New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1876. THE CRISIS IN TURKEY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 185, 13 October 1876, Page 10

New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1876. THE CRISIS IN TURKEY.

Feom the details of the Bulgarian atrocities, supplied by the last telegrams from Europe, it would appear there was no exaggeration in previous reports. These details are most harrowing, and afford an apt commentary on the effects of four hundred years of Turkish rule in Europe. It appears, then, that neither time nor the general progress of civilisation has had any effect in humanising the savage instincts of large numbers of the Mussulman subjects of the Sublime Porte. The presence of the Mahometan power on European soil is a reproach to the civilised nations of Europe, and could never have been a fact were it not for the jealousies and self-seeking of these nations. That such a nation as the Turkish should have ever been permitted to take a place in the midst of the family of Christian nations, is a disgrace to civilisation. But the most painful consideration, in connection with this matter, is the fact that the Empire, which is apparently most zealous to wipe out this disgrace, is herself hardly inferior in brutality and cruelty to the Turkish. " Russian rule in Poland" are words, that make those who know what the words mean shudder with horror, and burn with indignation at their bare recital. The Turks have butchered even women and children, and committed other atrocities. They have perpetrated numberless crimes, and revelled in cruel brutalities shocking to humanity. For these, they deserve the strongest reprobation and the severest chastisement consistent with civilised ideas ; and the nations of Europe ought to interfere in a cause sacred, and common to all men. But surely the nations foremost in the intervention ought to have clean hands themselves. A It is not so however : and from this arises a burningP scandal. Russia is now taking the lead in interfering in Turkish affairs. But if this power forgets three-quarters of a century of cruel misgovernment in Poland, continued down even to the present moment, others are not equally oblivious. The Turks persecute the Christians, but the Russians persecute the Catholics of their Empire ; the Turks slaughter women and children — the Russians subject women to the knout. Turkish sabres and rifles do their work quickly though terribly ; — the Russian Club is the mode of punishment selected for faithful Polish women, to which they are subjected till they faint, and to which they are subjected again and again till they faint, each many times, and at length expire in agony ; and all because they refuse to accept the religion of the Emperor, and foreswear their faith and consciences. The Turks butcher men with arms in their hands, or supposed to be hostile ; the Russians starve to death, in loathsome prisons, or banish to Siberia there to perish of nakedness and hunger, loyal wen who love their native land, are faithful to the Government in all thing's in which the Government has a claim on them'

-who earnestly pray for the welfare of the Emperor and Empire, and at whose door the shadow of a crime cannot be laid, because they refuse to abandon their religion. If the accounts of Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria are revolting and calculated to rouse indignation, the persecutions to which Polish Catholics are subjected by the Russian Government are only in degree less barbarous, savage, and shocking. And the fact is, strange though it may appear, that the Catholic Church meets with more justice, and experiences greater liberty in Turkey than in Russia, whilst the treatment of its political enemies by the Infidel Power is not very much worse, than that of rebels against its authority by the Russian. Whilst, therefore, we rejoice at the prospect of the liberation of the Christians of Turkey from the thraldom to which they have been subjected for centuries, we regret, and feel ashamed, that the lead on this occasion should have been conceded to semi-barbarous, and persecuting Russia by either the apathy or jealousy of the really free nations of Europe.