Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

294 SUPERIORITY OF A REPRESENTATIVE

ing by even the most indifferent parties ; but in a country where distances and secrecy lend their aid to the most tyrannical acts, all these violences remain concealed. This reminds me of the significant words too often repeated by Russians deprived of protectors — " God is so high, and the emperor so far off!"

Here, then, is the Greek church busy making martyrs. What has become of the toleration of which it boasts before men who are ignorant of the East ? Glorious confessors of the Catholic faith are now languishing in convent prisons ; and their struggle, admirable in the eyes of heaven, remains unknown even to the church for whom they generously fight upon earth, — that church which is*mother of all the churches, and the only church universal; for it is the only one untainted by locality, the only one which remains free, and which belongs to no particular country.*

When the sun of publicity shall rise upon Russia, how many injustices will it expose to view! — not only ancient ones, but those which are enacted daily will shock the senses of the world. They will not be sufficiently shocked; for such is the fate of truth upon earth, that, so long as people have a great interest in knowing it, they remain ignorant of it, and when at last they have their eyes opened, it has become to them no longer a matter of importance. The abuses of a destroyed power excite only cold exclamations : those who recount them, pass for ungenerous strikers

* Has it not taken three years to carry to Koine the cry of these unfortunate beings ?