What a Consul should be. — Turkish Oppression. — Official
Corruption. — Universal Venality. — The Moslem hates the
Christian.
On arriving in Benghazi I found a house prepared for me, by the
kindness of one of my friends, who gave up to me the only waterproof
rooms which, I believe, exist in the town. The sensation of sleeping
within walls, after three months spent under canvas, was not the
less agreeable from the circumstance that the rain poured down in
torrents, and only ceased for short intervals during my ten days’
stay. The second day after my arrival there fell a deluge of rain,
the effect of which was to wash down some thirty houses, while
there was not perhaps one in the place which had not suffered more
or less. This is owing to the houses being built with mud instead
of lime, which might be had at a very small cost. In the Frank
quarter some new houses were in process of building, and not being
roofed in, were more liable to suffer than finished buildings. As
I passed them the next day their interior literally presented mere
heaps of ruins. Year after year the same devastation is produced
by the same cause; the flat roofs, formed, as they are, of mats
laid over beams, with a heavy superstructure of sea-weeds and mud,
are never waterproof; yet such is the apathy, even of the European
residents, that they make no attempt to secure dry quarters for the
winter. One would think from their conduct that it had never rained
here before, and that the visitation, instead of being as regular
as the almanack, had taken all the world by surprise. In one house
I found workmen repairing fallen walls; in another, I heard that
the whole family had to sleep on the bales in the warehouse, which
admitted the water in fewer places than the other rooms. The streets
were in many places impassable from the ruins; and many houses were
literally melted away, the beams and stones remaining imbedded in
huge puddles of mud. It sometimes occurs, when the rains are more
than usually heavy, that the houses are in so menacing a state that
the whole town takes refuge in tents, where, though the ground be
damp, there are certainly no walls which threaten to overwhelm them.
I had the pleasure of finding the newly-appointed English
Vice-Consul, Mr. Werry, a gentleman well known to our officers who
served in the Syrian expedition. I was glad to offer him personally
my thanks for the ready politeness with which he had taken measures
to insure my safety while in the interior. Though he had only been
two months in Benghazi, he had already secured the good-will and
confidence of the British subjects for whose interest he is placed
there, as well as the respect of the Turkish authorities. During the
ten days I stayed in Benghazi he gave me frequent opportunities of
increasing my debt of gratitude to him. I regretted to leave behind
me, in so dreary an exile, one whose official experience, whose
activity, and familiar knowledge of all the Oriental languages,
would enable him to render essential services to his Government in
places of more importance. I do not by this mean to insinuate that
the presence of a British Consul in Benghazi is of little utility,
although the number of Europeans (they are nearly all British
subjects) be very small. Unconnected with trade, our Vice-Consul
holds an independent position, which those of other nations, fettered
by their personal interests, cannot attain, and he is thus frequently
able, in cases of gross injustice affecting the natives, to exercise
a salutary influence with the governor. His house is the ready refuge
of the ill-used slave and the oppressed Arab, and his exertions in
their behalf, rarely unavailing for them, give a prestige to the
name of Englishman, of which I more than once experienced the value.
This portion of the pachalic of Tripoli, in which I passed nearly six
months, is, like so many countries belonging to the Turkish Empire,
most bountifully endowed by nature with every source of wealth. Under
former rulers it was flourishing and populous, but it has now become
a waste; its scanty inhabitants are sunk in hopeless barbarism,
and even their poverty is no defence against the grasping avarice
of their governor—“Inter continuas rapinas, perpetuò inops.”
I do not accuse the present Sultan or ministers in Constantinople,
individually, of the tyranny and ignorance which render his rule a
curse wherever it is acknowledged; but—after seeing the fields of
Roumelia lying waste to the very gates of his residence, the cities
of Asia Minor depopulated, its mineral wealth a sealed treasure, even
the Arab glories of Syria faded, the palaces of Damascus crumbling,
and its marts deserted—the traveller cannot but long to see a
government changed whose oppression is less mischievous than its
neglects, and which tacitly permits wrongs greater than those which
it sanctions.[4] Well has it been said, that where the hoof of a
Turkish horse has touched the ground, there the grass grows not.
