“There is a connection [_verbindung_] among men, in
which no one can work for himself without working for
others.”--_Fichte._
“The tie of mutual influence passes without a break from
hand to hand, throughout the human family. There is no
independence, no insulation, in the lot of man.”--_Natural
History of Enthusiasm._
There is a tendency to regard the commotions of society, which have
taken place of late years, as the results of modern diplomacy, or of
notions concerning human rights, which have received birth and risen to
their present vigor within the last fifty years. Hence, it is argued,
there is a liability to reaction. The bright lights may go out, and
despotism triumph in the moral and political degeneracy. Yet this view
of the matter is very superficial. It is regarding the trunk as the
origin of the tree, overlooking the seed and the root. The truth is,
the principles now developing have their origin with society. For,
all sound political principles have a common foundation--the rights
of man. His selfishness, especially his thirst for sway, aided by
ignorance, has kept through force and fraud the true principles of
human government from being understood and adopted. Still the ancient
kingdoms, the world-empires and all, though now in their tombs, left
inscriptions on their head-stones of diamond worth to the science of
government. They are beacon-lights for the modern statesman. Their
wisdom and their folly, both aid him to discover the true rules for
human government, which have been buried up and concealed by folly
and passion since the days of the Patriarchs, from whom all civil
authority had its rise. Added to this light of experience, collected
by by-gone nations, are other influences of a physical nature. The
application of the magnet to purposes of navigation, was one of those
master thoughts, which, from its vast importance, we are almost tempted
to regard as an idea of directly divine origin. The influence of this
on the whole family of man, can be best estimated by suffering one’s
self to think what the state of the world would of necessity be, were
it entirely unknown. Again, the application of steam to machinery, is
not only changing the aspect of things in the New World and Europe,
but this invention was a positive act for the moral and physical
renovation of Asia and Africa--an act of such power as must hasten
their new birth by centuries. British steamers are already on their
way to explore the Niger. It is the operation and display of this vast
physical force, which is to be a great means of starting into action
the stagnated mind of this part of our race. These discoveries, it will
readily be allowed, can never cease to operate. Entwined with political
experience, they stand firm barriers to any relapse in the general well
being of the human family; while, year after year, to these and others,
which cannot be mentioned in the limits of a single article, are added
the discoveries of physical and political science, as they occur, until
their increasing light reveals to the common eye, one and another,
and another, of the rights of man, which designing men, “tyrants, or
tyrants’ slaves,” have striven to conceal. Almost every nation of the
earth has had some of its dark places pierced by these accumulating
rays. Despotic powers have been forced to yield up some part of the
prerogatives of the crown, or to surround them with stronger guards.
Constitutional governments have been compelled to adopt measures of
reform, and to pursue a course of policy more uniformly liberal.
Amid these commotions, no nations have more attracted the attention of
all classes, than Turkey and Greece. The politician has watched with no
little anxiety the rapid dismemberment of that power, which has so long
stood the great barrier between the East and West. The scholar has felt
a new hope that the mother-land of mental light may be herself again.
While the Christian is assured that the Almighty is thus shaking the
nations for the accomplishment of his own high ends. He is but making
straight the path of his servants.
The history of the Turks is remarkable and instructive--in the sudden
rise of their empire--in its long continuance--and precipitate fall.
The wild region of Mount Taurus and Imaus was their cradle. At once
the most barbarous, the rudest, and the most enterprising of all the
Saracen tribes, they penetrated to the banks of the Caspian Sea, and
serving as mercenaries under the Caliphs, acquired great reputation
for military prowess, and soon subjugated the contending Caliphats
to their own sway. Palestine, with its capital Jerusalem, fell into
their hands. Near the middle of the fourteenth century, they crossed
into Europe, and possessed themselves of Adrianople. In a few years
subsequent to this event, the city of Constantine, to adorn which
he had lavished the treasures of his realm, was doomed to see their
triumphant banner floating above her walls. Epirus soon suffered the
fate of Constantinople; and the land of the orator and philosopher,
which built a bulwark against Xerxes, received their chains. They
marched victorious even to the walls of Vienna; but were finally driven
back as far as Greece. European arms could avail no farther. In other
directions this remarkable people were uniformly successful; until,
in the sixteenth century, the Sultan was lord of thirty kingdoms,
containing not less than eight thousand leagues of sea coast, and
some of the fairest portions of the world. Not only those regions
which have been rendered famous as the homes of the great masters of
sculpture, song and philosophy, but the land of the Patriarchs, where
were exhibited the thrilling scenes of the accomplishment of the
covenant of God with man--Baghdad, the court of the science-loving
Caliphs--Egypt--and the countries of Asia Minor, whose luxuriance not
even Turkish thraldom and indolence has sufficed to destroy.
