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It would seem idle to multiply dry particulars of cases, all essentially similar, showing the widespread corruption and sinister ingenuity which thwarts the administration of justice in Turkey, though this could be done without difficulty, as such cases are of almost daily occurrence in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey. It is indeed hard to see how any attempt at reform and superintendence could successfully cope with a system so rotten to its very core.

The third important branch of provincial rule in the Turkish territory of western Asia, which presents an equally lamentable spectacle of corruption, is the financial and fiscal department. Its practice is less often prominently before the public than those of the police and judicial departments; but, on the other hand, it is too persistently addicted to malversation of office to escape detection. Designedly bewildering complications of accounts, showing illusory balances in favor of those who keep them, supply the means of peculation. Receipts in coin and payments in notes leave large profits. Collusive sales of crown lands enrich their negotiators. The farming of the tithes of agricultural produce offers an abundant harvest of gain to its many manipulators, whether the season be favorable to the crops or otherwise. The collection of arrears of taxes is productive of gratuities to all those who are connected with it, great and small. The administration of property belonging to pious foundations furnishes a fertile field for wholesale robbery. Finally, the appointment of governors and lieutenant-governors of districts by the governors-general of provinces is almost invariably accompanied by money payments by the former to the latter, and to other functionaries facilitating their nominations. Instances of bribery and corruption are so common in the Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire that, in adducing a few of them as proofs of their existence, the only difficulty lies in their selection, as it is not attempted now to treat the subject of reforms in Asiatic Turkey in an exhaustive, but rather in a suggestive manner. The following cases may serve to establish the fact of such malpractices existing, if demonstration be required.

Complaints were lately sent to a governorgeneral by the population of a district against the extreme rapacity of a new governor. A commissioner was intrusted with the duties of a formal inquiry into the case. The governor summoned all the complainants before him, and in the presence of the commissioner he admitted the receipt of every bribe which they mentioned. He then made out a debtor and creditor account of all that he had received in the district and of all that he had paid to obtain his appointment, resulting in a balance in his own

favor, of which he demanded payment in the event of his recall. He was not recalled, and his rapacity immediately increased in intensity.

A British merchant remitted five hundred pounds in notes by post from one town to another. The letters containing them in halves were never received. Investigations were instituted, and the postmaster absconded. He has now been captured, however, through the active exertions of the British consulate, and the merchant may thus hope to recover his money, a part of which the postmaster probably devoted to purchasing impunity and undisturbed possession of the remainder.

There exists a perfect understanding among Turkish pashas and effendis with regard to the levying of this species of blackmail from subordinate functionaries. A late governor-general of an Asiatic province had received one thousand pounds from a person who had been appointed a judge through his good offices with the Porte; this large amount corroborating what has been stated above concerning the value of the illicit gains that accrue from the exercise of judicial functions. It happened that the governorgeneral was recalled very soon after the appointment of the judge. On the arrival of his successor an arrangement was entered into by which half the sum paid to the late governor was handed by him to the new one on condition of his not attempting to replace the judge by another remunerating candidate for magisterial honors and profits.

The devices employed for realizing large amounts are sometimes singularly ingenious; and, if such a degree of intelligence and energy as one sees every day displayed in inventing means of peculation were directed toward the laudable end of good government, the Turkish domination in western Asia might last and prosper, a result quite incompatible with the constant perversion of skill to iniquitous purposes. For instance, the Turkish authorities spend their time in having the walls of half-ruined houses repaired or pulled down at the expense of their Government, in order to prevent their falling on the inhabitants, whom at the same time they assess for the payment of the necessary outlay, which had been charged to the Treasury. They announce that the volume of water in one stream is to be diverted to a second, which is insufficient to supply the mills built on it and the gardens irrigated by it; the owners of mills and gardens on the first stream pay liberally to prevent the cutting of a channel between the two streams, which would cut off the water so necessary to their property; the second stream is then dammed up at the distance of a few miles, and the millers and gardeners having an interest in it disburse

