The accounts received yesterday from the coast of Syria have realized all our worst fears.  On the 9th of this month the city of Damascu was attacked by the Druses, and 500 Christians are said to have perished.  The Consulates, with the exception of the English, were burnt down.  In short, the whole place seems to have been at the mercy of the marauding army, the Turkish authorities having shown their usual complicity with the aggressors.  This frightful event must remove the scruples of the most cautious politician.  Instant action must take place to save the world from crimes which will be a reproach to it for ages.  No one can tell what another week may bring forth.  The next mail from Beyrout may inform us that Aleppo has shared the fate of Damascus, that at Jerusalem Christians of every nation and church, including a number of Protestant Englishman, have been put to the sword. Whatever may have been the beginning of this movement, there can be no doubt that it has assumed a most formidable character.  Yesterday it was a feud between two mountain tribes; tomorrow it may be the onslaught of the Musselman races on the Christians, whom recent events have caused them to look upon  with increasing hatred and dread.  Before succor can arrive, before the Turk can be made to feel that Europe will stand no trifling in this matter, it may be that every village in Syria, may, in the whole of Asia, may be stained with blood.  Races which have lived in security for centuries under the protection of the European Powers, may be swept from the earth by this fierce outbreak of fanaticism, all hopes for a better future may be destroyed, and the regeneration of these unhappy lands made impossible for ever by a single month of unchecked lawlessness.  When too him, it may be discovered that civilization  has been once more overwhelmed by a deluge as it was beginning to blossom and to give hopes of bringing forth fruit.

It is strange that a land which was the cradle of Christianity should continue, age after age, to be the place of its sharpest trial.  It would almost seem as if a spell hung over that renowned and holy corner of Asia, and condemned it to keep forever its former likeness, to furnish  persecutors and martyrs, franxied multitudes demanding blood, and timidGovernors giving up the guiltless to death.  Since the days when the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem went down under the first shock of Arab invasion, the Christians of Syria and Palestine have been the most ill-used subjects of the most fanatical part of Islam.  Their fate has somewhat resembled that of the tribes whom Israel, ages before, found in the same land.  They have been exterminated, or reduced to the condition of slaves, or forced to conform to the victorious faith.  The small number of Christians in Syria and Egypt, compared with the vast multitudes whom the first Caliphs found in those countries, shows how active have been all these causes of depopulation.  In the earlier periods of conquest the slaughter was prodigious.  In later times misery has done the work of the sword.  The population had died out, or merged into the dominant races.  When our ancestors engaged in the Crusades they had a real justification for the evils enduredby their fellow Christians, and probably from those days to these there has never been a time when the religious spirit which prompted such adventures should not have found a pretext in some act of cruelty.  In Europe and in Asia Minor the Christian has had only to do with the Turk, whose bigotry has been tempered by his qualities as a politician and a ruler.  Nowhere in the western parts of the empire have slaves or Greeks had to undergo the hanimal  illusage and the periodical violence which have been the  portion of the Syrian Christians from their Arab persecutors.

What is to be done with a country in which these things are so often happening, and in which they may happen at any hour?  Are we to give up the land which has a higher interest than any other to the human race, that every man of our religion may be exterminated from it, and their place possessed wholly by the most savage populations of the East?  Are we, who have kept the Sultan on his throne, to acquience in a state of things which will make it as difficult for an Englishman to visit the scenes of Christian history as to penetrate into the mosques of Mecca?  Are we to permit Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem and perhaps every city as far as Baghdad, to be closed to Europeans after their native Christian population has been massacred or driven out?  Are we prepared to hear of our missionaries being put to death or turned out of the country, with orders never to set foot in it again, and to be unable to venture a mile from the Mediterrainean coast without a guard of Musselman cavasses?  But all this must be conceded, and more too, unles we are ready to deal sternly and summarily with these Druse and Arab ruffian and the conniving Turkish authorities.  It is likely, indeed, that for the moment the Porte will be rather frightened.  we have no doubt that M. Musurus has informed his government of the temper of the English nation, and the Ambassadors in Paris will doubtless make equally pressing presentations.  The troops will be dispatched with something like alacrity to Beyrout, and Fuad pasha will do his best to put  a stop to the disorders.  But what is a Constantinople politician, that he should be able to dam up the current of Asiatic fanaticism, which has now broken its bounds, and is flooding the southern provinces of the empire?  The perpetrators of these outrages have little respect for the class which Fuad represents, and which they would exterminate with as much pleasure as they do the Christians.

We do not know how far the Commissioner may possess the qualities necessary for dealing with savage races in a state of frenzy, but he will certainly require them.  No kind of conciliation or coaxing will be of the least avail, as it will only give the marauders a high notion of their own power and encourage them to renew the attack directly the troops are withdrawn.  Only the most resolute demeanor and the most active operations will be of any use.  The question, then, is whether Fuad pasha, or, indeed, any Turk, is escowed with the requisite energy and resources?  We fear not.  The behavior of the Turkish officers seem to indicate that they had little power over their men.  In one case there is reason to believe that the commander really took part with the murderers, but generally the work has gone on while the troops have stoicly kept to their barracks, and their officers seem to have known that it was of no use trying to bring them out.  If this was the case with detachments, why should it not be so with an army?  Who shall say that the force acting under Fuad Pasha will show any real activity in punishing outrages which every true believer in its ranks considers to be a holy work?  If, however, it should prove that the Porte is incapable of keeping order it will then be time to consider whether the Turk has not been there, and whether Christian nations  ought not to take council as to the future of this interesting and most unhappy land.

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