Turkish power; nor more curious than the coincidence between the despotic acts of the reforming Eastern Sultan and of the innovating European democracies. The measures of both have been the same; both have been actuated by the same principles, and both yielded to the same ungovernable ambition. The Sultan commenced his reforms by destroying the old territorial noblesse, ruining the privileges of corporations, and subverting the old military force of the kingdom; and he is known to meditate the destruction of the Mahometan hierarchy, and the confiscation of the property of the church to the service of the public treasury. The Constituent Assembly, before they had sat six months, had annihilated the feudal nobility, extinguished the privileges of corporations, uprooted the military force of the monarchy, and confiscated the whole property of the church. The work of destruction went on far more smoothly and rapidly in the hands of the great despotic democracy, than of the Eastern Sultan; by the whole forces of the State drawing in one direction, the old machine was pulled to pieces with a rapidity to which there is nothing comparable in the annals even of Oriental potentates. The rude hand even of Sultan Mahmoud took a lifetime to accomplish that which the French democracy effected in a few months; and even his ruthless power paused at devastations, which they unhesitatingly adopted amidst the applause of the nation. Despotism, absolute despotism, was the ruling passion of both; the Sultan proclaimed the principle that all authority flows from the Throne, and that every influence must be destroyed which does not emanate from that source; "The Rights of Man" publicly announced the sovereignty of the people, and made every appointment, civil and military, flow from their assemblies. So true it is that despotism is actuated by the same jealousies, and leads to the same measures on the part of the sovereign as the multitude; and so just is the observation of Aristotle." The character of democracy and despotism is the same. Both exercise a despotic authority over the better class of

this subject, nothing can be more obvious than that the Greek Revolution was utterly fatal to the naval power of Turkey; because it deprived them at once of the class from which alone sailors could be obtained. The whole commerce of the Ottomans was carried on by the Greeks, and their sailors constituted the entire seamen of their fleet. Nothing, accordingly, can be more la mentable than the condition of the Turkish fleet since that time. The catastrophe of Navarino deprived them of their best ships and bravest sailors; the Greek revolt drained off the whole population who were wont to man their fleets. Mr Slade informs us that when he navigated on board the Capitan Pasha's ship with the Turkish fleet in 1829, the crews were composed almost entirely of landsmen, who were forced on board without the slightest knowledge of nautical affairs; and that such was their timidity from inexperience of that element, that a few English frigates would have sent the whole squadron, containing six ships of the line, to the bottom. The Russian fleet also evinced a degree of ignorance and timidity in the Euxine, which could hardly have been expected, from their natural hardihood and resolution. Yet, the Moscovite fleet, upon the whole, rode triumphant; by their capture of Anapa, they struck at the great market from whence Constantinople is supplied, while, by the storming of Sizepolis, they gave a point d'appui to Diebitsch on the coast within the Balkan, without which he could never have ventured to cross that formidable range. This ruin of the Turkish marine by the Greek Revolution and the battle of Navarino, was therefore the immediate cause of the disastrous issue of the second Russian campaign; and the scale might have been turned, and it made to terminate in equal disasters to the invaders, if five English ships of the line had been added to the Turkish force; an addition, Mr Slade tells us, which would have enabled the Turks to burn the Russian arsenals and fleet at Swartopol, and postponed for half a century the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Nothing, therefore, can be more instructive than the rapid fall of the

citizens; decrees are in the first, what ordinances and arrests are in the last. Though placed in different ages or countries, the court favourite and democrat are in reality the same characters, or at least they always bear a close analogy to each other; they have the principal authority in their respective forms of government; favourites with the absolute monarch, demagogues with the sovereign multitude."*

The immediate effect of the great despotic acts in the two countries, however, was widely different. The innovations of Sultan Mahmoud being directed against the wishes of the majority of the nation, prostrated the strength of the Ottomans, and brought the Russian battalions in fearful strength over the Balkan. The innovations of the Constituent Assembly being done in obedience to the dictates of the people, produced for a time a portentous union of revolutionary passions, and carried the Republican standards in triumph to every capital of Europe. It is one thing to force reform upon an unwilling people; it is another and a very different thing to yield to their wishes in imposing it upon a reluctant minority in the state.

