VIII. CHAP. was no man who looked so worthy to fix its destiny as Sir Stratford Canning. He had faults which made him an imperfect Christian, for his temper was fierce, and his assertion of self was so closely involved in his conflicts that he followed up his opinions with his feelings, and with the whole strength of his imperious nature. But his fierce temper, being always under control when purposes of State so required, was far from being an infirmity, and was rather a weapon of exceeding sharpness, for it was so wielded by him as to have more tendency to cause dread and surrender than to generate resistance. Then, too, every judgment which he pronounced was enfolded in words so complete as to exclude the idea that it could ever be varied, and to convey, therefore, the idea of duration. As though yielding to fate itself, the Turkish mind used to bend and fall down before him. But the counsels which Sir Stratford Canning had been accustomed to tender to the Sultan's Ministers, however wholesome they might be, were often very irksome to hear, and very difficult to adopt. Indeed it might be questioned whether his Turkish policy could be made to consist with the principle on which the Ottoman system was based. He sought to make the Ottoman rule seem tolerable to Christendom by getting rid of the differences which separated the Christian subjects of the Porte from their Mahometan fellow-subjects, and placing the tributaries on a footing with their masters. But the theory of Mahometan government rests upon the maintenance of a clear VIII. separation from the unbelievers; and to propose to a CHAP. Mussulman of any piety that the Commander of the Faithful should obliterate the distinction between Mahometans and Christians, would be proposing to obliterate the distinction between virtue and vice; the notion would seem to be not merely wrong and wicked, but a contradiction in terms. A virtuous Osmanlee would feel that, if he were to consent to this levelling of the barriers between good and evil, he would lose the whole merit and comfort of being a Turk. Perhaps the opposite policy-namely, that of widening the separation of the Christians, and giving them (under a tenure less precarious than the present one) the character of tributary municipalitieswould be more consonant with the scheme of a Mussulman Empire, and therefore more susceptible of complete execution. But whether the reforms thus counselled were possible or not, it was hard to resist the imperious Ambassador to his face. If what he directed was inconsistent with the nature of things, then possibly the nature of things would be changed by the decree of Heaven, for there was no hope that the great Eltchi would relax his will. In the mean time, however, and by the blessing of God, the actual execution of the Ambassador's painful mandates might perhaps be suffered to encounter a little delay. So thought, so temporised, the wise tranquil statesmen at the Porte. Of course this kind of ascendancy was often very galling to the Sultan's advisers. They knew that the English Ambassador was counselling them for VOL. I. I VIII. CHAP. the good of their country; but they felt that he humbled them by making his dictation too plainly apparent, and they were often very conscious that the motive which made them succumb to him was dread. Yet, if the Ambassador was unrelenting and even harsh in the exercise of his dominion over the Turks, he was faithful to guard them against enemies from abroad. He chastened them himself, but he was dangerous to any other man who came seeking to hurt his children. Now it happened that this was exactly the kind of ascendancy over the Turks for which the Emperor Nicholas had long been craving. Some men imagine that the Emperor's designs in regard to Turkey were steadily governed by sheer desire for his neighbour's land; and they are not without specious materials for forming such an opinion: but perhaps a full knowledge of the truth would justify the belief that, from the Peace of Adrianople in 1829 down to the time of his death, the Czar would have preferred the ascendancy which Sir Stratford Canning enjoyed at Constantinople to any scheme of conquest. And, what is more, if Nicholas had succeeded in gaining this ascendancy, he would have been inclined to use it as a means of enforcing counsels somewhat similar to those which were pressed upon the Sultan by the English Ambassador; for though his first care would have been always for his own Church, it would have suited his pride and his policy to extend his protection to all the Christian subjects of the Porte. But just as similarity of doctrine often embitters the dif VIII. ferences between contending sects, so the very resem- CHAP. blance between his and Sir Stratford Canning's views with regard to the Christian subjects of the Porte made it the more intolerable to him to see that he, the powerful neighbour of Turkey, who was able to hover over her frontiers and her shores with great armies and fleets, could never make an effort to force his counsels on the Porte without finding himself baffled or forestalled by the stronger mind. Even in his very early life it had been the fate of Sir Stratford Canning to have to resist and thwart the Russian Government; and during a great part of the years of his embassy at Constantinople he had been more or less in a posture of resistance to the Emperor Nicholas. Moreover, the feeling with which the Emperor carried on this long-standing conflict was quickened by personal animosity, and by a knowledge that diplomacy was watching the strife with interest and amusement; for he had once gone the length of declining to receive Sir Stratford Canning as the English Ambassador at St Petersburg, and had thus marked him out before Europe as his recognised antagonist. The struggle had lasted for a long time, and with varying success; for many a Turkish ministry owed its frail existence and its untimely end to the chances of the combat going on between the Czar and the English Ambassador. The Turks could not help knowing that the counsels of the Ambassador were for their own good, and they had reason to surmise that the advice of the Emperor might spring from opposite motives; but there are times when the VIII. CHAP. smooth speech and the wily promises of a political foe are more welcome than the painful lectures of an honest friend; and again, though it was hard to bear up with mere words against the personal ascendant of the Ambassador, the Emperor had the power of throwing the sword into the scale at any moment. The strife, therefore, had not been altogether unequal; but, upon the whole, Sir Stratford Canning had kept the upper hand, and the Czar had been forced to endure the agony of being what his representative called 'secondary,' so long as Sir Stratford Canning was in the palace of the English Embassy. Lord Stratford to return to Con stantinople. For almost two years Sir Stratford Canning had instructed been absent from Constantinople; but now, at a time when Europe had fastened its eyes upon the Czar, and was watching to see how the Ambassador of All the Russias would impose his master's will upon Turkey, the Emperor Nicholas was obliged to hear that his eternal foe, travelling by the ominous route of Paris and Vienna, was slowly returning to his Embassy at the Porte. His instructions. * It was on the 25th of February 1853 that Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was instructed to return to his former post. The measure was not without significance. Read by foreigners, it imported that England clung to her ancient policy, and was proceeding to maintain it; and although the instructions addressed to Lord Stratford disclosed no knowledge of the spirit in which Prince Mentschikoff was * Sir Stratford Canning was created Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe in 1852. |