p. 189 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · September 3, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 12

The Cretan Insurrection.

TURKEY has refused to enter into any consultation with the other Powers relative to Crete. The obsequiousness which greeted the Sultan in the Christian capitals of Europe seems to have been thrown away. He is no more disposed to act like a Christian than before he learned that Christians saw nothing out of the way in his inhuman treatment of their brethren. This is entirely natural. As he expects to subdue in time the revolt in Crete, there is no use in his deferring to feelings that are not strong enough to resent his brutality by even so much as a refusal of hospitalities and a refraining from the most fulsome adulation of his goodness as a ruler and a man. In some respects the means taken by Omer Pasha are well adapted to the end he has in view. He is determined to subjugate the Island, even if he “makes it a solitude and calls it peace.” He has blockaded it from within and without. He will not permit the women and children to leave the Island because they consume the scanty provisions and help bring the whole population to the point of starvation and surrender. But, on the other hand, the natural ferocity of the Turks is counterbalancing this policy by their wholesale massacre of women and children in the interior of the Island. Even the foreign consuls in Canea not favorable to the insurgents have been forced by the atrocities committed, to protest against further slaughter. A joint telegram from them says: “The massacres of women and children are going on in the interior of the Island. The government can neither suppress the insurrection nor prevent the occurrence of these atrocities. Humanity demands imperatively the immediate suspension of hostilities, or the transportation of the women and children to Greece.” The American Consul writes that “the Turks are preparing similar massacres for the submitted villages, in the neighborhood of Rhetymo and Canea. We are all wearied and sick at heart at the alarm and distress, and the uncertainty of the position. I do not, nor do any of the consuls, regard the insurrection as any nearer an end than before Omer Pasha attacked Spakhia.”

There are indications of a revolt of the Christians in Thessaly and Epirus. If this takes place it may require a part of Omer Pasha’s army to put it down.

The correspondent of the Boston Advertiser says the blockade-runner Arkadi is cursed by the Turks and denounced by the diplomats for breaking through a paper blockade. He adds: “She doubtless does naughty things, and deserves to be condemned for ‘irregularity,’ but the All-seeing Eye reads upon her log many such entries as these; Nineteenth voyage, July 11, brought away two hundred women and children; July —, 20th voyage, brought off seven hundred women and children; and these entries will go far to effect changes on the other side of the ledger. Verily this modern Argo brings home cargoes to Greece more precious than the golden fleece! But where is the great leader in this struggle between Moslems and Christians for what was Christian soil, and what still is the fairest of all European islands? He is the honored guest of Christian kings, queens and princes who all rise up to do him honor. Verily the days of chivalry are fled, but the days of reckoning are to come!”

The sailors of the Christian navies that cruise around the Island are very anxious to take off the starving women and children, but diplomacy forbids, and they are compelled to see them dying, as it were, before their very eyes, and are unable to save them.

Church Property in Italy.

THE Church Property Bill, which has passed the Lower House of the Italian Parliament, and is now pending in the Senate, in which body there is probably no doubt of its success, is a very sweeping measure, and not at all calculated to increase the confidence of the Pope in the Italian Government, to whose “protection” he has been turned over by the wily Emperor of France. The ministry made the passage of this measure a question of life or death, and the all but unanimous vote in its favor in the popular branch of the National Legislature, reveals the great religious revolution that has taken place in Italy, and the indifference of even the professed friends of the church to its temporal welfare. The great majority by which the bill was passed seems to have been the result of some kind of a compromise between Rattazzi, the minister, and the leader of the opposition, by which, probably, the latter is to secure some political leaves and fishes for himself and his friends. This shows that the opposition to the bill was not founded on any reverence for or attachment to the church, but was merely held as political capital in the struggle for the “ins and outs.” The bill insures the suppression of all religious corporations, and provides for the administration of their property by the State—that is, by the local commissions, “composed of the Prefect, Syndic, Fiscal Advocate, agent of the crown lands and two upright citizens.” These local commissions are to be superintended by a central commission, consisting of the chief Director of crown lands, the Treasurer of the Religious Worship Fund, two Deputies and two Senators. All the personal property and five per cent. of the revenue derived from landed estates are to be applied to the expenses of religious worship, and to the life pension of members. The church lands are to be put up in small lots at public auction at a minimum price, bidders to deposit a tenth of that price in the provincial treasury on the day of sale, a tenth of the actual purchase money ten days after, and the remainder to be paid in eighteen years, in fixed rates, at six per cent. If paid down, seven per cent. discount will be allowed. Charitable institutions are to be left unmolested for the time being. “The Government is authorized,” says the bill, “to emit at such epochs, and in such manner as it sees fit, a sufficient number of five per cent. bonds to insure the entry into the Treasury of the actual sum of 400,000.00fr. These bonds shall be accepted at their nominal value, in payment of the lands whose sale by this law is decreed.” There were present in the House when the vote was taken on the most vital proposition of the bill, 284 members, of whom only four abstained from voting. The result was, yeas, 265; nays, 15. A writer who was present when the vote was announced, states that “wild cheers rang through the house, and the sitting was suspended for one hour.”

The wisdom of this bill as a financial measure of course remains to be tested. Its enemies say the bonds will rise and fall with Italian stocks; that foreign speculators will purchase them at low figures and buy the lands, paying down and thus getting a discount of seven per cent. on the nominal value of the bond, and that the lands will sell at less than half their original value, and, what is worse, pass into the hands of foreigners. Rattazzi and the friends of the measure, on the other hand, claim that these lands, guaranteed by the immense wealth of the church, will be taken up almost at par by the Italians themselves, and that the sale, in small lots, and the long respite afforded for payment, will create a great number of small proprietors, and lay the foundation of new and great prosperity. Whichever of these prophecies shall prove nearest correct, the property is lost to the church, and the people not only acquiesce but rejoice in the fact.—Chicago Tribune.