public order of Europe, or upon whatever ground-we have, as you know very well to your cost, taken an important and active part in former years in the affairs relating to the Government of Turkey. We have, in truth, I may say, set up Turkey upon her legs. The probability is that she would not be upon her legs at this moment but for the powerful assistance which, in conjunction with France, we rendered to her, and which it was very doubtful whether France would have undertaken to render if she had stood alone. Consequently, considering the grievous complaints that are made, and the horrors that occur, it becomes a matter of great importance to us in the discharge of our responsibilities to know something about the interior state of Turkey. It is extremely difficult for us to know the state of our own country. We know it but very imperfectly, although we have the assistance of a Press which is organised to the very highest degree, and although we have the aid which we derive from the invaluable privilege of public discussion, inherited from our forefathers, and never more valued than at present. In Turkey, on the other hand, we are dealing with a country in a state that is in some respects semi-barbarous, and in some respects worse than barbarous-meaning by the term barbarous a country in a very early stage of social progress. We are, therefore, in some difficulty, because we have duties to discharge, and we are not amply provided with the means of discharging them. The consequences of this are to be seen and felt by us all in our different positions. I can assure you that I, as a public man, having perhaps opportunities of information superior to the average, have to lament very deeply the insufficiency of my own information. For the last six months I have laboured almost unceasingly to increase it; but I still feel that it is very defective. My desire this evening is to do something, as far as time permits, towards providing my hearers with a clearer view of the interior condition of Turkey than is commonly possessed at present, and likewise to do something towards bringing home to the public mind that which is by many most strongly felt— namely, that down to the present moment, in the case of the people, in the case even of statesmen, aye, and very often in the case of travellers, who went to the East and who came back lamentably deficient of information, we all have been too much in the dark as to the real state of affairs.

I have chosen as the principal source of what I shall say this night, the Work of two English ladies. It may seem a little strange that two ladies should undertake the task of travelling through a country like Turkey; but these two ladies were persons of great courage and intelligence, and likewise imbued with feelings of great philanthropy; and one of them (Miss Irby) has devoted years of her life, and is at this moment devoting herself, to the highly important and laudable purpose of the extension of education in some of the Turkish provinces.

The other, Miss Mackenzie, has been cut off in her honourable career by death. I have no hesitation in saying that the book I have chosen is, as far as I know, the very best that can be obtained upon the interior condition of part of Turkey. They devoted themselves morning, noon, and night to see with their own eyes, and hear with their own ears, and consider with their own minds and hearts the condition of the country. That was the purpose for which they went there. Another reason why I take their book is that it has not been produced amid the somewhat heated conditions of the last six or twelve months. It was published nine or ten years ago; but the state of things which it described was a state of things which undoubtedly has not mended. It has decidedly, and that I think by general confession, grown worse, and not better, in the most essential points, within that time.

So much, then, for the book to which I am about to refer ; but still it is necessary that I should say a few words to assist you in understanding the very peculiar and unexampled condition of the Turkish government, and the Turkish race in the European provinces of the Ottoman Empire. I am going to limit myself to a very small portion of the Turkish Empire. The whole dominion has a population of 40,000,000, and not only so, but it is composed of a great multitude of countries differing very much in their political relations to Turkey, and all of them, I am afraid, having only this in common-that wherever they are directly under the Government of the Porte, they are under an incredibly bad government. The best-conditioned of them by far are those who, although they pay tribute to the Porte, and maintain a certain mildly-developed connection with it, yet in the main have the management of their own affairs. To-night we have to deal with a very small portion indeed of the Turkish Empire. These ladies have described principally the northern part of Macedonia, the country lying immediately round the southern and western parts of Servia, and also Montenegro. Now, the Turkish Government is a government without any parallel, so far as I know, in the world. It is a government established by conquest, and in that respect it is exceedingly like a great many other governments that have been established by conquest. For example, the Norman Government was established in England by conquest, and was maintained for a certain time by force, and for a time there was a great inequality between a man who was a Norman by birth in England, and the condition of a man who was a Saxon, or a Briton, or a Dane by birth; but all these differences have long ago worn off, and we do not know whether a man is a Briton, a Jute, a Dane, or a Saxon, or a Roman, or a Celt; we have all happily settled down into one homogeneous whole. The case of Turkey is exactly the reverse. There has been no settling down, no amalgamation. It is with

Turkey, not a case of milk put into tea, which amalgamates with the tea; it is the case of oil put into water, which will not mix. That may make intelligible to you the condition of the Turks in regard to their subject races. They are no more mixed than the oil with the water.

The only qualification which I must make to that saying is this: when the Turks came into the country they came upon this principle, that all the populations of the countries that they conquered were to have the choice between three alternatives. One of them was death, another was a sort of servitude, in which the Christians now remain, and the third was the embracing of the Mahometan religion. A portion of the Christian population of those countries chose to embrace the Mahometan creed; and I am sorry to say—for it does not tell well for the benefit of worldly prosperity on the human heart and character-that these were almost entirely the wealthy people. They were the people who had what is called something to lose, who had what is sometimes spoken of as "a stake in the country." We sometimes hear "a stake in the country" spoken of really as if it invested a man with special virtues and moral excellences. However that may be, in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Crete, and Bulgaria, a number of those who had wealth turned Mahometan to save their property, and have formed a class by themselves, the Turks being partially, and only very partially, mixed with these Mahometans; but with the Christian population, whether Roman Catholic or belonging to the Eastern Church, they have not amalgamated at all.

