We had been asked to meet the representatives of Austria and Russia, and received quite an ovation at the Consulate. The conversation turned on the Greek hierarchy of this country, and the worst that we had heard of these wolves in sheep’s clothing was more than corroborated. Perhaps the most terrible feature of the tyranny under which the Bosnian rayah groans, is that those, who should protect, betray him, and that those, to whom he looks for spiritual comfort, wring from him the last scrap of worldly belongings which has escaped the rapacity of the infidel. Amongst all the populations of modern Turkey there is only one so vile as to fawn upon the tyrants. The modern Greeks of Constantinople—the Fanariotes, let us call them—not to pollute a hallowed name—have inherited all the corruption of a corrupt empire, and added to their hereditary store. It is from these, as we have seen, that the odious class of middle-men, who farm the taxes, is chiefly recruited. It is also from these that the dignitaries of the Greek Church throughout Turkey are chosen. The Turks have not hesitated to utilize the sleek knavery ready to their beck. It has long been a part of Turkish policy to rivet the fetters of their Sclavonic subjects by filling the high ecclesiastical offices of the Greek Church with Fanariote bishops. The office of the old Serbian metropolitans who resided at Ipek was suppressed, and Bosnia has since been divided into four eparchies[252] under the immediate control of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Eparchs needing, like the head of the Greek Church himself, an exequatur from the infidel before they can enter on their functions. The Greek Patriarch takes good care that these eparchies shall be filled by none but Fanariotes, and thus it happens that the Pravoslaves or orthodox Christians of Bosnia, who form the majority of the population,[253] are subjected to ecclesiastics, aliens in blood, in language, in sympathies, who oppress them hand in hand with the Turkish officials, and set them, often, an even worse example of moral depravity.