During the last twenty-five years, since the fall of the Janissaries
(which seemed to strengthen the central government while it weakened
the empire), there has been much law-making, and many abuses have
been abolished, as far as edicts can abolish deeply-rooted customs;
but the old spirit still breathes in the new régime, and injustice
and oppression are as frequent under the present Sultan as under his
predecessors. It is, indeed, no longer a matter of indifference to
the Grand Vizier, “whether the dog devours the swine or the swine
the dog.” A wholesome fear of European opinion has succeeded
to undisguised contempt; but the Turk of the people is still in
his own eyes the first of human beings; his Sultan is still the
suzerain before whom all kings bow, and at whose orders the French
and English krals send their fleets and troops to chastise the
rebellious Egyptian or Muscovite; and in the remoter provinces,
which are beyond the immediate eye of the Elehi Beys, as they call
the foreign ambassadors, the old system of peculation and robbery
exists in full force.
Much has been written in praise of the new organisation of the
Turkish Government, and the Tanzimat, as the regulations for the
service are called; but the good which this contains is for the
most part evaded or neglected. The most real result of the reform
has been to introduce a number of new functionaries, or, in other
words, to increase the points of contact between the governors and
the governed, whereby more frequent opportunities of peculation
are given to the former. The sanitary regulations, so ridiculous
in the way they are enforced and the way they are neglected, are
one instance of this; another is the prohibition of presents from
inferiors to superiors, which all employés take an oath to observe;
yet it would not be easy to find ten per cent. of the higher officers
who are insensible to, or unwilling to accept such an argument. In
trifling things they are, of course, careful to wear the mask of
austere virtue, as Izzet Pacha, the Governor of Tripoli, lately
recalled on the complaints of the French Government, showed, when
he was here in summer. A merchant of the place sent him a basket of
grapes, when they were still scarce, and he returned them, saying,
that, according to his oath, he must either pay for or refuse
them. Yet this is the man who, after keeping an Arab sheikh in
prison for many months, released him on receiving 150,000 piastres,
about £1500; and whose sons, youths of eighteen and twenty years,
established in their father’s pachalic a trade in all the produce
of the country, which amounted to a virtual monopoly. The European
merchants sent a remonstrance on this subject to Constantinople,
and they received an answer, in the advancement of the elder of
these enterprising young tradesmen to the dignity of Mirabi, or
pacha of one tail.
After the last harvest the cultivators of the soil complained
that the tithe in kind due to Government was taken in such a
way as to amount to nearly one-half of the entire produce. This
had been contrived by Izzet Pacha’s son and some of the local
authorities; the tenth only being carried to the public account,
and the remainder divided among themselves. Many representations
to this effect were made to the French consular agent, who, after
obtaining satisfactory evidence of their truth, reported the case to
his superior in Tripoli. Not long afterwards, on some dispute with
the Pacha, the Consul brought this up as a proof of the malversation
of the subordinates, on which the other pretended great indignation,
and insisted that he and the Consul should send to Benghazi for
information. The books were, of course, in good order; the witnesses,
on whose testimony the Consul had relied, were by threats reduced
to silence; the charge could not be substantiated (the Bey who was
judge being himself the chief delinquent); and the upshot of the
inquiry was, that the Vice-Consul had to make apologies for the
slander, while he and every Frank in the place knew the truth of
the accusation, and could point out the magazines where the grain
thus extorted was deposited. Many weeks had not passed after this
when ships belonging to the Pacha’s son arrived in the port,
and openly loaded with this very corn on his account.
