No. 444.
Mr. Heap
to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
Constantinople, August 13, 1884. (Received September 1.)
Sir: Adverting to your dispatches numbered 196 and 214, dated the:28th of May and 17th July respectively, relative to the restriction on the sale of the American Bible Society’s books, and more especially to [Page 573] the detention by the custom-house here of their Bibles printed in Arabic, I have the honour to inform you that the minister of public instruction directed the custom-house on the 4th of July last to deliver these books to their owner or consignee.
It is to be regretted that in the interior as well as here the authorities, particularly the subordinate and more illiterate ones, through misdirected or ignorant zeal, interfere so often with the colporteurs of the Bible Society although they are duly licensed and the books they have for sale have passed the censorship. The superior authorities appear to disapprove of the arbitrary acts of their subordinates, but do not seem able to prevent them, and when a seizure of books takes place they allow so many delays and formalities to be interposed that much time usually elapses before redress can be obtained.
The old time rough and ready justice of the pashas, who received examined and gave decisions on complaints in a single sitting, had its advantages, but all this is changed and the celerity of Turkish legal procedure exists only in tradition.
I am, &c.,