But the ultimate effect of violent innovations, whether proceeding from the despotism of the Sultan or the multitude, is the same. In both cases they totally destroy the frame of society, and prevent the possibility of freedom being permanently erected, by destroying the classes whose intermixture is essential to its existence. The consequences of destroying the dere beys, the ayans, the Janissaries, and ulema in Turkey, will, in the end, be the same as ruining the church, the nobility, the corporations, and landed proprietors in France. The tendency of both is identical, to destroy all authority but that emanating from a single power in the state, and of course to render that power despotic. It is immaterial whether that single power is the primary assemblies of the people, or the Divan of the Sultan; whether the influence to be destroyed is that of the church or the ulema, the dere beys or the nobility. In either case

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CCIX.

there is no counterpoise to its authority, and of course no limit to its oppression. As it is impossible, in the nature of things, that power should long be exercised by great bodies, as they necessarily and rapidly fall under despots of their own creation, so it is evident that the path is cleared, not only for despotism, but absolute despotism, as completely by the innovating democracy as the resistless Sultan. There never was such a pioneer for tyranny as the Constituent Assembly.

It is melancholy to reflect on the deplorable state of weakness to which England has been reduced since revolutionary_passions seized upon her people. Three years ago, the British name was universally respected; the Portuguese pointed with gratitude to the well-fought fields, where English blood was poured forth like water in behalf of their independence; the Dutch turned with exultation to the Lion of Waterloo, the proud and unequalled monument of English fidelity; the Poles acknowledged with gratitude, that, amidst all their sorrows, England alone had stood their friend, and exerted its influence at the Congress of Vienna to procure for them constitutional freedom; even the Turks, though mourning the catastrophe of Navarino, acknowledged that British diplomacy had at length interfered, and turned aside from Constantinople the sword of Russia, after the barrier of the Balkan had been broke through. Now, how woful is the change! The Portuguese recount, with undisguised indignation, the spoliation of their navy by the Tricolor fleet, then in close alliance with England; and the fostering, by British blood and treasure, of a cruel and insidious civil war in their bosom, in aid of the principle of revolutionary propagandism: the Dutch, with indignant rage, tell the tale of the desertion by England of the allies and principles for which she had fought for a hundred and fifty years, and the shameful union of the Leopard and the Eagle, to crush the independence and partition the territories of Holland: the Polish exiles in foreign lands dwell on the heart

3 r

rending story of their wrongs, and narrate how they were led on by deceitful promises from France and England to resist, till the period of capitulation had gone by: the Eastern nations deplore the occupation of Constantinople by the Russians, and hold up their hands in astonishment at the infatuation which has led the inistress of the seas to permit the keys of the Dardanelles to be placed in the grasp of Moscovite ambition. It is in vain to conceal the fact, that by a mere change of Ministry, by simply letting loose revolutionary passions, England has descended to the rank of a third-rate power. She has sunk at once, without any external disasters, from the triumphs of Trafalgar and Waterloo, to the disgrace and the humiliation of Charles II. It is hard to say whether she is most despised or insulted by her ancient allies or enemies; whether contempt and hatred are strongest among those she aided or resisted in the late struggle. Russia defies her in the East, and, secure in the revolutionary passions by which her people are distracted, pursues with now undisguised anxiety her long-cherished and stubbornly-resisted schemes of ambition in the Dardanelles; France drags her a willing captive at her chariot-wheels, and compels the arms which once struck down Napoleon to aid her in all the mean revolutionary aggressions she is pursuing on the surrounding states; Portugal and Holland, smarting under the wounds received from their oldest ally, wait for the moment of British weakness to wreak vengeance for the wrongs inflicted under the infatuated guidance of the Whig democracy. Louis XIV., humbled by the defeats of Blenheim and Ramillies, yet spurned with indignation at the proposal that he should join his arms to those of his enemies, to dispossess his ally, the King of Spain; but England, in the hour of her greatest triumph, has submitted to a greater degradation. She has deserted and insulted the nation which stood by her side in the field of Vittoria; she has joined in alliance against the power which bled with her at Waterloo, and deserted in its last extremity the ally whose standards waved triumphant with her on the sands of Egypt.

