laim the
right of protection only over thousands; but you claim that same right
over millions, and, therefore, you shall not have it. The question you
may, however, say, is not fairly put, for should a Turk be converted, and
on the point of losing his head, we are ready to interpose with our
authority, even though it be to the Greek Church that he should have
turned. Well! but place yourselves for a moment in our situation. Are we
to leave to you the work which has been done in our vineyard, and not
stand up for those who have embraced the cross, merely because there are
millions in that realm who embrace it? The case stands equally the same
with regard to the far greater number of human beings who are born and
have grown up in the profession of our faith. Without attempting to prove
that they are exposed to constant cruelty and oppression, a fact which has
been strenuously denied without the denial having ever been proved, it is
abundantly known, and an indisputable fact, that the Greeks are in a state
of continual bondage, deprived of the dearest rights of men, condemned, in
a religious point of view, to a state of thraldom such as exists in no
other part of the world, inasmuch as the supreme head of their church is
installed in his dignity, maintained in the same, or deposed by a
sovereign professing a faith hostile to his own. Is such a state of things
to be tolerated by those who are its victims? and is not this in itself a
hardship greater than any other that can be imagined? The English have
given us, in a period, it is true, of greater zeal for their faith, an
example of active sympathy manifested by them towards their brothers in
belief, subjects of a neighbouring and powerful sovereign. The case was
not as urgent as the one to which I compare it, inasmuch as the Huguenots
of France were not the subjects of a Mussulman sovereign. But this,
perhaps, will be brought home as an argument against me, for such is the
hatred of sects proceeding from the same faith, that England would,
perhaps, have borne more meekly the hardships endured by the Calvinistic
brethren, if they had been subjected thereunto by a Soliman, and not by
him who styled himself the most Christian king of France. However this may
be, it is said at present that, whether oppressed or no, the Greeks never
solicited our intervention. To this it may be answered, that the whole
difficulty would have been solved by the very fact of the solicitation,
for ha