Page images
PDF
EPUB

EVENTS OF THE MONTH.

Nov. 1. Municipal Elections in England and Wales.
New French Cabinet completed.
Earthquake Shock in Rome.

Anniversary of the Death of Alexander III. of
Russia celebrated.

2. News to hand of the Execution of eight of the Sultan's Albanian Guards.

South Carolina Constitutional Convention adopted a Plan for Disfranchising Negroes by imposing a test of Literacy.

4. Lieut-Col. Mahomed Akram Khan, the British Agent in Kabul, assassinated by a messenger. New French Ministry announced its Policy. 5. Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades on the Clyde commenced a Strike.

King of Portugal arrived in England.

Lord Cadogan resigned his seat on the L.C.C. State and Congressional Elections in America, resulting in a sweeping Republican victory.

6. New Turkish Ministry formed with Khalil Rifaat Pasha as Grand Vizier.

Austrian Emperor declined to sanction the election of Dr. Lueger as Burgomaster of Vienna. Settlement arrived at between the Bechuana Chiefs and the British South African Company. Rotterdam Court upheld the claim of the North German Lloyd Company, and ordere: the owners of the Craithie to pay for the total luss of the Elbe, with 6 per cent. interest. 7. Lord Londonderry assumed the Chairmanship of the London School Board.

Conference on Temperance Legislation.

M. Peytral elected Vice-President of French
Senate.

Mr. T. M. Healy, M.P., was expelled from the
executive of the Irish National League.

Dr. Lütgenau, Socialist member of the German
Reichstag, sent to gaol for Lèse-Majesté.

8. Stormy Debate in the Austrian Reichsrath on the Lueger Affair.

9. Lord Mayor's Day in London; the Guildhall Banquet was attended by Lord Salisbury and other Ministers.

Accident to the Scotch Express at St. Neots; two killed and five injured.

11. Colliery Explosion at Blackwell, Derbyshire; seven killed.

Nubar Pasha, Egyptian Premier, resigned, and was succeeded by Mustapha Fehmy l'asha.

12. Deputation to Mr. Chamberlain from the Imperial Federation (Defence) Committee.

Rev. W. Lock elected to the Ireland Professor-
ship of Exegesis at Oxford.

M. Poincaré elected Vice-President of the French
Chamber.

Demonstration by Greek Students at Athens on
the Eastern Question.

Prince Ferdinand announced his intention of having Prince Boris rebaptized in the Orthodox Faith.

Conference of the Society of Friends at Manchester.

13. Negotiations opened among the Powers in order to agree upon a plan of united action with regard to Turkey.

Dr. Lueger was again elected Mayor of Vienna, and the Town Council was dissolved in consequence

Trade Union Deputation to the Home Secre-
tary.

Conference of the Midland Union of Women's
Liberal Associations.

14. Herr Liebknecht, German Socialist Leader, sent to gaol for Lese-Majesté.

Congo Free State paid over to Great Britain

£6,000 as indemnity for the irregular trial and execution of Mr. Stokes.

Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein volunteered for Service with the Ashanti Expedition.

Expulsion of Mr. Healy and Mr. A. O'Connor from Membership of the Committee of the Irish Party.

Tra le Union Delegates received at the Admiralty,

French Chamber rejected a motion in favour of the alteration of the Anti-Anarchist law. 15. Launch belonging to H.M.S. Edgar founded at Chemulpho, Korea; forty-eight lives lost.

[blocks in formation]

19. Mr. C. M. Chapman (M) defeated Mr. Insull (P) in the Chelsea County Council Election. Deputation to Mr. Chamberlain concerning the proposed Transpacific cable.

British, French and American 'gunboats ordere 1
to proceed to the Syrian coast.
Conference of the National Union of Conservative
Associations opened in Brighton.

20. The Queen received the Bechuana Chiefs at Windsor Castle.

Deputation to Mr. Balfour from the Chambers of
Commerce.

Deputation to Lord Salisburyland the Duke of
Devonshire on Voluntary Schools.

Bishop Wilberforce of Newcastle appointed to
the See of Chichester.