But this great empire was in itself radically defective. The government
depended on extortion for its revenue--on physical force or a degrading
imposture for obedience; neither of which, whatever may have been
the case in other days, could be safely trusted, in the light which
is breaking over the human family, and over the Turks as a part of
it. The present Sultan found himself in the dilemma between reform
on the one hand, in accomplishing which his throne, and perhaps his
life would be jeopardized, and certain destruction on the other. In
choosing the least of these evils, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine, were
severed from his empire. Mahomet Ali would have attacked him in his
capital, but for the interposition of the Tzar, who was fearful of
losing a prize which has ever been the object of Muscovite ambition,
the throne of Constantine. But while the black Eagle of Russia spread
his wings as a shelter for the Turk, he coolly seized in his talons the
keys of the Dardanelles; thus rendering any further interposition on
the part of England, who has so often balked the Tzar in his darling
project, entirely futile. Since which event, the fall of Turkey has
been pronounced as certain by all. What is to be its precise effect
on the politics of Europe, is a question which only a Talleyrand or
a Metternich could answer with any probability of truth. Yet the
foregoing remarks exhibit facts from which consequences of high
importance must follow.
They exhibit the empire of the Ottomans as once occupying a proud
station among the greater powers--as forming a boundary and preserving
a balance between the East and West--as a firm check on Muscovite
ambition--and as, from her consequence, possessing great weight in the
councils of nations; and it is apparent that she cannot fall without
important political consequences.
They exhibit her with a religion, which has ever been a bane to all
nobler sentiments or aspirations of the soul, brooding like night over
some of the fairest portions of the earth, blasting by the baleful
influence of her institutions the legitimate effect, both on mind
and body, of her naturally fair plains, rich vallies, and brilliant
skies, which, in other times, produced models for an Apollo Belvidere
and a Venus de Medici, and nourished men who were masters of the earth
and of mind; and it is evident that she cannot fall without important
consequences to the beaux Arts and Literature.
They exhibit her, as the main support and promoter of the debasing,
sensual tenets of Mahomet, in countries where the Apostles, and even
Christ, toiled and suffered. They exhibit her, as the systematic
opposer of the message of the Prince of Peace, to her distracted
provinces--the only balm for their wounds--the only physician for their
souls; and the effect of her fall on the highest of interests cannot be
unimportant.
What then is to be the influence of the prostration of the Ottoman sway
in these cradles of early knowledge, upon literature, science, and the
beaux arts?
Winklemann, in his history of sculpture, assigns as a principal reason
of the superiority of the Greeks in that sublime art over other
nations, the circumstance of their inhabiting a land so surpassingly
endowed by nature; and with much truth. Their bodies, neither chilled
nor contracted by the long winters of the north, nor softened into
lassitude and effeminacy by the tropical sun, but continually moving
and breathing in the purest air, under the mildest and most brilliant
of skies, whose loveliness was constantly exciting in the mind the most
agreeable trains of thought, attained, in their fair proportions, to a
harmonious keeping with the beauty around.
Close observation must convince every candid mind, that there is some
truth in the grand outlines of Phrenology. Forms such as aided in the
conception of those master pieces of ancient statuary, were never, and
never will be, inhabited by inferior or grovelling spirits. Vitiated
they may be by extraneous circumstances. Their noble faculties may be
turned to unworthy purposes. Corrupted by long intercourse with the
morally debased, they may, like the modern Greek, suffer the imputation
of being worse than their examples. But this is the proof of the
position. They are bad, but like Lucifer they are greatly so.
