The Greek Insurrection[65]

But although the present Greek insurrection, considered with reference to its own merits, is altogether insignificant, it still derives importance from the occasion it affords to the western Powers for interfering between the Porte and the great majority of its subjects in Europe, among whom the Greeks count only one million against ten millions of the other races professing the Greek religion. The Greek inhabitants of the so-called kingdom as well as those living in the Ionian Isles under British rule consider it, of course, to be their national mission to expel the Turks from wherever the Greek language is spoken, and to annex Thessaly and Epirus to a State of their own. They may even dream of a Byzantine restoration, although, on the whole, they are too astute a people to believe in such a fancy. But these plans of national aggrandizement and independence on the part of the Greeks, proclaimed at this moment in consequence of Russian intrigues, as is proved by the lately detected conspiracy of the priest Athanasius[67], and proclaimed too by the robbers of the mountains without being reechoed by the agricultural population of the plain all have nothing to do with the religious rights of the subjects of Turkey with which an attempt is made to mix them up.

As we learn from the English journals and from notice given in the House of Lords by Lord Shaftesbury, and in the Commons by Mr. Monckton Milnes[a], the British Government is to be called upon in connection, partly at least, with these Greek movements to take measures to meliorate the condition of the Christian subjects of the Porte. Indeed, we are told explicitly that the great end aimed at by the western Powers is to put the Christian religion on a footing of equal rights with the Mahometan in Turkey. Now, either this means nothing at all, or it means the granting political and civil rights, both to Mussulmans and Christians, without any reference to either religion, and without considering religion at all. I n other words, it means the complete separation of State and Church, of Religion and Politics. But the Turkish State, like all Oriental States, is founded upon the most intimate connection, we might almost say, the identity of State and Church, of Politics and Religion. The Koran is the double source of faith and law, for that Empire and its rulers. But how is it possible to equalize the faithful and the Giaour, the Mussulman and the Rajah before the Koran? To do that it is necessary, in fact, to supplant the Koran by a new civil code, in other words to break down the framework of Turkish society and create a new order of things out of its ruins.

On the other hand, the main feature that distinguishes the Greek confession from all other branches of the Christian faith, is the same identification of State and Church, of civil and ecclesiastical life. So intimately interwoven were State and Church in the Byzantine Empire, that it is impossible to write the history of the one without writing the history of the other. In Russia the same identity prevails, although there, in contradistinction to the Byzantine Empire, the Church has been transformed into the mere tool of the State, the instrument of subjugation at home and of aggression abroad. In the Ottoman Empire in conformity with the Oriental notions of the Turks, the Byzantine theocracy has been allowed to develop itself to such a degree, that the parson of a parish is at the same time the judge, the mayor, the teacher, the executor of testaments, the assessor of taxes, the ubiquitous factotum of civil life, not the servant, but the master of all work. The main reproach to be cast upon the Turks in this regard is not that they have crippled the privileges of the Christian priesthood, but, on the contrary, that under their rule this all-embracing oppressive tutelage, control, and interference of the Church has been permitted to absorb the whole sphere of social existence. Mr. Fallmerayer very amusingly tells us, in his Orientalische Briefe[b], how a Greek priest was quite astonished when he informed him that the Latin clergy enjoyed no civil authority at all, and had to perform no profane business. "How," exclaimed the priest, "do our Latin brethren contrive to kill time?"

It is plain then that to introduce a new civil code in Turkey, a code altogether abstracted from religion, and based on a complete separation of State and Church, would be not only to abolish Mahometanism, but also to break down the Greek Church as now established in that Empire. Can any one be credulous enough to believe in good earnest that the timid and reactionary valetudinarians of the present British Government have ever conceived the idea of undertaking such a gigantic task, involving a perfect social revolution, in a country like Turkey? The notion is absurd. They can only entertain it for the purpose of throwing dust in the eyes of the English people and of Europe.

Notes

[67] In January 1854 it was announced in Constantinople that the police had discovered a conspiracy of the Greeks, and a Greek priest named Athanasius had been arrested in Vidin. According to the Western press, the conspiracy was headed by Baron Oelsner, ex-adjutant of General Lüders, and its aim was to incite the Greeks and Slays living in Turkey to revolt.