• reformers looked to the future with hope. Midhat Pasha was appointed Prime Minister, and began to work out his scheme for the regeneration of 'Turkey. He framed his Constitution, which established the equality of all races and creeds, ⚫ and took steps to crush the rebellion in European Turkey that was threatening to bring about a European war. Midhat was beloved by educated and patriotic Turks, and was strongly supported by the people; his position seemed unassailable. But before he had been four months on the throne Abdul Hamid struck his first blow at liberty, and showed what manner of man he was. Midhat was suddenly summoned to the Palace, and on arriving there was informed that his exile had been determined upon and that he must forthwith board a vessel that was awaiting him in the Bosphorus with steam up, and betake himself beyond the confines of the Ottoman Empire. .Then the Sultan set himself to put out of the way the other men who had taken a part in the deposition of Abd-ul-Aziz. Rushdi Pasha and the Sheikh-ul-Islam were exiled to remote parts of the Empire, while many less distinguished Liberals disappeared, being either killed or imprisoned.

Midhat Pasha, the greatest of the Turkish reformers, as an exile, lived in several European capitals, studied on the spot the principles of decent government, and formed plans for the

amelioration of the condition of his unfortunate country when the opportunity should arrive. The Sultan appears to have come to the conclusion that his ex-Grand Vizier might be as dangerous to the Despotism while in Europe as he had been in Turkey. A plot, the details of which are well known, was laid to bring about Midhat's destruction. He was led to believe that the Sultan had repented of his injustice, had come to see the errors of his illiberal policy, and desired that the able statesman should return to Turkey to give his valuable assistance in the reorganisation of the Empire. So, after a long exile, Midhat, accepting a treacherous invitation, came back to his native land, and was made Governor of Syria. Shortly after his appointment he was denounced to the Palace by false accusers, who were prepared to prove that Abd-ul-Aziz had been assassinated by Midhat's orders. After an iniquitous trial, by judges who pretended to credit the obvious inventions of suborned witnesses, he was found guilty, and as it might have been dangerous to execute a man so much beloved and respected, he was condemned to imprisonment in a fortress in Arabia. There he was treated with great inhumanity and deprived of all the comforts and some of the necessaries of life. As his strong constitution resisted these ⚫ privations for three years, he was strangled in May 1884, by order of his persecutors, and his

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head was sent to the Palace, so that there should be no doubt about his death.

The Sultan had rid himself of all the chief friends of liberty immediately after his accession ,to the throne, but, cautious and fearful by nature, he took no further immediate steps to impose absolute despotism upon his people. (Mainly with the object of hoodwinking England and winning her good-will at the critical period preceding the outbreak of the war with Russia, he proclaimed the Constitution of Midhat Pasha, and a Turkish Parliament was allowed to meet. The Sultan imposed his will upon the Parliament and reduced it to impotence; but there were many patriotic deputies who spoke their minds freely and defied the monarch's wrath. At last, in February 1878, shortly before the conclusion of the treaty of peace with Russia at St. Stephano, the Sultan dissolved both Houses, and, with pretended reluctance, suspended the Constitution. He next proceeded to deprive the Sublime Porte of all power and to make the Palace supreme. The ministers became mere puppets, whose submission was bought by the licence that was allowed to them to embezzle the public funds. The control of the army and navy, of foreign affairs, of the finances of the Empire, every branch of the administration, the appointment of every official were in the hands of the Sovereign and his corrupt Camarilla. Having a pampered Prætorian Guard to

enforce his will, he held Constantinople under martial law. It was a reign of terror; he spared none who were not for him. From the dissolution of Turkey's first Parliament in 1878 until the proclamation of the Constitution in 1908, Turkey was oppressed by one of the most demoralising and destructive tyrannies that the world has known. For the Ottoman Empire those thirty years were the most unhappy and disastrous of its long history.

CHAPTER IV

The Sultan's policy-The decay of the Empire-The Camarilla -The spread of corruption-The isolation of Turkey— The oppression of the Moslem Turks-The espionage— The tabooed British-The sufferings of the army.

THE Sultan's policy was directed by a narrow fanaticism. It is possible that he sincerely believed that a cruel despotism was the best rule for Turkey. He hated the Christians, and it was his ambition to realise the dream of the PanIslamites, to gather together round himself as the Caliph all the followers of the faith of whatever race, so as to form a strong political-religious confederation of Moslems that should keep in check the aggressions of Europe and liberate Mussulman peoples now subject to the Christians. It was his aim, too, to withdraw all such rights as his predecessors had granted to the Christian subjects of Turkey and to revoke the irritating privileges which the Capitulations had given to foreigners within Turkish territory-not in themselves ignoble designs, but which were prosecuted by such ignoble methods as to nearly destroy instead of strengthening the Moslem supremacy in Turkey.