[The following article from the New York Tribune, showing the gradual decay of the Turkish empire may go to show the fulfillment of prophecy, the drying up of the Euphrates and its final overthrow as near at hand. Truly the signs of the times indicate the near approach of the day of the Lord. JOSEPH CLARKE.]
The conspiracy recently discovered in Constantinople is a new feature in the history of the Ottomans. It was not intended to accomplish a revolution in the Seraglio; it was not provoked by Viziers jealous of power, nor by the maladministration of favorites, nor by the cruelty or weakness of a Padishah. It had a deeper character. The outraged Koran called on the conscience of the faithful for protection against the western saviours and civilizers. Not against Russian influence, so much talked about for years past, but against the general Giaour, be he French or English, friend or foe; against benefactors, advisers, self-constituted guardians, and directors. It was the old spirit of Moslemism endeavoring once again to give expression to its deep, irreconcilable hatred of the western world, to make a supreme effort to rid itself of the polluting contact.
15The work of decomposition is going on with fearful rapidity in Turkey confirming the assertions and predictions which we have made for these six years past. The more progressive Turks of the Redschid school too clearly foresee the final and not distant dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the old Turk spirit. They have lost their confidence in the reforms which they themselves have introduced. They have lost their faith in the present vitality of the Turk element; they have been taught by events that it is absolutely impossible to modernize the Koran, or to blend it in any way with western civilization. Whatever may be said to the contrary by Turkophiles, we have the best authority for declaring that even the members of the Sultan's Cabinet, whose destruction was planned by the conspirators, inwardly share the opinion of the fanatics themselves, and would have wished their success could their own lives have been spared. Losing their faith in reforms, these reformers fall back on their faith in the Koran, wearied and disgusted by the dictatorial importunity of their European advisers.
The race of the Turk is rapidly dwindling in Europe. Of the four and-a-half millions of Mohammedans in European Turkey, less than a million are of Turkish descent. The Bosnians and Albanians are of European stock; Armenians and Greeks from Asia Minor abound throughout the country. The Slavic Bulgarian, the hardest field-laborer in the world, is crossing the Hellespont and awakening to rich life the fertile soil of Asia, so long sleeping under the lazy indolence of the Turk.
The days of Ottoman sway in Europe are numbered; the power of the Turk is weighed and found wanting; the final catastrophe approaches. It has been deferred until now only by the excitement of an artificial, morbid sympathy for Europe, mainly through the press which Redschid Pasha alone has subsidized to the extent of two and-a-half millions of dollars. But this exterior pressure cannot make up for lack of interior strength. The Turkish empire is doomed on both sides of the Dardanelles. For, when the Sultans lose Constantinople, they will lose the last shreds of their prestige over the Mohammedans of Asia and Africa.