the
result. Officially, he is not regarded as
different from any other vulgar Chris
tian, but that makes little difference
to the wretched momtsee farm labor
err, who knows that no slave ever be-
longed 10 his master more completely
than he. Houseless, helpless, hopeless,
he drags himself along day after day,
suffering privations and pains which
find their parallels only in the tales
of beleaguered cities or the narratives
of shipwrecked mariners. The momtsee
L ia n l.
belonging to his master, possesses no
furniture, no property of any kind,
anG cannot be said to possess his own
wife or TO be the efficient protector of
his own daughters, Bodies and souls,
they belong to the proprietor Of the
soil. and must endure in silence the in
suits and the injuries which his inter
est or passions may infiict upon them.
Redress they can never hope for, and
the only form their revenge can take is
assassination, which entails the imme-
diate death, or, IL they flee, outlawry
of the momtsee and the ruin of their
families and friends,
Another class of wretches hardly less
downtrodden than the momtsee is that
Of the Observation-Disclosures farm
lahorers, only they possess their own
implements live in their own dwell
ings, and are allowed lin theory to
take for themselves fixed portion Of
the produce of the soil In practice,
however, they never receive the stipu
lated quantity, nor or anything reason
ably approaching to it. They must be
thankful for anything they get, and
they steal what they can TO make life
possible. But the bulk of them are,
am assured, over head and ears in debt,
and every year number of them aban-
don the struggle in sheer despair and
accept room in one Of their masters
outhouses and till the land as mere
momtEeea.
The sole CLEAN of consolation which
alleviates the miseries of both these
categories of helots is their religion,
which to them means "education. y
relaxation, hope. To see the wax can
dies blazing in the little church on
Sundays and holidays, to hear the
solemn chant and watch the dramatic
pageant, surrounded by relatives and
friends, and freed from the upwearying
eye of the secret spy is pleasure the
thorough enjoyment of which is de.
pendent upon the sauce of relentless
persecution.
The taxes are unreasonable in theory
and utterly ruinous in practice, seeing
that the individual rapacity of the tax.
collectors is invariably substituted for
the express terms of the law; and this
with tho approval of its official al-
mlnlstrauors. These vutures of tax.
gatherers quarter themselves in the
town or village, always choosing the
| houses of Christians in preference to
those OF Mohanmedans, even in places
where the latter are in large MAORI ty
they insist, first Of all, on having all
their genuine wants and fantastic
whlms attended to, and then they lie
GIN to haggle. They may demand any.
thing from 30 TO 100 per cent more
than the legal taxes, and they possess
| lntaIllhle means to enforce their dc.
mands They sometimes ask for the
wife or daughter Of their host over and
above, and the latter knows thar re
fusal will lead to more terrible results
than compliance. He may drive a
bullet or dagger through the body OF
the base official, but he mist then take
to the woods, becpms "haiduk.n y or
hrigand, and abandon his wife OF
daughter to stili worse fate than
before
In none of these cases does the law
come in. II would he not merely use.
less, but very dangerous for the Chris.
tian to invoke its aid. while its slow
mechanism is superiluuus, to the Mos
lem. II the reyah dared 10 complain oi
a wealthy Moslem, he would b. Ger
talnly dismissed from court with srorr
by the Kaimakam or Vail, and dis
missed from life by the bullet Of ''anmt
person unknown " If the Mussulnal
were the aggriGved person, he woult
naturally take the law into hi!
own hands, beating or killing hi,
enemy, and no one would ever think o
making even shallow inquiry int,
the crime. its origin, and author.
In all this complicated system Of ey
tortion, injustice. ana murder there il
practically no difference between tow
and country. Several huckaters whom
questioned assured me- that no kim
OF business was possible for long il
most Of the towns and villages. The,
are Obliged to treat M0slems us a elias
privileged to come into Tho shnp, chOus
! what goods they like, and fix their owl
} prices. which they frequently neglec
to pay. The officer, the swashbuckler
the powerful hrigand make no pretpnc
OF paying at all; and even the commoi
people, if they chose to quarrel win
the shopkeeper ard assault him, coult
do SO with the impunity which is th
one inestimable privilege Of alt follower
3 of Mohammed - Fortunately, h
3 added, tna Moslcms Of the lowe
! orders are generally honest fellow
: enough, whose lnl is hardly muci
better Than our own. OF them We hav
null To say, except in the way of sym
patty and felow feeling.
d, Inc brigands arr 'in clover" i
! Macedonia. There is probably no nthe