himself, to my own knowledge, been out their right of cross-examining the witof his mind on several different occasions; nesses, affords sufficient proof that no real the first time as far back as the year 1863, evidence against them existed. As the when I find it mentioned in letters that I disgraceful mockery of the whole proceedwrote from Athens, where I was on a ings was admitted universally, even by special mission; and on two later occa- those who entertained no friendly feelings sions, within eighteen months of his dep- towards the accused, it is unnecessary to osition, I had spoken of his insanity in enter into an examination of them. The my letters to Lord Derby, reporting that object, however, was attained, and emiI had been told of it, as an undoubted nent persons, who were considered danfact, by one of the ministers with whom I gerous, and who might stand in the way was intimate, and mentioning some of the of the resumption of the absolute power peculiarities by which it was exhibited. of the palace, were effectually got rid of; At one time he would not look at anything while the men on whose perjured and subthat was written in black ink, and every orned evidence the convictions were obdocument had to be copied in red before tained, although they declared themselves it could be laid before him. Ministers to have murdered the sultan with their appointed to foreign courts could not proceed to their posts, and were kept waiting indefinitely, because their credentials addressed to foreign sovereigns could not well be written in red ink, and he would not sign those that were written in black. At another time, a dread of fire had got hold of him to such a pitch that, except in his own apartment, he would not allow a candle or a lamp to be lighted in the whole of his vast palace, its innumerable inmates being forced to grope about in the dark from sunset to sunrise; and in many other respects his conduct passed the bounds of mere eccentricity.

That such a mind as his should have entirely given way under the blow that had fallen upon him need hardly excite surprise; and under the circumstances there is nothing even improbable in the fact of his taking his own life, especially as he was known to hold that suicide was the proper resource of a deposed monarch. When the news of the abdication of the emperor Napoleon was brought to him, his immediate exclamation had been, "And that man consents to live!" When I first heard this story I did not know whether to believe it, but the truth of it was afterwards vouched for to me by the person to whom the sultan said it, and he is not a man whose word need be doubted. If at the time there was no ground for a suspicion of assassination, there was certainly no evidence deserving of the slight est attention brought forward at the iniquitous mock trial instituted three years later when the ruin of certain important personages had been resolved upon. The fact that the charges against them could only be supported by evidence which could not by any possibility be true, and the falseness of which could easily have been exposed if, in flagrant defiance of the law, the accused had not been denied

own hands, at the instigation of the pashas, were not only not executed, but are believed to have continued in the enjoyment of comfortable pensions ever since.

There is no way of explaining why, after the lapse of three years, a wrestler and a gardener should come forward and declare that they had assassinated the sultan, except by the assumption that they had been promised not only immunity but reward, if, while making their confession, they procured the conviction of Midhat and the other pashas as the instigators of their crime. They duly earned the promised recompense, and the sultan secured an iniquitous conviction that enabled him to rid himself of the men whom he dreaded; but it was at the cost of an indelible blot upon his reign.

The tragical end of Sultan Abdul Aziz was destined to prove fatal to the hopes of the reformers. Murad was known at one time to have indulged in habits of intemperance, though he was supposed lat terly to have overcome them; but he was of weak character and devoid of personal courage, and when Abdul Aziz, about a month before his deposition, caused him to be closely confined in his apartment, under the continued fear that an order would be given for his assassination, he again reverted to stimulants more immoderately than ever, drinking largely of champagne cut with brandy. While the conspiracy that was to place him on the throne was in progress he was in a state of terror, for he knew that its failure would cost him his life; and the news of the death of his uncle, Sultan Abdul Aziz, gave him a shock that left him in a state of imbecility, which necessarily put a stop to all the measures which it had been intended immediately to carry out.

Sensational events had been succeeding

each other with startling rapidity, but we | Crimean War. He got behind the assaswere not yet at the end of them. Within ten days from the death of Abdul Aziz the calm which had followed it was again suddenly disturbed by the news that the ministers had been attacked while sitting in council, and that some of them were killed

rect opinion upon a question of such extreme delicacy; that he had two duties to bear in mind, the one to his sovereign and the other to his country, and he must endeavor to reconcile the two as long as possible; but when he became convinced that the safety and welfare of the empire were seriously endangered by the contin ued inability of the sultan to take charge of its interests, that consideration must override all others. Whether that moment had come was a question for him, and not for me, to answer." I added, in my report of this conversation, that "although I was bound to speak with reserve and caution to the grand vizier, I must not conceal from your lordship my opinion that the change should be made with the least possible delay, and that the empire should not be allowed to continue longer without a sovereign."

tem of personal government, which it was their object to limit, it seemed probable that they would have difficulty in obtaining his consent to the measures by which the power of the sovereign was to be restricted by a popular control, and which, if Murad had been able to reign, would have been at once secured.

So it proved. Abdul Hamid was proclaimed sultan on the 31st of August, and six weeks later the increasing impatience of the people was quieted by the issue of a proclamation announcing a general scheme of reform for the whole Ottoman Empire, but the formal constitution that was to give effect to it was still withheld. It promised the establishment of a senate and of a representative assembly to vote the budget and taxes; a revision of the system of taxation; the reorganization of the provincial administration; the full exThe next day Prince Hamid sent to me ecution of the law of the vilayets, with a a person in his service, an Englishman large extension of the right of election, who possessed his entire confidence, to and other liberal measures, including most bespeak the support of her Majesty's of those which the Porte had been urged embassy, and to inform me of his views to introduce into Bosnia and the Herzegoand opinions. The prince declared that vina. This proclamation was issued on his first wish was to be guided by the the 12th of October, but, owing to the advice of her Majesty's government. He difficulties to be overcome at the palace,

had had translations made of our bluebooks, and he fully understood that the friendly feelings of England towards Turkey must naturally be estranged by what had taken place in Bulgaria, and the hard words that had been used in Parliament were not stronger then was warranted, if applied to those who were responsible for what had occurred. The credit of the State must be restored by a rigid economy, so that justice could be done to the public creditors; and a control must be established over the finances to put a stop to the corruption reigning in that depart

ment.

