The friends of Christianity and humanity, who sincerely sympathized with the martyred Christian Armenians, have learned that the Mohammedan rulers and the Turkish officials in the past centuries, and in the present, have given us enough instances of cruelty to convince the world that Mohammedanism and barbarism, if not identical, surely go hand in hand. Furthermore, the Turkish government and its officers have shown to the world that they were, and are, destitute of truthfulness. A well-informed recent writer says: “As rulers of subject races, the Turks have shown themselves incapable of anything except cruelty and corruption.” “Has Turkey one whit improved in the last five centuries? No. The Porte’s diplomatists have learned to tell falsehoods with more freedom, and more unblushingly; her cruelties and oppressions are practiced more vigorously but more secretly; and she is far more steeped (her higher classes) in vice and barbarism than she was five hundred years ago.”[135] The sultan, with an air of frankness, though compelled by the demand of the British ambassador, and with a desire to postpone immediate action, so that the indignation of the Christian world might subside, appointed a commission to make an investigation of the massacre. He depended too much on the friendly relations of the United States with Turkey, through Minister Terrell. The sultan asked the President to appoint a representative of this country; but when President Cleveland appointed Mr. Jewett, consul at Sivas, to make an independent investigation and report to our government, the sultan refused his appointment. How could he allow such an honest man as Mr. Jewett to make an independent investigation? Mr. Jewett knew the corruption of the sultan’s officers; he had some experience in the Marsovan trouble; his despatches were detained and his letters were meddled with by His Majesty’s faithful servants, who, at the head of a Turkish mob, had burned the mission school. The sultan’s commission was composed of the Turkish officers appointed by the Sultan and the consuls of France, England and Russia, who were in Asiatic Turkey. The commission was to decide who was to be examined, and whose testimony was to be taken. The European representatives were not privileged to make an independent investigation of the matter. Such being the case it was evident what might be expected from the Commission.