desolate wilderness; neither is there any one can escape
it." Now I might, in illustration of the character which the Turks bear
in history, suitably accommodate these words to the moral, or the
social, or the political, or the religious calamities, of which they
were the authors to the Christian countries they overran; and so I might
bring home to you the meaning and drift of that opposition with which
the Holy See has met them in every age. I might allude (if I dare, but I
dare not, nor does any one dare),--else, allusion might be made to those
unutterable deeds which brand the people which allows them, even in the
natural judgment of men, as the most flagitious, the most detestable of
nations. I might enlarge on the reckless and remorseless cruelty which,
had they succeeded in Europe, as they succeeded in Asia, would have
decimated or exterminated her children; I might have reminded you, for
instance, how it has been almost a canon of their imperial policy for
centuries, that their Sultan, on mounting the throne, should destroy his
nearest of kin, father, brother, or cousin, who might rival him in his
sovereignty; how he is surrounded, and his subjects according to their
wealth, with slaves carried off from their homes, men and boys, living
monuments of his barbarity towards the work of God's hands; how he has
at his remorseless will and in the sudden breath of his mouth the life
or death of all his subjects; how he multiplies his despotism by giving
to his lieutenants in every province, a like prerogative; how little
scruple those governors have ever felt in exercising this prerogative to
the full, in executions on a large scale, and sudden overwhelming
massacres, shedding blood like water, and playing with the life of man
as though it were the life of a mere beast or reptile. I might call your
attention to particular instances of such atrocities, such as that
outrage perpetrated in the memory of many of us,--how, on the
insurrection of the Greeks at Scio, their barbarian masters carried fire
and sword throughout the flourishing island till it was left a desert,
hurrying away women and boys to an infamous captivity, and murdering
youths and grown men, till out of 120,000 souls, in the spring time, not
900 were left there when the crops were ripe for the sickle. If I do not
go into scenes such as these in detail, it is because I have wearied and
troubled you more than enough already, in my account of the savage
perpet