Tulsi

“ A man who appeared to be a mendicant fakīr, came down to the river-side, carrying in one hand a long pole, and in the other one joint of a thick bamboo, which formed a vessel for holding water, and from this he poured some of the holy stream of the Ganges on the little shrub goddess the tulsī.
In the midst of hundreds and hundreds of temples and ghāts, piled one above another on the high cliff, or rising out of the Ganges, the mind is perfectly bewildered; it turns from beauty to beauty, anxious to preserve the memory of each, and the amateur throws down the pencil in despair. ”

“ In this way Tullius gained control of the populace; but fearing that some rebellion might take place, he entrusted the greater part and the most important of the public business to the care of the more influential citizens. Thus they became harmonious among themselves and transacted the public business in the best manner. He also conducted a few wars against the Veientes and against all the Etruscans, in the course of which nothing was done worthy of record. Wishing to affiliate the Latins still more closely with the Romans, he persuaded them to construct a temple in Rome out of common funds. ”

“ Frequent menaces and challenges had passed in battle between them, and those exchanges of defiance to which their hot and eager emulation is apt to prompt young soldiers had added private animosity to their national feelings of opposition. Yet for all this, considering Tullus to have a certain generosity of temper, and knowing that no Volscian, so much as he, desired an occasion to requite upon the Romans the evils they had done, he did what much confirms the saying, that Hard and unequal is with wrath the strife, Which makes us buy its pleasure with our life. ”

“ Greece, when overwhelmed in 1897 by Turkey, was rescued by Europe. Viewed broadly, then, the property of the Sultan has devolved as much to sustain the weak as to enlarge the strong, so that even in Europe, and even in the southeastern part of it, force has not ruled absolutely, and weakness can live and flourish. How is it that the rays, shorn from the horns of the waning Crescent, have made an aureole for such humble brows? Who, if not democracy, has cried halt to the "Drang nach Osten" of Austria and Russia? ”

“ In truth, if my country, which is far dearer to me than my life—if all Italy—if the whole republic were to address me, "Marcus Tullius, what are you doing? will you permit that man to depart whom you have ascertained to be an enemy? whom you see ready to become the general of the war? whom you know to be expected in the camp of the enemy as their chief, the author of all this wickedness, the head of the conspiracy, the instigator of the slaves and abandoned citizens, so that he shall seem not driven out of the city by you, but let loose by you against the city? ”

“ The ambitious designs of Russia found abundant warrant in the cruel treatment of the Christian people of Turkey. A number of Christian kingdoms lay under the Sultan’s rule, in the south inhabited by Greeks, in the north by Slavs; their people treated always with harshness and tyranny; their every attempt at revolt repressed with savage cruelty. We have seen how the Greeks rebelled against their oppressors in 1821, and, with the aid of Europe, won their freedom in 1829. ”

“ The pouring clouds cleave close to the ground, as sages stoop beneath accumulated lore. The mountain endures the buffeting of the storm, as the virtuous bear the abuse of the wicked. The flooded streamlets rush proudly along, like mean men puffed up with a little wealth. ”

“ Prussia or Germany, in the same way, represents the force which, relying on the strength of nationality, has for the moment made her the leading power in Christendom. For the perishing remnants of Turkey a faint plea of territorial possession has gone forth, but the conscience of friend and the determination of foes have alike repudiated it as an excuse for misgovernment and palliation of tyranny. There is no idea, no such justification for that curse of Christendom. Turkey means nothing, represents nothing but butchery, barbarism, and the vilest slavery. ”

“ A Southern Slav patriot has said that no greater misfortune has befallen the Southern Slavs, than to pass under the dominion of civilized Austria. Had they been obliged to share the fate of their brothers, the Serbs and Bulgarians, they would certainly have tasted all the misery of the Turkish yoke, but to-day they would be free, as an independent State with a right to their own national and intellectual development. The one thing Turkey has left untouched in the Serbs and Bulgars—the heart of the people—is the very thing that Austria has sought to destroy in her Southern Slav subjects. ”

“ Therefore, for the love of heaven, since, not content with a sure independence, we are running the doubtful hazard of sovereignty and slavery, let us adopt some method, whereby, without great loss, without much bloodshed of either nation, it may be decided which is to rule the other." The proposal was not displeasing to Tullus, though both from his natural bent, as also from the hope of victory, he was rather inclined to violence. ”

“ Enthusiasm, efficiency, and the spirit of self-sacrifice led the young nations on the road to victory; moreover, they found an ally in the selfishness of their antagonists, sycophants and pleasure-seekers, trusting to the paid legionaries of Rome or the foreign-trained political intriguers of the Sultan’s army. Imperial Rome perished of corruption and had to make way for something cleaner, wholesomer. The Turkish Empire in Europe has gone the same way, and the same causes brought about its fall. Would it not be as well for us Britons to look at home? ”

“ Methinks I see my Tullia, I hear my Tullia, I talk with my Tullia.—But as soon as he began to look into the stores of philosophy, and consider how many excellent things might be said upon the occasion—nobody upon earth can conceive, says the great orator, how happy, how joyful it made me.
My father was as proud of his eloquence as Marcus Tullius Cicero could be for his life, and, for aught I am convinced of to the contrary at present, with as much reason: it was indeed his strength—and his weakness too.——His strength—for he was by nature eloquent ”

“ Inasmuch as a great part of the peoples still under Turkish rule in Europe were—like the Russians—Slavs and adherents of the Greek church, Russia believed that it had the best right to protect the Christians within the Sultan's dominions from the atrocious misgovernment of the Mohammedans. When in 1853 news reached the Tsar that the Turks were troubling Christian pilgrims, he demanded that he be permitted to assume a protectorate over all the Christians in Turkey. ”