The professions of the prince seemed fair enough; but I was anxious to learn something of his character which would enable me to judge of the course he was likely to follow better than from the mere words which he might think it desirable to employ; and upon that point the information I got from his envoy was not so satisfactory. It is true, that, as was to be expected, he spoke in the highest terms of the prince's capacity and disposition; but he added that he was determined not to put himself into the hands of any minister, and as soon as possible to get rid of those

then in office.

It was evident, therefore, that he bore no good-will to the reformers; and since he appeared to intend to continue the sys

it was not till the 25th of January following that the long-expected instrument which was to be the charter of the freedom of the Turkish nation was officially proclaimed. Even then it was greatly modified in some essential particulars from Midhat's original project, and disfigured by the omission of a clause, for which he had struggled in vain, under which no Ottoman subject could be exiled by the authority of the sultan, or otherwise than by the sentence of a competent court.

When the constitution was proclaimed, Midhat proposed to communicate it, formally and officially, to the Conference which was then sitting, as providing for most of the reforms that had been called for in the disturbed provinces.

Had this offer been accepted, the powers would have obtained a solemn engagement, little less binding than a formal treaty, that its provisions were to be respected, and would have secured the right of authoritatively insisting upon their observation; and though the sultan might perhaps endeavor to evade it, he could not have ventured, as he afterwards did, openly to repudiate it. He would have known, not only that the powers would sternly remind him of the engagement he had taken towards them, but that they would be supported in their protest by the immense majority of his own subjects. But

Midhat Pasha's offer was not accepted by the Conference. If the members of it had not speak of the proceedings from my I had then left Constantinople, and can been at all aware of the serious nature of own observation; but the Times correthe reform movement that was in progress, spondent (as well as those of other papers) and of the earnestness of the men who bore testimony to the courage with which, were striving to carry it through, I do not at almost every sitting, the Chamber critidoubt for a moment that they would have cised the acts of the government and acted very differently, and would gladly called upon the different ministers to give have seized the opportunity of forwarding explanations respecting their conduct of it; but most of them, being entirely igno- their departments; and he added that the rant of all that had been going on in the house represented some of the best elecountry before their own arrival, imagined ments of the nation and that the present the constitution to have been invented "contest was one between the people and merely as a means of providing the Porte the pashas." No doubt this was so. with a pretext for refusing to accept some two years the struggle of the people with For of the proposals on which they were in- the palace and pashas had been carried sisting. In their comments upon it, what on, and the weight of England, unforwas good was passed over with ungener-tunately misled by those who ought to ous silence, while its shortcomings were have been the first to welcome the dawn greedily dwelt upon, and insinuations were of freedom in another country, had been allowed to reach the palace that the sultan thrown into the scale of the pashas and would do well to be on his guard against against those who were laboring for the Midhat Pasha, who had taken an active people. part in dethroning his two predecessors, and who was bent upon making himself dictator. The Liberal party in England, unaccountably and little to its credit. adopted much the same tone, and thus did its best to defeat the efforts of the struggling Turkish reformers.

But incomplete and imperfect in many respects as the new charter was, it contained much of immediate value, and enough to open the way for further devel. opment. The two sessions of the Parliament held under it were most encouraging, and showed the members to be fully determined that their control over the government should be a real one.

There was no jealousy between the different classes of which the assembly was composed; turbaned mollahs and dignitaries or representatives of the Christian Churches being equally bent upon making the new institution work for the regeneration of their common country; criticising the acts of the government with perfect freedom, making known the abuses going on in the provinces, and refusing to vote the money asked for when they deemed the amount excessive or the object unnecessary. Nothing, in fact, could be more promising; and many of those who, in their ignorance of Turkish character, had laughed at the notion of an Ottoman Parliament, prophesying that it would be wholly subservient to the government and confine itself to approving and registering all the proposals submitted to it, now honestly expressed their surprise and their admiration of the fearless spirit that was exhibited.

ful if the support to which their gallant How far they might have been successefforts were entitled had not been withheld, it is not possible now to say; but it may, at least, be affirmed that, if there is ever to be an efficient reform of the debe by means of some such popular control plorable Turkish administration, it must the palace and the official classes. as it was then proposed to establish over

do not readily reconcile themselves to the Absolute rulers and their dependants loss of any of their power, and the reformers would in any case have needed all their resolution in defending what they

had won.

the aberration by which England was then It was not, therefore, surprising that possessed should have encouraged the sultan quickly to set about the recovery of his authority, and he at once perceived that his first step should be to deprive the reformers of their leader. A blow might safely be struck at Midhat Pasha without the risk of a word of disapproval from either party in England. By the Liberals he had been mercilessly assailed and held up to execration; and he was scarcely better looked upon by the members of the Conference of Constantinople, who were irritated by his refusal to accept en bloc the whole of the proposals which, under the inspiration of the Russian ambassador, had been submitted to him.

time that there were only two points of It is probably nearly forgotten by this any importance upon which Midhat had shown himself intractable, and that one of these was the proposal that the appoint