all they can to have the water of the other stream added to it, in the belief that the supply is failing from natural causes; the dam is at once cleared away, and there is great rejoicing when the water is seen to have increased in volume. This swindle is, of course, understood when it is seen that the two streams have not been united, as was supposed; but the authorities have in the mean time been paid by both parties, and neither of them has the courage to make any complaint. Such juggling tricks are not uncommon in the Asiatic provinces, and no shame is felt in playing them off on the people. The sheep-tax is collected by the emissaries of the provincial government, one for each group of villages or nomadic tribes. These collectors pay generally about fifteen pounds to the Turkish authorities for their respective appointments. They then go out to drive a lucrative trade, and make a small fortune by not counting the flocks of those who pay for exemption from the tax. The farming of the tithes is the greatest and most profitable of the many fields for malversation of office which are open to the Turkish provincial administration in Asia. A sufficient bribe can always secure the privilege of assessment at thirty per cent. of the value of the crop, and even after collection new arrangements can be made by which the amount stipulated as payable to the Treasury is greatly reduced. One of these contractors owed fifteen hundred pounds as the price of a collection which had yielded him about five thousand pounds, and, by the disbursement of gratuities in the proper quarters, he had his debt registered as eight hundred pounds. Another of them owes upward of fifty thousand pounds to the Treasury for tithe contracts, which had been paid for only in part during a long series of years; and he is allowed to continue his speculations in the same way with very considerable profit to himself, while his accumulating debt remains unclaimed through regular payments of bribes amounting to about five thousand pounds a year, although he is wealthy enough to pay up all the arrears he owes if pressed. In another example of the same kind the tithes of a circle of villages had been farmed for many years by a speculator who paid generally about two thousand pounds for them, a little more or a little less in proportion to the abundance or deficiency of the crops. Last season having been unusually productive there, the Turkish authorities availed themselves of the opportunity of deriving an advantage from this circumstance. They had the tithes exposed for sale piecemeal, each village separately, and the aggregate amount offered for them was nearly six thousand pounds; but they were not sold. The previous farmer of them was summoned, and a bargain was struck with him on the plea

of the inexpediency of making any change of persons when the perfect security offered by the original speculator had been already amply tested. He openly boasted of his good fortune in having been able to purchase nearly six thousand pounds' worth of tithes for the customary payment of two thousand pounds with only fifteen hundred pounds in addition distributed among those disposing of them. Such is the manner in which the provincial revenues of Asiatic Turkey are collected; for this latter instance is far from being a solitary one, and it may indeed be taken as a sample of the universal practice. Those public revenues would doubtless be greatly augmented in amount if a better system of collection with a rigid superintendence were introduced with practical success.

The question now arises whether practical success in the introduction of reforms into the police, judicial, and financial establishments of Asiatic Turkey be possible. Proposals can always be made, more or less advantageous in theory, and they may also be accepted. But the Turks are very skillful in defeating the application of measures which they had accepted in principle, and they have a ready excuse for their non-application in the dearth of financial resources to meet the unavoidable expense attending the due realization of reforms. In making this excuse for inaction they may nurse a latent hope of obtaining thereby another loan, which would furnish an opening for picking and stealing; but, however this may be, it should be borne in mind that the Ottoman Turks are an essentially Oriental people, and, as such, they respect power alone, yielding to force, not to persuasion. Gentleness and humanity are, to them, suggestive of weakness and fear. Whatever is done for them must be done peremptorily, if it is expected to succeed. They are a cynical race, ruling a conquered country on principles of self-interest, irrespective of right or wrong. A late very intelligent and equally unreserved Grand Vizier made no concealment of the fact, being in the habit of saying that the Turkish domination of the Ottoman Empire is for the benefit not of the governed, but of the governing, classes. In its Asiatic provinces it is in fact an organized system of peculation. The public business of the infernal regions themselves, as an American traveler quaintly observes, could hardly be administered on such principles. The Turkish rule in western Asia is past redemption, irreclaimably vicious. No reproductive faculty exists in the character of the Turks. If their domination is not corrupt, it is nothing. The rotten, withering branches of the tree once lopped off, it must die. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, than whom no one knows the Turks better, said of them in one of

his speeches, "Their corruption eats into the very foundations of society, and a combination of violence, fraud, and intrigue obstructs the march of progress, and poisons the very atmosphere in which they prevail." On the other hand, Lord Palmerston once said in the House of Commons that there was not an instance in all history of another country having advanced so much in its political and social condition during twenty years as the Ottoman Empire had! These are two great authorities on the subject, and they are in open contradiction with each other; inquirers can judge which of them is the more likely to be in the right.