Jabez Balfour and others found Guilty on the first indictment in the Liberator case.

21. Annual Meeting of the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching.

Slavery Convention, between Egypt and Great
Britain signed.

22. Rev. Canon Jacob nominated Bishop of Newcastle.

Mr. John Morley consented to stand for Mon-
trose Burghs.

British missionary and family murdered in
Madagascar.

23. Bechuana Chiefs left Southampton for South Africa.

Sir Philip Currie arrived in Constantinople.
Severe Gale on the British coasts;
⚫ disasters at sea.

many

British Guiana Legislature voted the Supplies for the Expenses of the Colonial Forces. Shakir Pasha, the Ottoman Minister at Athens, was recalled.

Great Britain's proposal for Arbitration with reference to the Island of Trinidad presented to the Brazilian Government.

Sir F. Scott left Liverpool for Ashanti. 25. Annual Meeting of the London Nonconformist Council.

Conference at Ottawa on the Canadian Copyright
Question.

Italian Budget Statement submitted.

Italian-Swiss Treaty signed.

26. Session of the General Medical Council opened. Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna baptised.

27. Duke of Devonshire appointed Lord Lieutenant of County Waterford.

Austrian Reichsrath decided that Dr. Lueger should be prosecuted on a charge of defamation. Church Reform League established.

28. Lord Bute re-elected Lord Rector of St. Andrew's University.

Deputation to the Duke of Devonshire advocating a Teaching University for London.

Mr. W. J. Courthope elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.

29. Jabez Balfou rwas sentenced to fourteen years' imprisonment.

30. Annual meeting of the Royal Society. German Police Ordinance published dissolving committees and associations connected with the Social Democratic Party.

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

Railway Economics.

4. Lord Lansdowne, at the Imperial Institute, on Chitral.

Capt, Younghusband, at the Imperial Institute, on Chitral.

Lord Methuen on Army Temperance Work.

5. Capt. Lugard, at Edinburgh, on Africau Questions.

Mr. Long, at Whitehall, on the Licensing
Question.

6. Mr. Chamberlain, at Whitehall, on South Africa. Lord Wolseley on the Army.

7. Duke of Devonshire, at Cutlers' Hall, on the Work of the Government.

Lord Wolseley, at Nottingham, on the Volunteer
Force.

8. Duke of Devonshire, at Sheffield, on the Council of National Defence.

9.

Sir J. Gorst, at Glasgow, on Social Reform.

Mr. G. W. E. Russell, at Manchester, on the
Liberal Party.

Lord Salisbury, at the Guildhall, on the Eastern
Question:

11. Mr. Chamberlain on the Australian Colonies. Mr. Hampden Jackson, at the Imperial Institute. on "The Niger River Territories."

12. Sir H. H. Fowler, at Wolverhampton, on Social Legislation.

Capt. Lugard, at Royal Colonial Institute, on "The Extension of British Influence and Trade in Africa."

13. Sir M. H. Beach, at Bristol, on the Government. Sir J. Gorst, at Queen's Hall, on the School Board.

Mr. Asquith, at the Grand Hotel, on the Liberal
Party.

14. Mr. Balfour, at Glasgow, on the Unionist

Policy.

Mr. C. T. Ritchie on the Possibility of an Aliens
Bill.

17. Lord Wolseley, at Woolwich, on the New Arms.

[graphic][merged small][merged small]

Society, on "Gold and Silver and the Money
of the World."

20. Mr. Balfour, at the Holborn Restaurant, on
Party Organisation.

21. Mr. Balfour at Manchester.

Sir J. Lubbock, at Mercers' Hall, on University
Extension.

Mr. Asquith, at Walworth, on Social Problems.
22. Mr. Balfour, at Manchester, on the General
Election.

Capt. W. H. James, at Unitel Service Institu-
tion, on "Modern War."

25. Mr. W. B. Harris, at the Imperial Institute, on
"The Persian Kurds."

27. Lord Salisbury on Primary Education.

Mr. Labonchere, at Chelsea, on the General
Election.

Lord Halsbury, at the Royal Society of Litera-
ture, on Poetry.

