736 



TUEKEY. 



four delegates chosen from those councils, will be 

 charged to present the minutes to the Porte. All 

 these matters will be referred by the Grand- Vizier to 

 the Council of State, which will address to him the 

 reports containing its decisions. The presidents of 

 the sections of the Council of State and a councillor 

 from each section shall meet every year to examine 

 the budget of receipts and expenditure. 



ABT. 3. The Council of State will be divided into 

 five sections, namely : 



1. Section o the Interior and of War : which will 

 be charged with the examination of projects of law, 

 and regulations elaborated by the proper administra- 

 tive departments concerning general administration, 

 the police, and the army and navy, and to determine 

 on the matters submitted to it in regard to the appli- 

 cation of such laws and regulations. 



2. Section of Finances and Evcaf, charged to ex- 

 amine every thing relating to the laws and regulations 

 as to the collection of taxes, the good management of 

 the state revenues, and the general administration of 

 vakoufs. 



3. 'Section of Legislation, whose functions shall be 

 the elaboration of civil, commercial, and criminal 

 law, as well as of regulations for the tribunals by 

 which those laws are administered, and to decide in 

 cases of conflict between administrative and judicial 

 authorities. 



4. Section of Public Works, Commerce, and Agri- 

 culture, which will consider questions concerning the 

 development of the interests of those services, as well 

 as concessions and conventions connected therewith. 



5. Section of Public Instruction, which, in conform- 

 ity with its special attributes, will take charge of 

 questions in which the educational institutions of the 

 state are concerned. 



All matters in dispute shall, according to their na- 

 ture, be settled by the section to which they relate. 



ART. 4. The Council of State shall not interfere 

 with the attributes of the Executive, its mission being 

 to deliberate only on the matters prescribed in the 

 present reglement. It shall only have authority to 

 watch over the execution of the laws and regulations, 

 and, in case of their imperfect execution, to notify the 

 same to the proper quarter. 



ABT. 5. Each section shall record the result of its 

 deliberations on the questions within its special prov- 

 ince in a report which shall be submitted to the 

 Grand-Vizier. This report of the section shall bear 

 also the seal of the Council, even in cases where the 

 decision rests with the section itself. The presi- 

 dent of the Council will put his own seal on the re- 

 ports of deliberations which take place in his pres- 

 ence. Matters relating to organic laws and regula- 

 tions, which will in the first instance be examined by 

 a section, will not be the subject of a report to the 

 Grand-Vizier until after they have been submitted to 

 the assembly of the whole Council. 



ABT. 6. The Council will be presided over by a 

 minister, who will be assisted by five presidents of 

 sections and a secretary-general. Each section will 

 consist of from five to ten members, so that the num- 

 ber of Councillors of State shall not exceed fifty. 

 The members of the Council of State shall not ex- 

 ceed fifty. The members of the Council will be dis- 

 tributed among the different sections, according to 

 the relative importance of the sections, but no sec- 

 tion shall consist of less than five members. 



ABT. 7. The president of the Council, the presi- 

 dents of the sections, the secretary-general, and the 

 members of the Council, shall be appointed by the 

 Sultan by imperial firman. 



ABT. 8. Each section shall have five maitres de re- 

 quetes and five auditors taken from capable persons in 

 the bureaus of the Council, which will be so formed 

 as to answer the requirements of the different sec- 

 tions. 



ABT. 9. The Presidents and the Councillors will 

 have deliberative votes. It will be the duty of the 

 assistant to summarize the subjects of deliberations, 



and of the auditors to draw up minutes pf the pro- 

 ceedings. An assistant to each section will discharge 

 the functions of first secretary to the section. 



ABT. 10. The deliberations of the Council, whether 

 in general assembly or in sections, shall be decided 

 by the majority ot votes. The president and the 

 members shall have each one vote. The votes shall 

 be taken by ballot whenever required by the ma- 

 jority. 



ABT. 11. The president of the Council, or, in his 

 absence, one of the presidents of sections, will pre- 

 side over the general assembly of the Council. 



ABT. 12. The members of the Council shall all 

 have the same rights and prerogatives, whatever may 

 be their individual ranks or grades. 



ABT. 13. The mode of deliberation and every thing 

 concerning the working of the bureaus of the Coun- 

 cil will be the subject pf a special reglement to be elab- 

 orated by all the sections of the Council conjointly. 



ABT. 14. The present organic reglement may be 

 modified by imperial ordinance, should the Govern- 

 ment deem it useful and necessary to do so. 



The first list of members of the new Council 

 contained 40 names, of which 27 belonged to 

 Mussulmans and 13 to non-Mussulmans. Of 

 the latter, 4 are members of the Greek com- 

 munion, 4 Armenian Catholics, 1 a Gregorian 

 Catholic, 2 Israelites, 1 a Bulgarian, and 1 a 

 Syrian Catholic. Among the additional mem- 

 bers who were subsequently appointed, was the 

 Emir Mehemed Ruslan, a descendant of one of 

 the oldest families of Chouf in the Lebanon, as 

 representative of the Druses. The measures 

 deliberated upon and adopted by the Council of 

 State, and sanctioned by the Sultan, are to be 

 published regularly by the Takmmi VaTcai, the 

 official journal of the empire in the Turkish 

 language. 



The Supreme Court of Justice, which was 

 established in 1868, contained also some 

 Christian members, consisting of 8 Turks, 3 

 Armenians, and 2 Greeks. 



Another Christian (a Catholic), Daud Pacha, 

 heretofore governor-general of the Lebanon, 

 was appointed Minister of Public Works, Tele- 

 graph, and Postal Departments. Jn his place, 

 Franco Nassi Pacha, also a Catholic, was nom- 

 inated by the Porte to be governor-general 

 of the Lebanon. After three conferences be- 

 tween the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs 

 and the representatives of the guaranteeing 

 powers (Russia, France, England, Austria, and 

 Prussia), this nomination was conformed by 

 the latter. The protest of the Italian Govern- 

 ment, against exclusion from a voice in (Syrian 

 affairs, at length availed to admit its minister 

 to a share in this common act of the great 

 powers. 



In the spring the Government claimed to 

 have discovered a wide-spread conspiracy of 

 the " Young Turkey " party. It condemned 

 twenty of them to exile for having, in the 

 words of the accusation, formed part of a 

 secret society. Zia Bey, the leader of the 

 Young Turkey party, indignantly repudiated 

 any connection of his party with an attempt 

 against the life of the Sultan and his ministers. 

 In a letter to the Paris Etendard, Zia Bey 

 says : " The eiforts of the Young Turkey party 