If only stubborn facts are taken into consideration, no lack of proof will be found that, however plausible it may appear to be at Constantinople, the old theory of Turkish regeneration has been completely refuted by subsequent events and indications in Asiatic Turkey. No possible doubt of this can remain in the mind of any one who has been resident there for a sufficient length of time to form a safe opinion. The Turks of Asia have not improved in any way for centuries, their national tendencies being confined to that spirit of conquest which led them victoriously from the Altai Mountains and the plains of Khorassan to the shores of the Bosporus. New powers or capacities can not be easily created in them, and the influence of their domination, which has always been fatal to civilization, must continue, like an incubus, to crush down every element of progress that exists in the country. They are not colonists, they are not traders, they are not administrators: the special faculties and habits requisite for all those vocations are entirely wanting in them. They have learned nothing since they invaded the Byzantine Empire, and they have unlearned nothing. Oltenitza, Silistria, and Kars, Alexinatz, Shipka, and Plevna prove that they are still the same intrepid warriors they were then; but they are also now the same cruel and bloodthirsty despoilers of the subjugated population, and respect for justice and truth is as far as ever from exercising any influence on their conduct. They can but oppress and impoverish, torture and plunder, being equally incapable of living and thriving by honest industry themselves, and of allowing others to prosper by it. The prejudices of caste are even more deeply rooted in them now than they were of old, for the sympathy and protection afforded of late to the Christians of Turkey by the European powers have only exacerbated their hatred of them. Not a Mussulman beggar meets a nonMussulman householder in the towns of Asiatic Turkey without taking "le haut du pavé," and making him walk in the gutter. It is true that a Christian or Jewish householder may be a mem

ber of one of the provincial councils, all of which have had for many years the illusory semblance of being composed of mixed elements; but he is nevertheless contemptuously ordered to sign their decrees, even when the purport of those decrees is prejudicial to the legitimate interests of the non-Mussulman classes of the population. The Turk is thus the lord of creation, and the Christian and Jew are his retainers. His Mussulman faith is a religion of pride, requiring no aliment, out living on itself, and that pride must be abased before any reform growing out of the Christian doctrine of equality can be successfully introduced. Like the haughty exclusiveness of the Jewish polity of old, the insolent usurpation of superiority by Islamism must ultimately cause its own downfall; but the time may not yet have come for such a sweeping change in the Turkish domination in western Asia, and the means of producing it, though they have certainly now been called into existence, may not have reached that degree of maturity which is necessary for its completion, if violent convulsions are to be avoided in effecting it.

Notwithstanding the danger, however, that amicable relations might suffer by our insistance, and that serious disturbances might be produced in the country by compliance with it, still the only advisable course for England to follow with regard to Asiatic Turkey, if the Anglo-Turkish Convention is to become more than a dead letter, must be to merge her chivalrous courtesy into a stern declaration that her counsels will be enforced in the event of their being disregarded. The Porte, having seen the deplorable excesses of the Turks in the late war glossed over and palliated in England, may have conceived, by dint of impunity, the erroneous notion that England will assume no other tone, whatever ultimate answer may be given to her advice; and, if the negotiations regarding the application of reforms to the Asiatic provinces are not carried on by England in a manner proving that no more trifling with the subject will be allowed, it will soon become evident that only one alternative will remain open to her, namely, the repudiation of the responsibilities assumed by her in the Anglo-Turkish Convention. Those responsibilities having been very properly made conditional on the application of reforms, such a conclusion of the question would be perfectly justifiable in itself; and it would be less unsatisfactory than to go on receiving vacuous assurances of the fulfillment of a condition with is opposed by too many obstacles to admit the probability, or even the possibility, of its being fully realized under the Turkish domination in western Asia.

Fraser's Magazine.

THE

IT

ITALIAN

I.

HOMES OF THE PLASTER-IMAGE MEN.