Their government was originally a government of force, and a government of force it still remains. It is impossible for me to explain at full length the nature of that government, but it is as unlike as anything can be to the government of England. That is something of a beginning towards an explanation. If you consider what is done by our government-I do not mean a particular administration, but the whole constitution, or rather, the series of those who administer that constitution-if you consider the aspects of our own government, you must wipe them all out and put them away, and then start afresh to consider what the Turkish government is. The business of our government is to preserve property, to preserve order, to prevent each man from injuring his neighbour, to promote education, and knowledge of religion, to guard the sanctity of the family, and, above all, the sanctity and honour of women. In Turkey not one of these is guarded; except, to a certain degree for the Turks themselves and the Mussulmans. For the Christian they are not guarded; and that is the great and palpable fact which distinguishes the Turkish government from the English government, and, in its degree, from every government in Christendom.

The Turkish government, in truth, so far as it has merit, has it not in what it does, but in what it does not do. When this

conquering race came into Europe they were wonderful as a conquering race. They had an immense talent as a conquering race, as a military horde, and they understood right well the business of conquest, the business of bloodshed, the business of setting themselves up by force above their fellow-creatures. But, as to the ordinary arts of government, they neither understand them at all, nor care one pin about them. At times, in the course of the Turkish history, plans have been submitted to the Ottoman Porte-—which, I believe, is the proper official name of the Government-for the total destruction and extermination of the whole of the Christians; but these plans have been rejected, and why? Because they said, “No, it is much better to allow the Christian to pay a ransom for his life. When he has paid a ransom for his life, he will remain and serve our purposes. He will pay taxes for us; cultivate the soil for us. He will have no rights of property. His property will only be that which we do not want. So much of it as we want will be our property. He shall remain, therefore, upon these conditions; and, as to the concerns of his government, we are not going to bother ourselves as to the government of inferior animals, such as the populations of those countries that we have trodden under foot. Let them manage for themselves, so far as they can do so without interfering with our objects and purposes. As for their religion, let them shift for themselves: they have paid their ransom." The name given to the Christian population was "Rayahs." I am informed, or at least I have seen it printed in books, by those who profess to understand the Turkish language, which I do not, that “rayah” means ransomed -one who has paid a price for permission to live. Whether that be the meaning of the word or not, it is the essential idea of the condition of the Christians in the Turkish Empire.

This was a state of things which you will easily understand required radical reform; and radical reform in Turkey was contemplated as a sequel to the Crimean War. At the end of the war the Ottoman Government gave an engagement, perhaps the most solemn ever contracted, certainly one of the most solemn ever contracted in the public history of the world-for it was an engagement sealed in blood and tears-in the blood and tears of many an Englishman and English family—a most solemn engagement to set all this right, and to establish full civil, religious, social, and legal rights amongst its subjects. Twenty years of tranquillity followed. I do not mean that the Empire was always tranquil. There were, there could not but be, rebellions, a natural growth in such a case, that cannot be repressed; but there was no foreign attack or aggression of any kind upon the empire. At the end of these twenty years, when the recent rebellions occurred and the facts were brought more fully to light, we find that, instead of that engagement's having been redeemed,

matters appear to be absolutely worse than they were twenty-five years ago.

Such is the state of things which we approach in this great question. And I will endeavour now to give you some details which will open it up to you in a certain degree—I am afraid, in a very limited degree, because it is far too wide to be embraced in the time which you can to-night devote to it; but I can show you that the language which I hold is not the language of persons with inflamed and heated minds. It is rather a striking fact that several members of the legal profession, and of great legal authority, have been writing upon this subject in different parts of the continent of Europe. I have read three works of this description, one of them by a German who is the greatest authority on international law of the present day, another by a Belgian legist of very great ability, and the third by an Italian Advocate; and I will read an extract from the writings of the latter to show that, although the language I use might appear to be extremely strong, yet it is not really stronger than what these lawyers use. These lawyers make no doubt whatever about the fact that it is the absolute duty of Europe to look at the condition of Turkey, and to prevent the continuance of the horrible state of things that prevails there. The Italian lawyer says that Turkey has never existed in Europe as a nation, if a state be an organic union of one or more peoples within defined limits of space, dependent upon a sovereign authority for the well-being of those associated in it. It follows logically that Turkey, as it is constituted, is not to be held as a state. An organic union of the different peoples constituting Turkey does not and cannot exist, because the denial of the equality of the subect in the face of the public authority carries logically, as a consequence, the violation of the sanctuary, of the family, of property, of religion, of personal existence. The Turk believes in his own supremacy over other people, and does not hold possible any relations between them except upon this condition. Lawyers are supposed to take judicial views of these matters, and such is the language of an Italian lawyer who has written upon this terrible subject.

I shall now go on to describe the condition of Servia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, and those southern and northern parts of Macedonia which are inhabited principally by people of the Servian race and people of Servian sympathies. In former times, the countries that run along the south of the Danube were occupied by two kingdoms of considerable power. One of them, the Bulgarian kingdom, was subdued in the fourteenth century; the other was the Servian kingdom, and that was subdued at the end of the fourteenth century; that is, they made themselves vassals of the Turks; but the Turks very soon trampled them altogether under foot. The conditions under which they submitted to a Mahometan power were broken :