23. Mr. Acworth, at the Society of Arts, on Rail-
way Economics.

Lord Rosebery, at Airdrie, on Liberalism.

29. Lord Ripon, at Leeds, on Mr. Gladstone.

Sir F. Lockwood and Mr. Haldane, at Oxford,
on the Liberal Party.

30. Lord Kelvin, at the Royal Society, on Microbes
and Argon.

Lord Crewe, at Oxford, on Home Rule.

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]
[merged small][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[graphic]

The New Grand Vizier.

Tahsin Bey

The Sheik-ul-islam (First Secretary of the Sultan, with the Imperial Iradé in his hand).

KHALIL RIFAAT PASHA, THE NEW GRAND VIZIER, ON HIS WAY TO THE SUBLIME PORTE

TO TAKE UP HIS POST.

ABDUL HAMID, SULTAN OF TURKEY.

The Finest Pearl of the Age, and the esteemed Centre of the Universe; at whose grand portals stand the camels of justice and mercy, and to whom the eyes of the kings and people in the West have been drawn; the rulers there finding an example of political prowess and the classes a model of mercy and kindness; our Lord and Master the Sultan of the two Shores and the High King of the two Seas; the Crown of Ages and the Pride of all Countries, the greatest of all Khalifs; the Shadow of God en Earth; the successor of the Apostle of the Lord of the Universe, the Victorious Conqueror (Al-Ghazi) Sultan Abdul Hamid Khan. May God protect his Kingdom and place his glory above the Sun and the Moon, and may the Lord supply all the world with the goodness which proceeds from his Holy Majesty's good intentions.-Turkish newspaper quoted by Mr. H. Antliony Salmoné, Nineteenth Century, November, 1894.

MEN and Amen! But if the stock of goodness at the disposal of the Lord does not exceed that which proceeds from

His Holy Majesty's good intentions it is to be feared the rest of the world will be put on short rations. Not that His Holy Majesty, the Shadow of God on earth, is lacking in the material with which on classic authority it is understood that Hell is paved. He means well, his intentions are excellent. Where he fails is in the execution. It is this trifling detail that at present stands in the way of the elevation of Abdul Hamid's glory above that of the Sun and the Moon, and indeed, it is to be feared, has consigned it to the nethermost depthswhich, however, unjust.

is

Abdul Hamid is, of all men, one of those most to be pitied, but at the present moment there is but little pity or compassion shown him. The custom of punishing the Pope for Cæsar's crimes is still fashionable amongst mankind, and Abdul Hamid is being made the scapegoat for all the atrocities of all the Ottomans. Not that he is without crimes of his own -black and bloody

power; by terror they have maintained themselves on the throne of the Cæsars for five centuries, and it is only because they can ΤΟ longer inspire suffi

[graphic]

ABDUL HAMID II.

crimes, according to our Western ideas; but, in the eyes of the Oriental, their only criminality consists in that they are not black and bloody enough to achieve their end. For the government of the Osmanli has always been, since the days when the Tartar horsemen first taught Asia how terrible was their wrath, a government of terror. By terror the Sultans climbed to supreme

cient terror that the Ottoman Empire is crumbling into ruin. Abdul Hamid, no doubt, resorted to massacre as a British Prime Minister attempts to renew his power by a dissolution. Atrocities are as natural to the Turk as the General Elections to a Parliamentarian. They are the traditional Ottoman method of renewing the mandate of the ruler. No doubt this is offensive to Western civilisation. The Sultan is an anachronism in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and those who have been trying to make believe that he was a civilised sovereign are no doubt experiencing the revulsion natural to disappointed hope. But those of us who have never for one moment forgotten that the Turk is simply the aboriginal savage encamped on the ruins of a civilisation which he destroyed, can afford to be more mild and just in our estimate of the character of the last of the line of Othman.

In this article I shall not depart from

the rule governing all these Character Sketches. I shall try to represent Abdul Hamid as he appears to himself at his best, rather than as he appears to his victims at his worst. It is of course impossible to write entirely from his standpoint. But it is possible to avoid the habit of judging the Sultan of Stamboul as if he were a mug citizen of a London suburb. And if we can but start

from the point of realising that it is as natural and as habitual to a Sultan to massacre as it is to a Redskin to scalp, we shall at least avoid one element that would be utterly fatal to any realisation of Abdul Hamid's position.