The supineness and weakness of

Ministers in the last agony of Turkey, has been such as would have exceeded belief, if woful experience had not taught us to be surprised at nothing which they can do. France acted with becoming foresight and spirit; they had an Admiral, with four ships of the line, to watch Russia in the Dardanelles, when the crisis approached. What had England? One ship of the line on the way from Malta, and a few frigates in the Archipelago, were all that the mistress of the waves could afford, to support the honour and interests of England, in an emergency more pressing than any which has occurred since the battle of Trafalgar. Was the crisis not foreseen? Every man in the country of any intelligence foresaw it, from the moment that Ibrahim besieged Acre. Can England only fit out one ship of the line to save the Dardanelles from Russia? Is this the foresight of the Whigs, or the effect of the Dock yard reductions? Or has the Reform Act utterly annihilated our strength, and sunk our name?

It is evident that in the pitiful shifts to which Government is now reduced, foreign events, even of the greatest magnitude, have no sort of weight in its deliberations. Resting on the quicksands of popular favour; intent only on winning the applause or resisting the indiguation of the rabble; dreading the strokes of their old allies among the Political Unions; awakened, when too late, to a sense of the dreadful danger arising from the infatuated course they have pursued; hesitating between losing the support of the Revolutionists and pursuing the anarchical projects which they avow; unable to command the strength of the nation for any foreign policy; having sown the seeds of interminable dissension between the different classes of society, and spread far and wide the modern passion for innovation in lieu of the ancient patriotism of England; they have sunk it at once, and apparently for ever in the gulf of degradation. By the passions they have excited in the Empire, its strength is utterly destroyed, and well do foreign nations perceive its weakness. They know that Ireland is on the verge of rebellion; that the West Indies, with the torch and the tomahawk at

their throats, are waiting only for the first national reverse to throw off their allegiance; that the splendid Empire of India is shaking under the democratic rule to which it is about to be subjected on the expiry of the Charter; that the dock yards, stripped of their stores to make a shew of economy, and conceal a sinking revenue, could no longer fit out those mighty fleets which so recently went forth from their gates, conquering and to conquer. The foreign historians of the French revolutionary war deplored the final seal it had put upon the maritime superiority of England, and declared that human sagacity could foresee no possible extrication of the seas from her resistless dominion: but how vain are the anticipations of human wisdom! The fickle change of popular opinion subverted the mighty fabric; a Whig Ministry succeeded to the helm, and before men had ceased to tremble at the thunder of Trafalgar, England had become contemptible on the waves !

From this sad scene of national degradation and decay, from the melancholy spectacle of the breaking up, from revolutionary passion and innovation, of the greatest and most beneficent Empire that ever existed upon earth, we turn to a more cheering prospect, and joyfully inhale from the prospects of the species those hopes which we can no longer venture to cherish for our own country.

The attention of all classes in this country has been so completely absorbed of late years by the progress of domestic changes, and the march of revolution, that little notice has been bestowed on the events we have been considering; yet they are more important to the future fate of the species, than even the approaching dismemberment of the British Empire. We are about to witness the overthrow of the Mahometan religion; the emancipation of the cradle of civilisation from Asiatic bondage; the accomplishment of that deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre, for which the Crusaders toiled and bled in vain; the elevation of the Cross on the Dome of St Sophia, and the walls of Jerusalem.

