Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

as disunited individuals, under passive obedience in ordinary cases; but, unlike the Spaniards, when notoriously aggrieved: when their property or religious code is forcibly violated when the prince would riot in blood, and persist in an unsuccessful war: the Turks appeal to the law; they find a chief; the soldiery join their standard, and depose or destroy him, not on the furious pretext of of popular hatred, but upon the legitimate ground of the Koran, as an infidel, and a violator of the laws of God and Mahomet They always, however, place his regular successor on the throne. Yet, notwithstanding the general venality which pollutes the fountains of justice, and notwithstanding the great abuse of power to which I have alluded, their internal policy is, in many respects, excellent, and may be compared with advantage to that of any nation in Europe. Highway-robbery, house-breaking, or pilfering, are little known and rarely practised among them; and at all times the roads are as secure as the houses. Ample provisions too are made against those petty secret frauds which many who carry a fair face in England, and would bring an action for damages against one that should call them rogues, practise every day. Bakers are the most frequent victims of justice, and are not unfrequently seen hanging at their own doors. They are mulcted and bastinadoed for the first and second offence, and on the third, a staple is driven up into their door-case, and they are hanged from it. Notwithstanding which, men are constantly found hardy enough to pursue the same course of practise; and this is more extraordinary, as the police is so strictly attended to, that the bashaw or vizir himself goes about in disguise, in order to discover frauds, and detect the connivances of the inferior officers of justice. But what will our great ladies say, who consume their nights, destroy their constitution, and squander their husband's perty in gambling; who afterwards, to repair their shattered finances, have recourse to the infamous expedient gaming-houses, and endeavour to recover by degrading means what they have lost by folly, to the disgrace of themselves and family, and the shame of their sex and rank-What will they say when I tell them, that gaming

pro

is held among the Turks to be as infamous as theft, and a gamester looked upon with more detestation than a highway robber? The Turkish ambassador and his train will, on their return to their country, have to tell a curious tale of this much-famed island, in that and other respects.

LETTER XXIX.

PREJUDI

REJUDICE, that canker of the human heart,. has injured mankind by impeding personal intercourse, and thereby clogging the channel of intellectual improvement it forbids that interchange of sentimentthat reciprocal communication of opinion that generous circulation of intellectual wealth, which, while it enriches another, advances itself it dissevers the bond of social union, and makes man sit down the gloomy, selfish possessor of his own miserable mite, with too much hatred to give, and too much pride to receive, those benefits, which Providence, by leaving our nature so unaccommodated, has pointed out as necessary to pass between man and man: under its influence we spurn from us the good, if we dislike the hand that offers it, and will ra ther plunge into the mire than be guided by the light of any one whose opinion is at variance with our own.

Thus it is between the Turks and us-the little of their affairs which the prejudice of the Mahomedans have allowed themselves to communicate, or suffered others to glean among them, has been in general so misused, distorted, and misrepresented by the prejudices of the Christians, that it is not going beyond the truth to say, there exist not a people in the civilized world whose real history and genuine state are so little known as those of the Turks and the worst of it is, that not one misrepresentation, not one single mistake has fallen on the generous, charitable side; but all, all without exception, tend to represent the Turk in the most degraded and detestable point of view. As the purity of the Christian does not allow him to be guilty of a wilful, uncharitable misrepre

N

sentation, we should attribute it to unavoidable error, were it not that, till some late authors whose liberality does them honor, they all walked in the very same track, and could hardly have been so uniformly erroneous from design. We must therefore attribute it to religious zeal and mistaken piety; in which, in this instance alone, they seem to be reputable competitors with the Turks. The moroseness, the animosity, and the supercilious selfpossession of the bigot, each holds in common with the other.

One striking feature in the constitution of Turkey is, that neither blood nor splendid birth are of themselves sufficient to recommend a man to great offices. Merit and abilities alone are the pinions which can lift ambition to its height. The cottager may be exalted to the highest office in the empire; at least there is no absolute impediment in his way; and I believe it has often happened. Compare this with France under its late monarchy, where no merit could raise a man from the Canaille : this, I say, is one of the criterions of a free constitution, and Turkey is so far democratic.

