Convinced As The Turks
Must Now Be, In Many Parts Of The East, Of The Superiority Of These
Europeans, Whom
They cannot but consider as the brethren of their
Christian subjects, their behaviour towards the latter will,
nevertheless, be strictly
Regulated by the avowed sentiments of their
governors; and it would be as easy for Mohammed Aly by a single word to
degrade the Christians in Egypt, as he found it to raise them to their
present consideration, superior, I believe, to what they enjoy in any
other part of Turkey.
The hatred against Christians is nearly equal in every part of the
Ottoman empire; and if the Moslims sacrifice that feeling, it is not to
the principles of charity or humanity, but to the frown of those who
happen to be in power; and their baseness is such, that they will kiss
[p.207] to-day the hands of him whom they have trodden under foot
yesterday. In examining into the fanatical riots, many of which are
recorded in the chanceries of the European consuls in the Levant, it
will generally be found that government had a share in the affrays, and
easily succeeded in quelling them. The late Sultan Selim, in his
regenerating system, which led him to favour the Christians, found no
opposition from the mass of his people, but from the jealous
Janissaries; and when the latter had prevailed, the demi-Gallicized
grandees of Constantinople easily sunk again into Sunnys. Sometimes,
indeed, a rash devotee, or mad Sheikh or Dervish at the head of a few
partisans, affords an exception to these general statements; and will
insult a Christian placed in the highest favour with the public
authorities, as happened at Damascus in 1811, to the Greek Patriarch,
after Yousef Pasha had been repulsed:
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