That this great event was approaching has been long foreseen by

the thoughtful and the philanthropic. The terrors of the Crescent have long since ceased: it received its first check in the Gulf of Lepanto: it waned before the star of Sobieski under the walls of Vienna, and set in flames in the Bay of Navarino. The power which once made all Christendom tremble, which shook the imperial throne, and penetrated from the sands of Arabia to the banks of the Loire, is now in the agonies of dissolution: and that great deliverance for which the banded chivalry of Europe fought for centuries, and to attain which millions of Christian bones whitened the fields of Asia, is now about to be effected through the vacillation and indifference of their descendants. That which the courage of Richard Cœur de Lion, and the enthusiasm of Godfrey of Bouillon, could not achieve; which resisted the arms of the Templars and the Hospitallers, and rolled back from Asia the tide of European invasion, is now in the act of being accomplished. A more memorable instance was never afforded of the manner in which the passions and vices of men are made to work out the intentions of an overruling Providence, and of the vanity of all human attempts to prevent that ceaseless spread of religion which has been decreed by the Almighty.

That Russia is the power by whom this great change was to be effected, by whose arm the tribes of Asia were to be reduced to subjection, and the triumph of civilisation over barbaric sway effected, has long been apparent. The gradual but unceasing pressure of the hardy races of mankind upon the effeminate, of the energy of Northern poverty on the corruption of Southern opulence, rendered it evident that this change must ultimately be effected. The final triumph of the Cross over the Crescent was secure from the moment that the Turcoman descended to the plains of Asia Minor, and the sway of the Czar was established in the deserts of Scythia. As certainly as water will ever descend from the mountains to the plain, so surely will the stream of permanent conquest, in every age, flow from the northern to the southern races of mankind.

But although the continued opera

tion of these causes was evident, and the ultimate ascendent of the religion of Christ, and the institutions of civilisation, over the tenets of Mahomet, and the customs of barbarism, certain; yet many different causes, till within these few years, contributed to check their effects, and to postpone, apparently, for an indefinite period, the final liberation of the Eastern world. But the weakness, insanity, and vacillation of England and France, while they will prove fatal to them, seem destined to subject the East to the sway of Russia, and renew, in the plains of Asia, those institutions of which Europe has become unworthy. The cause of religion, the spread of the Christian faith, has received an impulse from the vices and follies, which she never received from the sword, of Western Europe. The infidelity and irreligion of the French philosophers have done that for the downfall of Islamism which all the enthusiasm of the Crusaders could not accomplish. Their first effect was to light up a deadly war in Europe, and array the civilized powers of the world in mortal strife against each other; but this was neither their only nor their final effect. In this contest, the arms of civilisation acquired an unparalleled ascendency over those of barbarism; and at its close, the power of Russia was magnified fourfold. Turkey and Persia were unable to withstand the Empire from which the arms of Napoleon rolled back. The overthrow of Mahometanism, the liberation of the finest provinces of Europe from Turkish sway, flowed at last, directly and evidently, from the rise of the spirit which at first closed all the churches of France, and erected the altar of Reason in the choir of

Notre Dame. We are now witnessing the conclusion of the drama.When England descended from her high station, and gave way to revolutionary passions; when irreligion tainted her people, and respect for the institutions of their fathers no longer influenced her government, she, too, was abandoned to the consequences of her vices; and from her apostasy, fresh support derived to the cause of Christianity. French irreligion had quadrupled the military strength of Russia: but the English navy still existed to uphold the tottering edifice of Turkish power. English irreligion and infidelity overturned her constitution, and the barrier was swept away.

The British navy, paralysed by democracy and divisions in the British islands, can no longer resist Moscovite ambition, and the prostration of Turkey is in consequence complete. The effects will be fatal to England; but they may raise up in distant lands other empires, which may one day rival even the glories of the British name. The Cross may cease to be venerated at Paris, but it will be elevated at St Sophia: it may be ridiculed in London, but it will resume its sway at Antioch. Considerations of this kind are fitted, if any can, to console us for the degradation and calamities of our own country: they shew, that if one nation becomes corrupted, Providence can derive, even from its vices and ingratitude, the means of raising up other states to the glory of which it has become unworthy and that from the decay of civilisation in its present seats, the eye of Hope may anticipate its future resurrection in the cradle from whence it originally spread its blessings throughout the world.