extended to a considerable part of civil law--notably to questions
of marriage, divorce, and inheritance when they concerned Christians
only.

It is obvious that the possession by the Greek patriarch of
Constantinople of this enormous power over the Christian subjects of
the Turks enabled him to carry on a propaganda of hellenization.
The disappearance for three centuries of the national consciousness
in Servia and Bulgaria was not the sole work of the Moslem invader;
a more fatal blight to the national languages and culture were the
Greek bishops and clergy who conducted their churches and schools.
And if Kinglake knew nothing of Bulgaria as late as 1834 it was
because every educated person in that country called himself a
Greek. For it cannot be too strongly emphasized that until
comparatively recent times all Christians of whatever nation or sect
were officially recognized by the Turks as members of the Greek
millet and were therefore designated Greeks.

The hostility of the Slavonic peoples in the Balkans, and especially
of the Bulgarians, to the Greeks, grows out of the ecclesiastical
and educational domination which the Greek clergy and bishops so
long and so relentlessly exercised over them. Of course the Turkish
Sultans are responsible for the arrangement. But there is no
evidence that they had any other intention than to rid themselves of
a disagreeable task. For the rest they regarded Greeks and Slavs
with equal contempt. But the Greeks quickly recognized the racial
advantage of their ecclesiastical hegemony. And it was not in human
nature to give it up without a struggle. The patriarchate retained
its exclusive jurisdiction over all orthodox populations till 1870,
when the Sultan issued a firman establishing the Bulgarian
exarchate.

There were two other spheres in which Greek influence was paramount
in the Turkish Empire. The Turk is a soldier and farmer; the Greek
is pre-eminent as a trader, and his ability secured him a
disproportionate share of the trade of the empire. Again, the Greeks
of Constantinople and other large cities gradually won the
confidence of the Turks and attained political importance. During
the eighteenth century the highest officials in the empire were
invariably Phanariots, as the Constantinople Greeks were termed from
the quarter of the city in which they resided.

In speaking of the Greeks I have not had in mind the inhabitants of
the present kingdom of Greece. Their subject