The very first principle ingrafted in the minds of the Mahomedan children, is a high contempt of all religions but their own; and from the minute babes are capable of distinguishing, they are taught to call Christians by the name of Ghiaour, or Infidel: this grows up in their manhood so strong in them, that they will follow a Christian through the streets, and even justle against him with contempt, crying Ghiaour! Ghiaour! or, Infidel! Infidel!Men of dignity and rank, indeed, will treat Christians with courtesy; but as soon as they are gone out of hearing, will call them dog! This is monstrous! But let us recollect how a Turk would be treated in Spain or Portugal, and we shall see that inhuman bigotry may be found in a greater degree among Christians than even Mahomedans. In Spain or Portugal they would treat them thus: the common people would call them hogs; they would justle them also in contempt; and what is more, they would stab them (it has often happened) por amor de Dios; and as to the people of rank, they would very conscientiously consign them to the Inqusition, where the

pious fathers of the church would very piously consign them to the flames, and coolly go to the altar, and pray to God to damn them hereafter to all eternity. So far the balance, I think, is in favor of the Turks. Need I go further?-I will.-

The Mahomedans are divided into two sects, as the Christians are into many. Those are the sect of Ali, and the sect of Omar. Now, I have never heard among them of one sect burning the other deliberately: but the Roman Catholics, even now, burn Protestants by juridical sentence-burn their fellow christians to death for differing from them in a mere speculative point of doctrine. Which then are the better men? I am sure it is unnecessary to say: though bad are the best.

The Turks are allowed, by those who know them best, to have some excellent qualities; and I think, that in the prodigality of our censure, which, though little acquainted with them, we are forward to bestow, it would be but fair to give them credit for many of those good qualities, which even among ourselves it requires the greatest intimacy and the warmest mutual confidence and esteem to disclose or discover in each other. That they have many vices is certain. What people are they that have not? Gaming they detest; wine they use not, or at least use only a little, and that by stealth; and as to the plurality of woman, it can in them be scarcely deemed a vice, since their religion allows it. One vice, and one only of a dark dye is laid to their charge; and that has been trumpeted forth with the grievous and horrid addition, that though contradictory to nature, it was allowed by their religion. This I have reason to believe is one of the many fabrications and artifices of Christian zealots, to render Mahomedanism more odious; for I have been informed from the most competent and respectable authority, and am therefore persuaded, that the detestable crime to which I allude, is forbidden both both by the Koran and their municipal laws; that it is openly condemned by all, as with us; and that, though candor must allow there are many who practice it (by the bye there are too many in England who are supposed to do the same) there are none hardy or shameless enough

not to endeavor to conceal it; and, in short, that it is apparently as much reprobated there as any where; which at all events, rescues the laws and religion of the country from that stigma.

Perhaps there is no part of the world where the flame of parental affection burns with more ardent and unextinguishable strength, or is more faithfully returned by reciprocal tenderness and filial obedience, than Turkey. Educated in the most unaffected deference and pious submission to their parents' will; trained both by pre. cept and example to the greatest veneration for the aged, and separated almost from their infancy from their women, they acquire a modesty to their superiors, and a bashfulness and respectful deportment to the weaker sex, which never cease to influence them through life. Turk meeting a woman in the street, turns his head from her, as if looking at her were criminal: and there is nothing they detest so much, or will more sedulously shun, than an impudent, audacious woman. To get the better of a Turk therefore, there is nothing further necessary, than to let slip a virago at him, and he instantly retreats.

A

Since the arrival of the Turkish ambassador in London, I have had frequent occasion to observe, that the people of his train have been already, by the good examples of our British belles and beaux, pretty much eas ed of their national modesty, and can look at the women with as broad and intrepid a stare, as the greatest puppy in the metropolis.

Their habitual tenderness and deference for the fair sex, while it speaks much for their manly gallantry, must be allowed by candor to be carried to an excess extravagant and irrational. It is the greatest disgrace to the character of a Turk to lift his hand to a woman: this is, doubtless, right, with some limitations; but they carry it so far as to allow no provocation, be it what it may, suffcient to justify using force or strokes to a woman; the utmost they can do is, to scold and walk off.

The con

sequence of this is, that the women often run into the most violent excesses. There have been instances where they have been guilty of the most furious outrages;

« AnteriorContinuar »