When a pacha acts thus, we cannot wonder if his subordinates imitate
so good an example; and the director of the customs may be praised
for the honesty which consigns about three-fourths of their produce
to the treasury. An Arab said to me one day, on this subject, “The
Pacha eats, the Bey eats, and the Gumruckdjy (director of customs)
eats,” each buying his superior’s silence with a share of his own
peculations; the friends who protect his interests at Constantinople
coming in for their share of the pacha’s profits. A Turk is, in
fact, capable of learning many things; he may be _civilisé_—a
Frank word, now adopted in Turkish; he may cease to be what _La
Jeune Turquie_ calls a fanatic; he will indulge in deep potations,
or abstain from fasting in Ramadhan; but he will never learn not to
eat (Italicè _magnare_) when he can. His appetite and digestion,
in this sense, are truly ostrich-like. On inquiring into the truth
of the Bey’s statement that there are 1200 houses in Benghazi,
I learned that there are, in fact, 1400, the two hundred which are
suppressed in the official account being “eaten” by the Bey
and the Sheikh-el-belid.
An amusing instance of the ruses to which a scrupulous man, who has
the fear of his oath before his eyes, will resort, was related to
me by one who was in the town at the time it occurred. An Armenian
addressed himself to a Pacha in Anadoly, for the decision of a
lawsuit in his favour; and, after stating his case, produced a
bag well filled with the usual arguments, which he offered to his
Excellency. On this the great man, who had listened to his statement
with the blandest smiles, drew himself up, frowning in anger, and
only answered, “Infidel, be off!” The poor Armenian, astonished
at the reception of his well-meant offering, begged and prayed,
and seemed to weigh the bag in his hands, that the Pacha might
see how heavy it was—all Spanish dollars; but the only answer he
obtained was a fresh order to be off, with the surly addition, “He
is an infidel who gives, and an infidel who takes”—disobedience
to the Sultan’s laws being rebellion, and rebellion, according
to Turkish doctrine, infidelity. Disappointed and crest-fallen,
the poor Armenian withdrew from the presence, and was not a little
surprised to find himself the object of the congratulations of the
attendants and cavasses in the anteroom. “It is useless,” he
said, “to ask me for backshish; for the Pacha has rejected my suit,
and that, too, with hard words.” “What answer is this?” said
they; “did you not hear his words—‘the infidel gives and the
infidel takes?’ Go to the steward; is not he also an Armenian?”
One of the greatest blots on the Turkish constitution has not been
touched by the Tanzimat: it is that provision of the Moslem law
which excludes the reception of evidence given by persons of other
religions against a Moslem. Twenty witnesses may depose to the
murder of a Christian or Jew by a Turk; but, as was too clearly
shown in the case of Sir Lawrence Jones, if there be not among
them at least two Moslemin, their testimony is unavailing; while
to obtain Moslem witnesses to prove an outrage on a Christian is
impossible.[5] An Arab was wantonly beating a Maltese boy, a few
days ago, in the bazaar, when a respectable Moslem came to his
assistance; a third then came up, and apostrophised the boy’s
defender, saying, “Are you a Moslem? and do you take the part of
a Christian against a believer?” He spoke what all the spectators
felt. Until this odious distinction be abolished, there can be no
security either for the life or property of Christian rayahs or
foreigners, excepting in the energy and privileges of the consuls;
and the representatives of the great powers seem at present disposed
to yield the greater part of their own rights and the immunities
of their fellow-subjects. These were wisely considered essential
to the welfare or consideration of foreigners among a people who,
though little less than barbarians, look with the most profound
contempt upon a Frank; and those who renounce their enjoyment are,
I fear, too precipitate in their favourable judgment of the real
state of the Turkish Empire.
I cannot close my notes of the Cyrenaica without adding that I spent
there (occasional annoyances excepted) some most pleasant months;
I came to the country an invalid, and was exceedingly unwell when I
started for Grennah; but its pure air and lovely scenery restored
me to perfect health. For those who seek summer quarters in the
Mediterranean, I again repeat to them my former advice, to choose the
pleasant solitudes of Cyrene in preference to the Syrian hills, where
so much sickness and mortality prevail. I have been many times in
the Lebanon, and the rich beauty of Damascus has greater charms for
me than that of any city I have seen; but, still, I have never been
there without witnessing or feeling the effects of the pestilential
air, which, every autumn, produces fatal fevers and dysenteries. Even
in quitting its shores the evil spirit seems to pursue its victims;
and I have seen more than one friend seized with the deadly Syrian
fever weeks after he had reached a healthier climate.