The life of Midhat Pasha 25

The life of Midhat Pasha 25

“(Signed) MIDHAT.

 

“8 _Moharem_ 1294, _Hegira_.”

(24_th January_ 1877).

 

 

Worn out by these tactics, Midhat determined to bring the matter to

an issue, and make it what would be called a Cabinet question, and

addressed to the Sultan the following letter:—

 

 

“SIRE,—The object of promulgating the Constitution was to abolish

Absolutism, to indicate Your Majesty’s rights and duties, to define

and establish those of Ministers; in a word, to secure to the nation

complete and entire liberty, and thus by a common effort to raise the

condition and position of the country.

 

“Contrary to what had occurred in the case of former _Hatti Humayuns_

promulgated thirty years back, the new charter was to subsist and

receive its full application after the present political crisis

should be at an end; for our object in promulgating that Constitution

was certainly not merely to find a solution of the so‐called Eastern

Question, nor to seek thereby to make a demonstration that should

conciliate the sympathies of Europe which had been estranged from us.

 

“Allow me, Sire, to offer a few observations on this subject. In the

first place, Your Majesty, who is responsible before the nation for

your acts, is bound to be acquainted with your duties as well as

with your rights and prerogatives. It is, moreover, indispensable

that Ministers should have the certain conviction of being able to

accomplish their tasks, and that we should be able to free ourselves

from that habit of servile flattery which has debased our people and

ruined the country during the last four centuries.

 

“I am animated by a profound respect for the person of Your Majesty.

But basing my conduct on the ordinances of the Cheri (sacred law),

I am bound to withhold obedience to the commands of Your Majesty

whenever they are not in conformity with the interests of the nation;

otherwise the weight of my responsibility would be too heavy for me

to bear. The dictates of my conscience that command me to conform

my acts to the salvation and prosperity of my country impose an

imperative obligation on me; and the judgment of my country, which is

what I respect and cherish most, forbids me to act otherwise.

 

“I desire earnestly that no shadow of a suspicion should cross the

mind of Your Majesty, and I dread, as I have already said, to find

later on that I have sinned against my own conscience and deserved

the malediction of my countrymen. It is this very apprehension that

forces me to submit those considerations to Your Majesty. It is

indispensable, Sire, that the Ottoman nation should have the power

to reform and administer their country, according to the law. It is

unnecessary for me to point out or explain to Your Majesty all that

is contained in this phrase. I humbly pray and beseech Your Majesty

to have confidence in me and my colleagues in the accomplishment of

our difficult task, in which patriotism and love of our country are

our only motives and inspiration.

 

“I trust that I have not as yet committed any act compromising the

responsibility that I feel, and I desire that the nation should be

imbued with the sense of our responsibility towards it, otherwise no

satisfactory result can ever be attained.

 

“It is now nine days, Sire, since you have abstained from giving a

favourable answer to my petition. You thereby refuse to sanction laws

indispensable to the welfare of the country, and without which our

whole previous work will be rendered futile. Whilst Your Majesty’s

Ministers are engaged in endeavouring to restore the governmental

edifice which has with so much difficulty escaped total ruin, surely

Your Majesty would not willingly add to the work of destruction.

 

“If Your Majesty should in consequence of the above named opinions

consider it your duty to relieve me of my functions as Grand Vizier,

I would pray Your Majesty to confide them into such strong hands as

shall be able to reconcile the principles and ideas of Your Majesty

with the necessities of the country and the gravity of the situation

in which the Empire finds itself placed to‐day.—I am, Sire, Your

Majesty’s humble servant,

 

“MIDHAT.

 

“18_th January_ 1293, _O.S._”

(30_th January_ 1877.)

 

 

For three days he abstained from going to the Palace.

 

The Sultan, who was now prepared for extremities, sent Safvet Pasha

to him to inform him that all he demanded would be granted and to

request him to come to the Palace. Safvet Pasha, Minister for Foreign

Affairs, and one of the Turkish delegates at the Conference, was not

what would be called a strong Minister. He was prone to conciliation

and compromise rather than energetic measures and resolutions; but he

was essentially an honest man: duplicity and treachery were absolutely

foreign to his nature. If on this occasion he was intended as an

instrument of duplicity, it was practised at his own expense, and

he was merely an unconscious tool. Midhat, however, demurred to the

invitation, and required the necessary Irades to be issued on the

matters pending with the Palace, before he resumed his functions as

Grand Vizier. Thereupon the Sultan sent his first aide‐de‐camp, Saïd

(Ingless) Pasha, to him, to assure him that the Irades were ready, if

he would, on the Sultan’s order, accompany him to the Palace. Midhat

went. He perceived on his way an unwonted display of troops in the

district of Tavshan Tashi, where his Konak was situated, but he was not

aware then, on the night of the 4th‐5th February, that the Imperial

Yacht _Izzeddine_ was moored close to the marble steps leading up to

the terrace of the Palace of Dolma‐Bagtche. If he had perceived it and

guessed its purpose, it was too late to retreat, or to escape the snare

laid for him. On his arrival at the Palace he was shown into a small

ante‐chamber and told to await the Sultan’s orders.