T is a well-known fact that while emigration is almost unknown to the thriving peasantry of Tuscany, the neighboring province of Lucca furnishes a very large proportion of the wandering Italians who go to seek their fortunes beyond the seas. These are nearly all figurinaj, those plaster-image men who with their trays of brittle distortions of famous statues are to be met with everywhere throughout the world. Few peasant families of the Lucchesi valleys are without some Gianni or Pietro who, forsaking the parental corn- or hemp-patch, has trudged away to attack the world's oyster by means of sulphurmolds and wax and plaster. But the Italian race ever being essentially home-loving, these Lucchesi seldom settle abroad. Sooner or later they find their way back to their native place, lay out their savings in a scrap of ground, tell wondrous tales of travel and golden possibilities, and keep up the family tradition by packing off all superfluous sons to seek their fortune in the same way. Here at the Bagni di Lucca we are in the very midst of this land of figurinaj, and all the surrounding villages nestling in chestnut-glades or crowning hilltops are pointed out to us as the homes of returned emigrants. All are interesting, but Ghivizzano is certainly the most picturesque. A few miles from the Bagni, just where the noble valley of the Serchio widens out into a sunny, vine-tangled district, sloping upward over a chain of chestnut-covered hills to the bold spurs and peaks of the central Apennines, Ghivizzano crowns the summit of one of the aforesaid hills. Encircled with high walls and crested by a tall campanile and a ruined tower dating from the days of that potent lady the Countess Matilda, it still shows an imposing front to the world, and must have been a splendid place for defense in the fighting days of Castruccio-Castracani, whose birthplace it was.

And now as then, though windows have here and there been opened in the grim old walls, there is but one gate to Ghivizzano; it is still a castello-as these walled villages are called-and generation after generation of its inhabitants contentedly tramp round two thirds of its circuit, after their day's labor in the fields, to reach that solitary place of ingress. It seems strange that no successful figurinaio should have brought back some

SKETCHES.

public spirit as well as quattrini from his distant wanderings, and sought to let in light and air to the cooped-up dwellings by knocking down a few bits of the useless walls: Italians, however, are the most conservative, least revolutionary of races, and the fact that a thing has always been, is with them an excellent reason why it should always continue to be. Besides, all the more thriving inhabitants-chiefly returned emigrants

have spread themselves outside the village, and the hillside toward the high-road is dotted with tiny farms and a few gayly-painted houses. But apart from quattrini, the nomadic tendencies of Ghivizzano have one result which is comical enough to the casual visitor. Halting for breath outside the gateway of this Old World Italian village, it was startling to be suddenly accosted by a voice from an upper window with a Good evening, ma'am," in very tolerable English. Castruccio's ghost would have been far less surprising.

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Then, as we presently dived into a vaulted passage in the thickness of the wall, which runs nearly all round Ghivizzano, the same voiceclose at hand now-said: "Very bad road, that way, ma'am; you caan't get on," in an accent which told that the speaker had not studied the English language among the "upper ten." He was quite young, but had come back from America lamed for life, and had settled down in his native place. He was beginning to tell us his adventures, when a brisk, withered old man with a face like a dried herring-before soakingpounced upon us in a friendly way, and volunteered to take us up to the church. He too spoke English, though less fluently than the other, and gladly relapsed into his native tongue on finding that we understood it rather better than we understood his English. He was very voluble, and willing as Othello to recount his experiences. Of course he had been a figurinaio, and had only recently retired from his wandering business. He was the owner of a couple of houses and several fields, but his income seemed to be small-it certainly allowed no margin for soap—and he did not disdain to supplement it by filling the office of clock-winder to the commune for the magnificent weekly salary of ten centimes.

A perfect labyrinth of narrow lanes is crammed into the tiny circuit of Ghivizzano's walls. First of all-undeterred by the cripple's warning-we plunged into the dark vaulted passage, popularly known as Castruccio's dungeons, but which probably served as a covered way of communi

cation between different points of the fortifications. The so-called dungeons are now tenanted by captives who greeted us with friendly grunts as we passed their doors. Now stumbling over fallen masonry, now climbing steep steps, diving under this blackened archway and that, we soon found ourselves back in the main street, not far from our starting-point. We were struck by the well-to-do air of the solid, well-built, low-browed houses. Picturesquely dingy, they are neither ruinous nor poverty-stricken. Their darkness and dirt are but the natural outcome of the universal indifference of the Italian lower classes to the state of their dwellings. For them a house is simply the shelter wherein they sleep and will probably die. All else, their pleasures as their labors, are carried on out of doors.