How long is this to be the case with Greece? Emphatically no longer.
Already by the aid of the missionary and foreign science, she is
realizing the fable of the renascent phenix; already are those whose
beauty of person long years of servitude have been unable to destroy,
renewing the moral beauty of the spirit within; already are they
turning those powers which made them remarkable in depravity to their
proper channels. And he, whose love for the human family, or reverence
for the classic scenes of Greece, has led him to peruse the late
accounts from thence: if he has observed the avidity with which they
seek instruction, when they once taste of its sweets: if he has noticed
their teachable spirit, rapid improvement, exhibitions of ingenuity
and taste: his bosom has exulted in the sober certainty that Greece
will be herself again. But why has this fair morn at last dawned over
this singularly illustrious land? The answer is plain. Mahometan
despotism and ignorance no longer hold sway within her borders. If this
be so, what is to be the effect of the removal of Turkish intolerance
and misrule, and the establishment of an enlightened and responsible
government over the shores of the Levant, in the same parallels of
latitude? Are the fields of Anatolia less rich than those of Greece, or
her harbors less promising for commerce? or are the Greeks, scattered
through those regions, who at least double the number of those in their
father-land, less capable of moral improvement? Is the conclusion drawn
from unfair premises, that the day of the deliverance of this country
is near--that the angel of knowledge will again spread his wings over
Anatolia, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt, her ancient home? The conclusion is
not, can not be false. The same physical influences operate now as in
days of old, though the misrule of man may have marred their effects.
The same high cast of mind is there which won immortality for their
fathers: and why may not spring up in those regions, under a wiser
government, and a purer religion, a people, in arts and science even
superior to the ancients? Why may there not arise, under the auspices
of virtue and wisdom, new models for a Venus or an Apollo? Why may not
the Parian marble there rise into temples of as fair proportions as
that of Olympus or of Minerva, reared for nobler purposes, dedicated to
a far higher and holier worship?
The influence of the subversion of the greatest rival of the Christian
church, is a subject replete with interest. When the mere politician,
unswayed by the fond hope which might influence the Christian’s
decision, publishes to the world as certain the prostration of
Turkey--when the disciple of Jesus may at length point the startled
infidel to the tottering fabric of Mahometanism, which he has impiously
dared to name as co-enduring and co-equal with the pure Christian
faith, and bid him look on, as column after column is torn away from
the crumbling structure, as Immanuel is triumphing where Mahomet
ruled--when the finger of the Almighty is writing as palpably the
sentence of this unparalleled imposture as when it traced on the wall
the doom of Babylon--what heart does not glow with deeper gratitude,
overflow with more fervent thanksgivings, and pray with strengthened
faith?
The time is to be when “nations shall be born in a day:” and from the
ardent character of the east, it seems not improbable that it is to be
witness of this latter as it was of the former triumphing of the cross.
It is an especial appointment of providence, that nations more
advanced in civilization must necessarily labor for the improvement of
those which are less so. So the East once labored for the West. Now
the nations of the west, with their Institutions of Learning--their
Presses--their Forges--their Dock Yards--working together for the
perfection of human knowledge, and for facilitating its diffusion--pour
light of constantly increasing brightness over the East. Still greater
commotions must soon follow in these early inhabited regions. Their
renovation must advance rapidly and steadily. There may and doubtless
will be times of apparent retrogradation, but it will be like the
flood-tide waves, which roll back from the shore only to mount still
higher on their return. It may be said that these things are uncertain,
because they are future; but it is not necessarily so. The diffusion of
sound political principles, and the rising of the Sun of Righteousness
over these nations, seem as clearly heralded by these events, as is the
coming of the material sun when morning is breaking in the east, the
night-damps leaving the earth, the clouds decking themselves in gold
and purple, and all nature waking for the duties of a new day.