340 Mr. Bell on the growing power of Russia. 
of coping with the disciplined armies of Russia, but the attempt at 
military innovation displeased his Mussulman subjects, and was 
made in an evil hour. The Russians saw it at once, and before the 
sultan had time to have an army on the improved plan sufficiently 
numerous and efiicient, attacked him, deprived him of the greater 
number of his new soldiers, whilst the rest of his army on the old 
footing abandoned him toa man. Reform in military tactics can- 
not now be introduced, and even though it should, it will not save 
the empire, nor prevent its becoming a prey tothe Russians. The 
religious system of the Koran has rivetted the minds of the Turks 
in an obstinate adherence to antiquated ignorance, and placed an 
insurmountable barrier against all improvement of any kind, espe- 
cially from the Djours or infidels, and since they will not learn 
any thing at their hands, they will be compelled to submit éo their 
power. ‘The country is so wasted and depopulated, that a very 
few thousands of European soldiers would conquer Natolia, and 
drive the sultan and his treops to the banks of the Euphrates ; and 
in the opinion of an English traveller, a military man, 4000 men 
would conquer all Syria and Palestine, and 10,000 would subjugate 
Egypt. Russia knows all this, and the capture of the strongest 
fortresses which Turkey possessed on her Armenian frontier, as 
Kars, Bayazid, Akhalziche and Erzeroom, with little or no trou- 
ble, has shown that the eonquest of Turkey would be ne arduous 
task, even to a small European force. The sultan, now placed be- 
tween two political fires on either hand, the Greeks and the Rus- 
sians, cannet preserve his independence, but must be crushed be- 
tween the two in any future contest. To talk of Greece as an in- 
dependent power is a chimera; her independence will be merely 
nominal, whilst in reality she will become a province of Russia, 
and be completely subservient to-her schemes of ambition. It is 
not probable that Turkey will be partitioned by Austria and Rus- 
sia, and the latter will never suffer Constantinople to fall into any 
other hands than her own. The great mass of the Christian popula- 
tion are Greeks, as the Wallachians, Moldavians, Bulgarians, Ser- 
vians, Bosniacs, Albanians, and Macedonians, besides the native 
Greeks; and from the era of the separation of the eastern and western 
_churches, the Greek Christians have preserved an irreconcileable 
hatred to the Catholics. As the Russians are staunch adherents of 
the Greek church, have always avowed themselves the protectors 
of the Greeks and the Greek faith, and have avenged the injuries 
and oppressions of the Greeks on the heads ef the Turks, can we 
hesitate for one moment to believe that the Greek population will 
prefer the yoke of the Russian Czar to that of Austria. Both par- 
ties have always been in the habit of mutual intolerance, and the 
Venetians lost the Morea in 1715, from their persecution of the 
Greeks, who preferred the Mussulman yoke to that of Catholics. 
(To be concluded in our neat.) 
