d; the wheels of government clanked
on in the traditional rusty way; governors of provinces and districts
continued, as of yore, to pocket the grants that were made for local
improvements; in defiance of the promises given in 1856, taxes continued
to be "farmed" out to contractors; the evidence of Christians against
Moslems was persistently refused a hearing in courts of justice[90]; and
the collectors of taxes gave further turns of the financial screw in
order to wring from the cultivators, especially from the Christians, the
means of satisfying the needs of the State and the ever-increasing
extravagance of the Sultan. Incidents which were observed in Bosnia by
an Oxford scholar of high repute, in the summer of 1875, will be found
quoted in an Appendix at the end of this volume.

[Footnote 90: As to this, see Reports: _Condition of Christians in
Turkey_ (1860). Presented to Parliament in 1861. Also Parliamentary
Papers, Turkey, No. 16 (1877).]

Matters came to a climax in the autumn of 1875 in Herzegovina, the
southern part of Bosnia. There after a bad harvest the farmers of taxes
and the Mohammedan landlords insisted on having their full quota; for
many years the peasants had suffered under agrarian wrongs, which cannot
be described here; and now this long-suffering peasantry, mostly
Christians, fled to the mountains, or into Montenegro, whose sturdy
mountaineers had never bent beneath the Turkish yoke[91]. Thence they
made forays against their oppressors until the whole of that part of
the Balkans was aflame with the old religious and racial feuds. The
Slavs of Servia, Bulgaria, and of Austrian Dalmatia also gave secret aid
to their kith and kin in the struggle against their Moslem overlords.
These peoples had been aroused by the sight of the triumph of the
national cause in Italy, and felt that the time had come to strike for
freedom in the Balkans. Turkey therefore failed to stamp out the revolt
in Herzegovina, fed as it was by the neighbouring Slav peoples; and it
was clear to all the politicians of Europe that the Eastern Question was
entering once more on an acute phase.

[Footnote 91: Efforts were made by the British Consul, Holmes, and other
pro-Turks, to assign this revolt to Panslavonic intrigues. That there
were some Slavonic emissaries at work is undeniable; but it is equally
certain that their efforts would have had no result but for the
existence of unbearable ills. It is time, surely, to give up the n