Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine – Volume 53, No. 332, June, 1843

As before said, our intention, on this occasion, is not to dissect principles or theories, but to present facts. We have still more in store for the absolute theory men. But, in concluding, we may be allowed to observe, that the causes why a restrictive and exclusive system does answer for Russia, and, on the contrary, tends to the ruin of Spain, are simply these:—The raw materials of Russia are indispensable for this and other manufacturing countries, because cheaper and more abundant than can be elsewhere procured, and the price of labour is low. The raw products of Spain necessary for manufactures are, on the reverse, dear priced; her products of luxury, even, are dear; her rates of labour are higher than in this or any other country of Europe. Two shillings and sixpence a-day, or fifteen shillings a-week; with, besides Sundays, a hundred saints' days or holidays in the year, put her labour and produce quite hors de combat in the race of competition. A Spanish operative would no more toil on a dia de dos cruces, (two saints on one day,) than he would fast on a feast-day, with an odorous olla podrida before him on the table.

1

See "Chapters of Turkish History," No. III., November 1840.

2

He was afterwards, in 1651, mufti for a few months; but is better known as an historian, (under the appellation of Kara-Tchelibi-Zadah,) and as having been tutor to Ahmed-Kiuprili.

3

His name, according to Evliya, was originally Yusuf, but was changed to Mohammed on the entreaty of the ladies of the seraglio, who said that Yusuf was the name of a slave.

4

The Turkish historian, Naima, fancifully compares this plane to the fabulous tree in the islands of Wak-Wak, the fruit of which consisted of human heads, as is fully detailed in the romance of Hatem Tai, besides various passages of the Thousand and One Nights. Under this same plane, by a singular instance of retribution, the heads of the janissaries massacred in the At-meidan in 1826, were piled by order of Sultan Mahmood.

5

The Turkish annalists do not fail to remark, that Kiuprili crossed the imperial threshold at the moment when the call to noon prayers was resounding from the minarets—an evident token of the Divine protection extended to him!

6

In a narrative by a writer named Chassipol, (Paris, 1676,) professing to be the biography of the two first Kiuprili vizirs, Mohammed is said to have been the son of a French emigrant, and this romance has been copied by most European authors. But the testimony of Evliya, Kara-Tchelibi, and all contemporary Turkish writers, is decisive on the point of his Albanian origin.

7

Ipshir Mustapha Pasha was originally a Circassian slave, and said to have been a tribesman and near relation of the famous Abaza. During the revolutions which distracted the minority of Mohammed, he became grand-vizir for a few months, (Oct. 1654–May 1655,) but was cut off by an unanimous insurrection of the spahis and janissaries, who forgot their feuds for the sake of vengeance on the common enemy.

8

De la Haye, the French ambassador, was imprisoned in 1658, and his son bastinadoed in the presence of Kiuprili, for being unable or unwilling to give a key to some letters in cipher from the Venetians; and some years later, the envoy of the Czar, Alexis Mikhailowitz, was driven, with blows and violence, from the presence of the sultan, who was irritated by the incompetency of the interpreter to translate the Czar's letter! This latter outrage, however, was not till after the death of the elder Kiuprili.

9

This monstrous exaggeration is reduced by Rycaut to the more credible, but still enormous number of 36,000 victims during the five years of his ministry.

10

"The Turk," says Montecuculi, "who is always armed, never finds time bald, but can always seize him by the forelock: the number of his victories, and the extent of territory which he has taken from the Christians, and which they have never been able to recover, sufficiently proves this, and shows the rashness and folly of those who pretend to make light of his power."

11

The name of Candia, which is the Italianized form of Kandax, (now Megalo-Kastro,) is unknown at the present day to the Greek inhabitants of the island, which they call by its classic name of Κρητη.—See PASHLEY'S Travels in Crete, i. chap. 11.

12

A notable retort is on record from the vizir to the Venetian envoy, who, on repairing to Constantinople after the battle, expressed his astonishment at the progress already made in the equipment of a new fleet. "Know," (said the haughty Osmanli,) "that the loss of a fleet to the Padishah is as the shaving of his beard, which will grow again all the thicker; whereas the loss of Cyprus is to Venice as the amputation of an arm from the body, which will never be reproduced."

13

"Thus were they annihilated, and all men who were faithful and devoted to God and their prince, were solaced and consoled."—MS. Chronicle by the notary Trivan, quoted by PASHLEY, chap. 33. These atrocities were perpetrated in the early part of the 16th century.

14

Among the captives was the ex-nurse of the heir-apparent, afterwards Mohammed IV., with her son, who was mistaken for a prince of the Imperial family; and being carried to Malta, was brought up there as a monk under the name of Padre Ottomanno! During the siege of Candia he was brought to the beleaguered fortress, in the hope that the presence of this supposed Turkish prince of the blood would shake the allegiance of the janissaries—but this notable scheme, as might have been foreseen, was wholly without success.

