TDBKET, 



prophet. Up till now : suffered patiently, 



forthe\ r.irry in tliii depth of their souls tin 

 of a proud resignation and pani-nt waitin,' whieh tliii 

 Vest do not understand ; tli 

 a same blood as the august family 

 .nii-s nt' tin- empire, and 

 . ! which they liavi- fur tin- t!i r 



up in tlirir thoughts with thn worship which they 

 the Koran. Hut permit nir, sin . 



it, thai the Mussulmans have 



reached the limit of saeriiiees and sutlV-n 



murmurs, hut half tap n_r ; and it 



1. macrons, both for your august dyna-tv 



and for tin- people, to reduce tin-in to, dospa'r. In 



tin- niiiUt of tin-so continual oppressions, which you 



hold iii horror, and which the groat functionaries of 



tin- t-nipiro do not probably desire, but which result 



from tin- vrry nature of the government oppressions 



U, notwithstanding your power and \ur intrl- 



IL'cneo, it appears that you are unable to jm-\ 



t-vi-n to know of the strong virility of the Turkish 



race grows feebler every day. Some of your subjects, 



good patriots, remark, with wcll-ground- 



f, that the race to which we are proud to be- 



- sntt'eriii',' from the sombre disease of depopu- 

 lation. Hut it is not this which alarms me tin- ino>t ; 

 perhaps this depopulation may be in a great measure 

 c.\i>laiued by our military organization. What terri- 

 fies 1110 for our future is that, in imitation of con- 



races, we Ottomans are allowing ourselves for 

 some years to be assailed by a moral degradation 

 which becomes every day more intense, every day 

 more profound, every day more universal. 



Alas ! sire, diminution of moral vigor and intellectual 

 degeneracy are not the only evils of our present situa- 

 tion. \Ve are struggling everywhere against the 

 monster of misery. More than once, sire, you must 

 have been grieved to perceive the poverty of your 

 ry ; more than once you have sighed at the ne- 

 y you have been under of not paying regularly 

 your troops and your functionaries : often has your 

 paternal heart been sad at the smallness of the pay 

 which the state allows to its servants, for you know 

 that in the East an official who is insufficiently paid 

 is an official who extorts money from the population. 

 But the financial embarrassments of your government 

 are nothing of themselves. What is terrifying is the 

 secret situation they reveal. Your Majesty's govern- 

 ment is, in fact, one of those which is earned on with 

 the smallest budget in comparison with the number 

 of the population. "\Vliv, then, does this modest budg- 

 h the empire? In the first place, because the 

 taxes are collected in the most objectionable manner, 

 but much more still because the population, working 

 but little, and ignorant of every thing, has arri 

 the last degree of misery. It is thus, sire, that your 

 subjects have become unable to support public "bur- 

 dens which everywhere else would appear light. In- 

 dustry, commerce, and agriculture are all declining 

 in the empire. The people seem to have lost the 

 want and the art of production ; they see the distress 

 in which they are plunged, but it does not arouse 

 their energy or stif them to any effort. 



He repudiates the idea that the decadence 

 of the empire is in any degree to be laid to the 

 account of Mohammedanism, and insists that the 

 political maladministration is the only evil to 



UNITARIANS. 



731 



be removed. For the cure of tins he propOMa 

 remedy a constitution, sa\ . 



Sin it 1 8T it 



ii ll constitution withucon-' 



i surrounded by all the guar- 

 necessary to insure its sincere application and 



lo continuance. Yes, iirc, a constitu- 

 tion which, in establishing a perfect equality of righto 

 and dutifft between Mussulman.'* and Christiana, 

 would realize that harmons which Western people 

 1 is impossible between conquerors ana con-. 

 pn-rcd. I fon-see, sire, that perfidious or ignorant 

 llors will endeavor to take advantage of even 

 tin- word constitution. They will seek to persuade 

 your Majesty that a constitution converts the 

 eign into a wimple automaton, and deprives bun of 

 his liberty of action and his In e \\ill ; and to persuade 

 tin- people that a constitution will force the Mussul- 

 man to renounce every thing he holds dear from his 

 i to his dress. Ignorant or perfl liou, sire, are 

 counsellors. Your Majesty should despiso 

 their advice and the people repel their suggestions. 

 A constitution will limit but one thing absolute 

 power and will only suppn M its excesses. It will 

 deprive the sovereign of only one liberty, that of de- 

 ceiving himself and of doing evil. As for the 

 people, the constitution will constrain it to no sacri- 

 liee incompatible with its honor and its welfare ; it 

 will alike guarantee to the people its holy religion, 

 its fortune, and its property, as also the tranquillity 

 of the domestic hearth ana the liberty and dignity 

 of each individual. In another point of view the 

 constitution will rapidly bring about salutary modifi- 

 cations in ouf international relations. Who is not 

 aware, sire, not only in our empire, but even in the 

 West of Europe, that the perpetual interference of the 

 representatives of the European powers in our inter- 

 nal affairs has produced the most fatal results ? The 

 representatives of those powers have doubtless more 

 than once raised their voices to recommend principles 

 of civilization and humanity. But more than onco 

 also they have interfered for the purpose of advan- 

 cing interests of race, or still worse, of promoting pri- 

 vate interestSj The constitution, in laying the foun- 

 dations of a true government, will put an end to all 

 interference from abroad, will extend over all the 

 populations of every creed an equal protection, and 

 will divide among them all the same guarding justice. 



The Levant Herald, of Constantinople, of 

 March 20th, calls the letter of Mustapha Fazil 

 Pacha "by far the most vigorous piece of 

 writing on Turkish affairs we have met with, 

 in or out of blue books." Similar views were 

 expressed in a letter from Zia 15ey (a refugee 

 in Paris) to a Polish paper published at Posen, 

 Dziennik Poznanski. According to this writer, 

 tin- imminence of a Russian intervention and of 

 an insurrection among the Turkish Slavonians 

 can only be prevented by the powers inducing tlio 

 Sultan to place himself at the head of the Turk- 

 ish reform movement, and, surrounded by new 

 advisers, to rescue both Turks and Christians 

 alike from the oppression and nrisgovernment 

 under which he asserts they are now suffering. 



U 



UNITARIANS. The "Year Book of the of erection which are not included in this num- 



Unitarian Congregational Churches;" for 1868, her. It gives a list of three hundred societies, 



states that wit hi n two y ( >ars fifty-one Unitarian sixty-five of which have no settled min 



churches have been built, enlar-ed, or other- and of three hundred and seventy ministers, 



wise improved, and that several are in process Many of the latter are retired, or, at least, 