“ As an ox follows the herd, so shall I follow the "right party," or whoever are said to be the "right party," even if they rush to destruction. The best course in our straits is clear to me. No one can tell the issue of war: but every one can tell that, if the right party are beaten, Caesar will not be more merciful than Cinna in slaying the nobility, nor more moderate than Sulla in robbing the rich. I have discussed la haute politique long enough, and I would do so longer, had not my lamp gone out. The end is "Your vote, Marcus Tullius." I vote with Pompey, that is with Titus Pomponius. ”

“ The political burdens, especially those connected with the army, grew heavier, naturally, as the power of Rome increased, and it was seen to be an injustice that one part of the people, and that, too, the smaller part, should alone feel their weight. This led to the first important modification of the Roman constitution, which was made even before the close of the regal period. According to tradition, its author was the king Servius Tullius, and its general object was to make all men who held land in the state liable to military service. ”

“ The Christian provinces of Turkey, and the Greek Christians, under the rule of the Sultan were misgoverned, plundered, and at times tortured by the myrmidons of a barbarous and feeble autocracy. The Russian Czar, as head of a nation fanatically devoted to the Greek cult, could always find in this misgovernment and oppression apt opportunity for interfering between the Sultan and his Greek subjects. Moreover, in every act of interference the Czar of Muscovy knows that he will be supported to the death by the fervid fanaticism of the Russian people. ”

“ But if we except the tribute of the children, to which the conquered Greeks seem to have submitted with so little show of resistance, and which owed its abolition, not to any revolt or insurrection against its continuance, but to the increase of the Turkish population and of the number of the renegades who were constantly entering the Sultan’s service,39—the treatment of their Christian subjects by the Ottoman emperors—at least for two centuries after their conquest of Greece—exhibits a toleration such as was at that time quite unknown in the rest of Europe. ”

“ CHAPTER XXI.—That it is a great reproach to a Prince or to a Commonwealth to be without a national Army.
Those princes and republics of the present day who lack forces of their own, whether for attack or defence, should take shame to themselves, and should be convinced by the example of Tullus, that their deficiency does not arise from want of men fit for warlike enterprises, but from their own fault in not knowing how to make their subjects good soldiers. For after Rome had been at peace for forty years, Tullus, succeeding to the kingdom, found not a single Roman who had ever been in battle. ”

“ Attius Tullius urged this course upon them all, but the people showed lack of enthusiasm. So when the nobles neither by advice nor by intimidation could prevail upon them to take up arms, they concocted the following scheme. The Romans were [Pg 101] conducting a horse-race, and the Volsci among other neighboring peoples had gathered in a large body to behold the spectacle. Tullius, as a pretended friend of the Romans, persuaded the Roman prætors that they should keep watch on the Volsci, since the latter had made ready to attack them unexpectedly in the midst of the horse-race. ”

“ Austria on account of her geographical position and her desire to expand to the southward, and Russia on account of her desire for Constantinople and the racial ties connecting her with the Balkan states, each hoped to be preferred. Both Austria and Russia, then, for more or less selfish reasons, were anxious to bring about the break-up of the Turkish Empire in Europe. Whenever a revolt against Turkish rule would break out, the revolutionists could almost always count on the help of one or the other of these nations. ”

“ Gentlemen, I declare that should the next revolutionary movement in Europe extend to the Turkish provinces of Moldavia and Servia,—and should Turkey hereby fall,—this would not become a benefit to those provinces, but would benefit Russia only; because then, Turkey no more existing, all those provinces will be naturally absorbed by Russia; whereas, to hold fast to Turkey—that Turkey, which respects religious liberty, gives them entirely and fully self-government. ”

“ Tullia was the instigator of this coup d'état; and impatient to learn its success, she drove to the Forum, and, calling her husband from the Senate chamber, was the first to hail him as king. But Lucius commanded her to return home; and the tradition runs that as she was going thither her chariot wheels passed over the dead body of her royal father as it lay in the narrow street. More of the story of this Roman personification of filial iniquity we are not told, except that, in accordance with the inevitable rule of legendary history, she met the Nemesis of her crimes on a later day. ”

“ The world can well form its own judgment about a race that can celebrate and have its school children participate in the celebration of the sinking of the Lusitania! What rights and justice can a conquered nation expect from such a race? The forcible expatriation of the Poles by Prussia in the years preceding the great war as well as the Prussian behavior in Belgium and northern France since the beginningof the war makes Prussia a proper ally of Austria and of Turkey, whose Serbian and Armenian crimes are only a continuation of their histories so replete with murder, oppression, and injustice. ”

“ For nearly a a century the Turkish Empire has been generally regarded as in a condition of slow but certain decay. One by one the Sultan has lost dominion over large and fair provinces, every year he has been sinking deeper and deeper into hopeless debt, and only considerations of self-interest on the part of other powers have kept life in that body-politic which the Czar Nicholas once so aptly compared to a sick man wasting away by a slow but fatal distemper. The Turks, it was said long ago, are only "encamped in Europe." ”

“ In spite, however, of fiendish and systematic persecution of the reformers and their followers, the Sultan has never succeeded in entirely stamping out the reform movement He was too late in his attempt to suppress education, and the spread of Western learning among the Turkish people has brought about the dissemination of the ideas of Western Europe as to the legitimate liberty of the people and the responsibility of the government; hence, discontent among the more thoughtful of the community has steadily gone on increasing. ”