I have already endeavoured to show in how many various ways the Latins possess superior opportunities, and are in a better position than the Greeks, in having greater facilities daily afforded them as far as regards the work of conversion; but there is yet another great source of advantage to them, and one which holds out many tempting inducements to the heavily-taxed peasantry to embrace at once, and without any further hesitation, the Roman Catholic faith. This is the privilege exercised by the consular authorities, and even by the very priests themselves, of protecting from outrage or insult every one who has embraced their religion, and who gives evidence of the sincerity of their intentions by regular attendance at mass, and by the rigid observance of high-days and holy-days, feasts and fasts. They also give them employment; and they become, _de facto_, protected by the French government; their taxes are light in comparison with those levied on their fellow-countrymen, and they are entirely exempted from that grinding system so commonly practised and played off upon the peasantry by the soldiery and underlings of government—a class of individuals that are a perfect bane to the Ottoman empire.
Before concluding these remarks, I must point out another glaring instance in which the Latins have gained a decided ascendancy over the Greeks in the East. I allude to the establishment by the Sisters of Charity of a hospital at Beyrout, in which the first medical advice there procurable has been secured. Here the poor fever-stricken natives have every attention paid to their wants in the hour of sorrow and sickness; while, side by side, on neat iron-bedsteads covered with snowy linen, we stumble across the last sad remains of the French Roman Catholic sailor, and, in the next bed to his, the Protestant British tar. Both have been equally cared for, as far as bodily concerns go, but there has been a fearful distinction between the spiritual consolation of the two. The Frenchman has received daily—hourly visits from the nuns, who have spoken to him smilingly of heaven, and lighted death’s dark pathway with the rays of cheerfulness. The Englishman, on the contrary, has felt himself friendless and solitary—no gentle lips have stooped down to whisper comfort and holy counsellings to the quickly departing soul. The reason is, that there is not at present an English clergyman or an English doctor in Beyrout.