15

Many of them adopted the faith of the invaders—and Tournefort, who visited Crete in 1700, says that "the greater part of the Turks on the island were either renegades, or sons of renegades." The Candiote Turks of the present day are popularly held to combine the vices of the nation from which they descend with those of their adopted countrymen.

16

The use of parallels is usually said to have been introduced at this time by Kiuprili; but they were certainly employed before Neuhausel, four years earlier.

17

These were, the Sabionera, covered by the detached fort of St Demetrius, the Vetturi, Jesus, Martinengo, Bethlehem, Panigra, and St Andrew.

18

The majority of these volunteers were supplied by the fiery noblesse of France, among whom the crusading spirit of their ancestors seems to have been revived at this period. At the battle of St Gothard, a considerable body of French auxiliaries was present, under the Duc de la Feuillade, (whose name was travestied by the Turks into, Fouladi, man of steel;) and his subsequent expedition to Candia, as well as the more formidable armament under Noailles, seem to have received the direct sanction of Louis XIV. Yet the old treaties between France and the Porte were still in force; so that it was not without some reason that Kiuprili replied, a few years later, to the Marquis de Nointel's professions of amity on the part of France, "I know that the French are our friends, but I always happen to find them in the ranks of our enemies!"

19

Villa is said to have produced before the senate of Venice a letter from Morosini to the vizir, offering to betray him into the hands of the Turks.

20

The harbour of Candia (now almost choked up) was at all times so small, and with so little depth of water, as to afford shelter only to galleys, the station of the larger vessels being at the isle of Standia, at some leagues' distance.

21

The appointment of the Greek Panayoti marks an important change in the system of Ottoman diplomacy; as previously the Porte had disdained to employ the rayahs in places of trust, depending wholly, in their intercourse with foreign ambassadors, on the interpreters attached to the suite of the latter.

22

Bashlík—a bonnet worn in bad weather.

23

Give him her feelings—a Tartar phrase.

24

Willingly, if you please? Literally, "on my head, on my eyes."

25

This cushion is embroidered with jewels, and is invaluable.

26

The Mussulmans believe, that in the northern burial-ground of Derbénd, are buried the forty first true believers, who were martyred by the idolaters.

27

God gave—Much good may it do you.

28

Brown's Lectures, Lecture xxviii.

29

Mill's Analysis, vol. i. p. 73.

30

This reasoning of Dr Brown's is founded upon an assumed analogy between the structure of the optic nerve, and the structure of the olfactory nerves and other sensitive nerves, and is completely disproved by the physiological observations of Treviranus, who has shown that no such analogy exists: that the ends of the nervous fibres in the retina being elevated into distinct separate papillæ, enable us to perceive the extension, and discriminate the position of visible bodies, while the nerves of the other senses being less delicately defined, are not fitted to furnish us with any such perception, or to aid us in making any such discrimination. See Müller's Physiology, translated by W. Baly, M.D., vol. ii. pp. 1073, 1074. Although the application of Treviranus's discovery to the refutation of Dr Brown's reasoning is our own, we may remark, in justice to an eminent philosopher, that it was Sir William Hamilton who first directed our attention to the fact as established by the great physiologist.

31

Mr Bailey seems disposed to carp at us for having confined our remarks to this first question, and for not having given a more complete review of his book. But the reason why we cut short our critique is obvious; for if it be proved, as we believe it can, that objects are originally seen at no distance whatever from the sight, it becomes quite superfluous to enquire what appearance they would present if originally seen at some distance from the sight. The way in which we disposed of the first question, however imperfect our treatment of it may have been, necessarily prevented us from entering upon the second; and our review, with all its deficiencies, was thus a complete review of his book, though not a review of his complete book.

32

Review of Berkeley's Theory, p 35.

33

Ibid. p. 136.

34

Review of Berkeley's Theory, p. 137.

35

Essay, § 158.

36

It would not be difficult to show, that as, on the one hand, distance is not involved in the original intuitions of sight, so, on the other hand, proximity is not involved in the original intuitions of touch; but that, while it is the touch which establishes an interval between the organ and the objects of sight, it is the sight which establishes no interval between the organ and the objects of touch. Sight thus pays back every fraction of the debt it has incurred to its brother sense. This is an interesting subject, but we can only glance at it here.

37

We observe that even Müller speaks of the "faculty of projection" as if he sanctioned and adopted the hypothesis.—See Physiology, vol. ii. p. 1167.

38

Lucretius.

39

T. Warton's "Suicide."

40

The cotton piece goods of India were still subject, in 1814, to a duty on importation equal to 85 per cent. This duty was reduced on the 5th of July 1819, but to L.67, 10s. per cent only. Finally, in 1825 the duty was again reduced to 10 per cent, at which it remains. The duty on cotton yarn imported from India was at the same time subject to a duty of 10d. per lb., and so remained till 1831 at least. It must be borne in mind, that India was the only country in the world which, before and during the rise of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain, was, or could be, an exporter of cotton fabrics and yarns.