TURKEY. 



841 



Spoofs of the Sultan's suzerain relations to the 

 ey were given ; but no power gave effective 

 support to the demand, and nothing resulted 

 but a coolness between France and the Porte. 

 The Sultan sent two commissioners on a secret 

 mission into Egypt, of his own motion, during 

 the crisis, but they were soon recalled. There 

 were signs of a rapprochement between the 

 Khedive and the Sultan, but the idea of plac- 

 ing himself under the protection of the Sultan 

 and becoming again a vassal could only have 

 been entertained for a moment by the Viceroy. 

 The reign of Abdul-IIamid is characterized 

 by an extreme departure from the methods of 

 government which have prevailed at Stamboul. 

 This ambitious, energetic, and devout Sultan 

 has undertaken the personal direction of all 

 the affairs of the empire. The Sublime Porte, 

 which has been the governing body for cen- 

 turies, is entirely effaced; the ministers are 

 divested of all authority and reduced to the 

 position of simple clerks, and everything hangs 

 upon the word of Abdul-IIamid. The conse- 

 quence is, that the secret and irregular influ- 

 ences, which were formerly powert'ul enough 

 in the minor departments of public life to 

 seriously interfere with the proper workings 

 of government, now control the whole admin- 

 istration. The Sultan, though possessing an 

 acute and active mind, is entirely wanting in 

 the calm judgment, a definite policy, and reso- 

 lute purpose which are requisite for the course 

 he has chosen. He has discarded the organi- 

 zation by which the government has been car- 

 ried on, and has established no other effective 

 system. By resorting to irregular methods, he 

 has no regular and reliable sources of informa- 

 tion or instruments for carrying out his re- 

 solves. The result is endless confusion, vacil- 

 lation, contradiction, and cross-purposes. The 

 fear of conspiracy and assassination has pos- 

 sessed his mind for a year or two, and an easy 

 means of gaining favor with Abdul- Hamid has 

 been the familiar device of pretending to un- 

 earth some desperate revolutionary or murder- 

 ous plot against him. The disastrous delay 

 in carrying out the provisions of the Berlin 

 Treaty in the Greek and Montenegro boundary 

 adjustments; the alternate encouragement and 

 repression of the Albanian movement, which 

 has exhausted the loyalty of that brave and 

 vigorous race ; the impotent assertion of suze- 

 rainty in Egypt and Morocco ; and the fomen- 

 tation of the hopeless Panislamic propaganda, 

 which make the Porte the tool of European 

 diplomatists and Oriental intriguers, to the 

 prejudice of the best interests of Turkey all 

 originated with Abdul-Harnid. Officials of all 

 grades are constantly being changed about or 

 dismissed by order of the Sultan. Many young 

 and inexperienced persons have superseded old 

 officers. This active interference in the admin- 

 istrative departments is due largely to the Sul- 

 tan's earnest desire to root out the abuses and 

 corruption of the Turkish administration, but 

 produces greater confusion and inefficiency. 



Ministers were dismissed for unknown causes 

 several times during 1881. Said Pasha, the 

 Prime Minister, has retained his post, and is 

 considered indispensable, though not as the 

 responsible adviser of the Sultan, who has 

 many counselors of all sorts and conditions, 

 and acts usually on roundabout and private in- 

 formation. Haunted by fears of assassination. 

 Abdul-IIamid remains secluded in his small 

 kiosk. He is extremely regular and temperate 

 in his private life, and modest hi his expendi- 

 tures. 



A fruit of the continuous dread of revolu- 

 tion, conspiracy, and murder, which haunted 

 the Sultan was the arrest, trial, and conviction 

 of the former Grand Vizier and celebrated 

 statesman, Midhat Pasha, on the charge of 

 having murdered the Sultan Abdul-Aziz. Ab- 

 dul-IIamid stood in fear of his dethroned 

 brother and Midhat Pasha, who he thought 

 were conspiring against him. The latter, who 

 had long been Governor-General of Syria, took 

 refuge at the French consulate when he heard 

 of his intended arrest. The latter delivered 

 him up to the Turkish authorities upon the 

 instructions of Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, who 

 had obtained the acquiescence of the European 

 cabinets. Midhat was confronted on his trial 

 by two witnesses (two wrestlers who were in 

 the service of the Sultan at the time of his 

 death). From these men a confession had been 

 extracted to the effect that they had been em- 

 ployed by Midhat Pasha to murder the deposed 

 Abdul-Aziz. The real story of Abdul's death, 

 as related by many witnesses, was that he 

 committed suicide with his mother's shears in 

 an inner room of the harem a few moments 

 after sending for the shears. Midhat Pasha 

 was denied every opportunity for a legal de- 

 fense, and, with scarcely a semblance of a judi- 

 cial trial, in the first instance and on appeal, 

 was convicted of murder and sentenced to 

 death. On the vigorous protestation of the 

 British Government, the sentence was com- 

 muted to banishment to Arabia. 



The methods by which the money was raised 

 to support the large military forces which were 

 held in readiness at the sea-ports and in the 

 Greek provinces, were of the most various de- 

 scription. The bankers of Galata would make 

 no advances without guarantees, which the 

 Government was unable to give. The people 

 were stripped of their stores, and even of their 

 utensils, wherever the authority of the Sultan 

 was still enforced. The produce was reckoned 

 at only one third its marketable value, but no 

 more than its value reached the treasury. In 

 Constantinople, where the privileges of the 

 harem facilitated the concealment of valuable 

 personality, the real-estate tax was levied for 

 three years in advance in the form of a forced 

 loan at ten per cent interest, and a poll-tax was 

 imposed on every male inhabitant in three 

 classes one Turkish pound (= $4.30), one half 

 a pound, and twenty piasters (one piaster = 

 4-3 cents). 