 

The first aide‐de‐camp soon returned with the Sultan’s order to deliver

up his seal of office, and to accompany him.

 

He then conducted him on board the _Izzeddine_, which, with steam

already up, immediately weighed anchor and steamed off in the

direction of the Sea of Marmora with Midhat on board. The Captain of

the _Izzeddine_ had sealed orders, which he was only to open in the

Sea of Marmora. These orders were, that he should wait for twenty‐four

hours in the Bay of Tchekmedje, and if he received no telegram within

that space of time, he was to conduct Midhat to any European port on

the Mediterranean that the ex‐Grand Vizier might select. No despatch

arriving, he proceeded on his course to Brindisi, where he landed

Midhat.

 

That the forcible banishment of the Grand Vizier was a violation of

the letter as well as the spirit of the Constitution promulgated and

sworn to by the Sultan, has never been seriously denied. The “reason

of State” urged would obviously cover any act of arbitrary power

whatever. It was for the express purpose of putting an end to such an

arbitrary _régime_ that the Constitution was framed and insisted on.

The flimsy pretext put forward, that it was in accordance with the

113th Article of the Constitution, will not bear the most superficial

examination. The power therein conceded to the Sultan was in a rider

to a clause declaring a state of siege when the safety of the State

required it, and the purport and limits of the clause must necessarily

govern the subsidiary provisions of the clause itself. Not only could

a rider of this description not bear the interpretation sought to be

placed upon it, but other substantial clauses of the Constitution

directly forbade the exercise of any such arbitrary power, and provided

for the elementary right that no man should be punished except after

due trial. But further: clauses 31, 32, and 34 contained special and

minute provisions for the arrest and trial of Ministers guilty of

treason or malversation, so that both positively and negatively, in its

substantial provisions and in its omissions, the banishment of Midhat,

with its attendant circumstances, was as clear a violation of the

Constitution as the _coup d’état_ of the 2nd December 1852 in France.

 

But political morality and good faith and patriotism apart, it must be

allowed that the tactics pursued by the Palace were, _qua_ tactics,

very cleverly devised. If the Sultan had struck at the Constitution as

well as the champion of it; at reform at the same time as the reformer,

he would undoubtedly have raised a storm in the country which would

have immediately endangered his throne; but by striking down the father

and pillar of the Reformers he practically killed reform, and put the

Constitution at his mercy as certainly as if he had suppressed it

then and there; and whilst pretending himself to champion both reform

and the Constitution, he managed to play the _rôle_ of Wat Tyler

successfully, and to take the sting out of the blow, and conceal the

full meaning of the act that he had just committed. There was a party

in Constantinople, to which personal ambition was not a stranger,

who imagined that Midhat was not essential to the cause of the

Constitution, and that Abdul Hamid II. was sincere in his protestations

of reforming ardour. Some were of good faith, and some were simply

moved by ambition. Both very soon discovered their mistake, and in

various distant provinces found leisure to reflect and repent of their

confiding innocence.

 

The Palace, although they had hazarded this great _coup_, did not feel

at all secure as to the effect it might produce on the population of

Constantinople, in spite of all the measures of precaution that had

been taken; and the order given to the captain of the _Izzeddine_ to

remain twenty‐four hours at anchor in the bay of Tchekmedje, was with a

view, in case of a serious rising in the capital, of recalling Midhat

and persuading him to resume his functions—until a more convenient

opportunity arose. The Palace was playing for safety.

 

Stunned by the suddenness of the blow, entirely unprepared for any

concerted action, and distracted by reports industriously spread, the

people did not rise, and the Palace breathed freely. It had gained a

complete victory.

 

* * * * *

 

Between the breaking up of the Conference and the breaking out of the

war, the sequence of diplomatic action can be very briefly narrated.

On the 19th January 1877 Prince Gortchakoff issued a Circular to the

Powers, which can be summed up in the question, “What are you going to

do about it?” One particular phrase, however, in this document must be

noted. He says that the agreement in the Berlin Memorandum not being

unanimous, and the crisis being aggravated, among other causes, by the

revolution in Constantinople, the Cabinets recommenced negotiations,

and, on the initiative of England, agreed upon a basis and guarantees

to be discussed at a Conference at Constantinople. There is very little

doubt that this revolution in Constantinople—which had the avowed

object of checking absolutism and giving the Turkish people guarantees

for good government—was in the eyes of Russia an aggravation of the

crisis, and justified, and even necessitated, in her opinion, hostile

action against Turkey. That Russia, who had undertaken the championship

of liberty and progress among the inhabitants of a neighbouring empire,

should be confronted by the establishment of institutions far more

liberal and advanced than anything her own people were allowed to dream

of; and that there should be sitting at Constantinople a Parliament,

the very name of which was a terror and nightmare at St Petersburg, was

without question an intolerable grievance.

 

_À propos_ of this, the famous despatch of Count Pozzo di Borgo, of

November 1828, to M. de Nesselrode, may be read with profit: