The granary and garden of Asia

It followed, that in the course of some years the imperial domain became the granary and garden of Asia; and the sovereign made money without impoverishing his people. According to the nature of the soil, he sowed it with corn, or planted it with vines, or laid it down in grass: his pastures abounded with herds and flocks, horses and swine; and his speculation, as it may be called, in poultry was so happy, that he was able to present his empress with a crown of pearls and diamonds out of his gains. His ex-ample encouraged his nobles to imitation; and they learned to depend for their incomes on the honourable proceeds of their estates, instead of oppressing their people, and seeking favours from the the court. Such was the immediate consequence when man cooperated with the bountifulness of nature in this fruitful region; and it brings out prominently by its contrast the wretchedness of the Turkish domination.

That wretchedness is found, not in Asia Minor only, but wherever Turks are to be found in power. Throughout the whole extent of their territory, if you believe the report of travellers, the peasantry are indigent, oppressed, and wretched. The great island of Crete or Candia would maintain four times its present population; once it had a hundred cities; many of its towns, which were densely populous, are now obscure villages. Under the Venetians it used to export corn largely; now it imports it.

As to Cyprus, from holding a million of inhabitants, it now has only 30,000. Its climate was that of a perpetual spring; now it is unwholesome and unpleasant; its cities and towns nearly touched one another, now they are simply ruins. Corn, wine, oil, sugar, and the metals are among its productions; the soil is still exceedingly rich; but now, according to Dr. Clarke, in that “ paradise of the Levant, agriculture is neglected, inhabitants are oppressed, population is destroyed” broad beans. Cross over to the continent, and survey Syria and its neighbouring cities; at this day the Turks themselves are dying out; Diar- bekr, which numbered 400,000 souls in the middle of last century, forty years afterwards had dwindled to 50,000. Mosul had lost half its inhabitants. Bagdad had fallen from 130,000 to 20,000; and Bassora from 100,000 to 8,000.

In the fifteenth century

If we pass on to Egypt, the tale is still the same. “In the fifteenth century”, says Mr. Alison, “Egypt, after all the revolutions which it had undergone, was comparatively rich and populous; but since the fatal era of Turkish conquest, the tyranny of the Pashas has expelled industry, riches, and the arts”. Stretch across the width of Africa to Barbary, wherever there is a Turk, there is desolation. What indeed have the shepherds of the desert, in the most ambitious effort of their civilization, to do with the cultivation of the soil? “That fertile territory”, says Robertson, “which sustained the Roman Empire, still lies in a great measure uncultivated; and that province, which Victor called Speciositas totius terrce florentis, is now the retreat of pirates and banditti”.

End your survey at length with Europe, and you find the same account is to be given of its Turkish provinces. In the Morea, Chateaubriand, wherever he went, beheld villages destroyed by fire and sword, whole suburbs deserted, often fifteen leagues without a single habitation. “ I have travelled”, says Mr. Thornton, “ through several provinces of European Turkey, and cannot convey an idea of the state of desolation, in which that beautiful country is left. For the space of seventy miles, between Kirk Kilise and Carnabat, there is not an inhabitant, though the country is an earthly paradise. The extensive and pleasant village of Faki, with its houses deserted, its gardens overrun with weeds and grass, its lands waste and uncultivated, and now the resort of robbers, affects the traveller with the most painful sensations ”. Even in Wallachia and Moldavia the population has been gradually decreasing, while of that rich country not more than a fortieth part is under tillage. In a word, the average population in the whole Empire is not a fifth of what it was in ancient times.

Here I am tempted to exclaim (though the very juxtaposition of two countries so different from other in their condition needs an apology), I cannot help exclaiming, how different is the condition of that other peninsula in the centre of which is placed the See of Peter! I am ashamed of comparing, or even contrasting, Italy with Asia Minorthe seat of Christian governments with the seat of a barbarian rule,except that, since I have been speaking of the tenderness, which the Popes have shown, according to their means, for the earth and its cultivators, there is a sort of fitness in pointing out that the result is in their case conformable to our just anticipation. Besides, so much is uttered among us in disparagement of the governments of that beautiful country, that there is a reason for pressing the contrast on the attention of those, who in their hearts acknowledge little difference between the rulers of Italy and of Turkey.