The Bee-Hive. — 1876-11-25 (London, England)

LLOYD JONES.  CONDITION OF AFFAIRS IN BULGARIA.  November has found Bulgaria unimproved, and seems likely to leave it as she found it. The Commissions sent from Constantinople to relieve suffering, to rebuild burnt villages, to punish wholesale murderers, and to restore order, have done none of these things. They have distributed a few blankets, have sent a very few doctors but no medicines, have restored, some cattle but no other kind or property; furnished a little wood but not restored a single roof, and remitted for a while some portion of taxes, but only in the smallest number of instances. Still women and children, utterly destitute and unprotected, are dying of hunger and cold by hundreds all over the country. In some places the tithes have been exacted twice over, and from the poor as from the better off, and, wherever there was opportunity, in double amounts. Those who, on the spot, send us this intelligence, once more tell us, that the Turkish authorities never make a promise they mean to fulfil; never do an act of juNtice without committing another  November 25, 1878.  wrong; never make a concession without conditions that make it worthless; never give with one hand without taking back with the ether.  These are matters which the Turkish functionaries perfectly understand; but all the duties of government they either have no notion of or wilfully and systematically ignore. "It is useless," says our informant, "to tell them that it is their business to obtain evidence, receive stolen property, restore it to its proper owners punish thieves, suppress crime, and do justice. That is a view of the duties and responsibilities of Government which a Turkish official never takes." This being so, what prospect is there for the future, unless the Conference about to meet exacts guarantees and imposes conditions which will take the matter wholly out of hands either so utterly incompetent is so doggedly unwilling:? Let the theory be loft in Turkish hands, and, as before, they will proceed upon the principle of ordering men to burn villages, then to rebuild them, and giving them the money to do it with This is what takes place at the present hour, whether the Ministers in Constantinople know it or not; and, if Midhat Pacha cannot learn what is going on, is it any wonder that Sir Henry Elliot, who relies upon Turkish official reports for his information, should know so little? The truth is, that the Turkish despotism, like most despotisms if not ally is become utterly and hopelessly corrupt. "It is the same," we arc assured, "with everything. Nothing can bo obtained from Turkish officials, be they mudirs, kaimakams, zaptielis, kurnjees, poliaks, judges, members of the Medjiliss, paellas, and mutessarifs, without the continual use of bribes. There is nothing absolutely to be hoped from them in the way of reform." To this extract of a letter from Phillippolis, it may be useful to append another from Constantinople. "When Englishmen," writes Mr. Pears, "see Chefket Pacha promoted, honoured, a leader among the young Turkey party of the capital, still left free by his Government, it is not difficult for them to believe the rumours that none of the men named as deeply implicated in the Bulgarian massacres will be punished, for the simple reason that the Turkish Government dare not punish them. It is openly asserted by men who profess to know what they arc talking about, that if any attempt is made to punish these men, they will produce their orders from the Government, and that not the Government of the deposed Ministers only but of those now in power."