Some of these Ghivizzano houses have outer stairs ending in a loggia, forming most pictorial backgrounds to the groups of inhabitants. They are by no means overrun by visitors, so we were stared at with friendly interest, and a small crowd was gathering at our heels. The grown people looked well fed, the children fat and healthy. By the raised well in one corner of a tiny triangular piazza, two pretty girls were standing with copper water-vessels poised on their heads. Hard by, at the head of some stone steps, a black-eyed baby was dancing on his mother's lap, crowing and clapping his hands, while his pretty sister, a plump little maiden of some three years old, eating her supper lower down, flourished her wooden spoon, and smiled at us through a tangle of fair curls. As we looked at the pretty picture, we were startled by a dreary moan. An old beggar-woman was kneeling behind us with outstretched hand. The poor creature was evidently daft, for, though we gave her something, she knelt to us again a few minutes later. It was a painful sight.

But now we have mounted a long, wide flight of steps, most suggestive of old-time processions and martial shows, have reached the grassy platform in front of the church, and our guide, the figurinaio, is holding forth to us on the chief events of his life. He knows England well, he says, has been all over it, but seems to have closer acquaintance with its jails than with any other of its institutions. He admits that he did not confine his energies to the sale of plaster figures, but is mysterious as to his other avocations. New York he speaks of in the friendliest manner; he has been to San Francisco, but his dearest reminiscences are the glories of the city which he is pleased to pronounce Sencenati. It was there, it seems, that he made a good deal of money, but he added, with a droll twinkle in his puckery old eyes, that the greater part of it was spent before he reached home.

The Ghivizzano church is singularly poor and bare, and, unlike the generality of churches in this part of Italy, has absolutely nothing to show in the way of architecture, pictures, or Robbiaware. But there is plenty to be seen outside its

doors. Built on the very summit of the hill, its arched loggia rests on a rocky ledge which drops sheer down into a steep and leafy chestnut-glade. Farther on, you overlook the cluster of red-brown roofs to a great stretch of the Serchio Valley. The bold cliffs and wooded gorges of Gallicano crowd close to the farther bank of the river, and, save one luminous peak, shut out the giants of the Carrara range. But on this side of the winding, glistening river a great velvety patch of forest stretches away as far as Ponte all' Ania; little towns and villages are scattered about on the hillsides; the fields and vineyards are arabesqued with woodland strips, and miles away, perched on a bold height, and backed by the loftiest of the guardian mountains, you can see the walls and towers of Barga, once a nest of warriors, whose struggles for liberty I hope to relate in some future paper. And all this is bathed in the fleeting sweetness of the after-glow, when every tint shows forth in softest intensity before fading into night.

But I am not long left to peaceful contemplation of evening effects. A rough-looking lad calmly seats himself beside me on the low parapet, and stares at me pertinaciously but not impertinently. I see more boys flocking round, so I get up and peep in at the door of the dim little church. About a score of women and children are droning out their evening prayer in a melancholy chant. One or two tiny lights twinkle on a side-altar. Curiosity soon overcame devotion on the part of the younger members of the congregation, and, having returned to my wall, I was presently interviewed by a group of little girls, who, whispering and giggling, stood a few paces from me, and took stock of everything about me. To the victim this soon became monotonous; so, singling out one of the mites, an odd little creature with a waist almost reaching to her knees, I asked her what her name was. This astounding request filled her with dismay, and put her companions to flight. Her giggles ceased; she covered her face with her hands; she wriggled this way and that, as though I were holding her in some fearsome spell. But my companion, the big boy, came to her aid; he was perfectly ready to answer questions. The child was his sister, and, after he had administered a few encouraging pokes and nudges, the queer thing at last gasped out that her name was Penelope, and that she was eight years of age. Having made this statement, she instantly scampered away to the other end of the loggia, and was soon giggling as before.

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