I. BEFORE HIS ACCESSION.

Put yourself in his place! Abdul Hamid, the nephew of Abdul Aziz, was reared in the seclusion of the seraglio. Forbidden to take any part in public affairs, he was flung in his earliest manhood into the midst of that debauchery which makes Constantinople the cesspool of the world. For some years he spent his life in riot and excess. Then he suddenly reformed. From a profligate he became an ascetic. Like Prince Hal he banished Jack Falstaff and all his companions of the winecup, and set himself with the zeal of a convert to live a higher and a purer life. His enemies impute it to calculation. But it would be more charitable to believe that the young man had passed through the experience of conversion -- a phenomenon fortunately by no means peculiar to the Christian faith. The penitent prodigal is not the less welcome because he goes to a mosque rather than to a church, and there seems to be no doubt that long before there was any prospect of his succeeding to the throne, Abdul Hamid reformed his mode of life and became, according to his lights, a pious and devout disciple of the Prophet. This was the more remarkable, as his conversion took place while Turkish society was still revelling in the false security and fictitious wealth that resulted from the loans which his uncle contracted with reckless prodigality. The latter part of the reign of Abdul Aziz was for the East what the closing years of the Second Empire were for France. Constantinople, like Paris, had its vulgar orgie of splendid debauchery-modern versions of Belshazzar's feast, in which the handwriting on the wall was hardly discerned before the avenger was at the gates.

THE FALL OF ABDUL AZIZ.

The French empire went down in the earthquake of Sedan in 1870. It was not till five years later that Nemesis overtook Abdul Aziz. The treasury, emptied by the Sultan's extravagance, could no longer pay the interest on the coupon, and when Abdul Aziz could no longer borrow his end was at hand. After a brief pause, during which the storm-clouds gathered and broke in insurrection in the extreme western province of the Herzegovina, the conspirators prepared to depose the Sultan. Then events followed each other with the rapidity of the swiftest tragedy. Abdul Hamid, from his retreat among the mollahs and imams, was startled by the news, first of the deposition of his uncle, then of the proclamation of his brother Murad as Sultan. Fast on the heels of this came the suicide of the deposed Sultan. Then like a thunderclap came the assassination of the ministers who had deposed Abdul Aziz, and the summary execution of their murderer. Meanwhile the war clouds were gathering black and heavy on the Russian frontier. Massacres and atrocities in Bulgaria had filled Europe with shuddering horror. Montenegro and Servia had gone to war; Russian volunteers were flocking to the Servian camp, the capital was seething with excitement. There was the underswell of a revolution in Stamboul, the menace of a Russian invasion in Europe and in Asia. In the midst of all these portents of doom, the pious recluse was suddenly confounded by the announcement that his brother Murad had gone mad, and that he must ascend the throne of Othman.

THE DEPOSITION OF MURAD.

It is difficult to imagine a more trying ordeal than that through which Abdul Hamid had passed between the deposition of his uncle and the removal of his brother. It would have severely tested the nerves of the most experienced politician in the most stormy of South American Republics. What it must have been to the inexperienced and devout Hamid no one can quite realise. What is clear is that he shrank timidly from the perilous dignity of the tottering throne. He refused to consent to the deposition of his brother. He was reluctant to credit the reports of the physicians. He insisted upon foreign advice. But Midhat had decided that Murad must be removed. According to the statements made in the recently published book about Murad, the unfortunate Sultan might easily have recovered had he been allowed to rest. As it was, the conspirators purposely rendered his recovery impossible. The moment the foreign physician's back was turned they succeeded in driving their unfortunate victim into a condition of imbecility, which justified, if it did not even necessitate, his deposition. Abdul Hamid persisted to the last in deprecating his brother's removal. He objected strenuously to his own elevation to the Sultanate. Only when it was made clear to him that Murad would be deposed in any case, and that he had only to choose between being Sultan himself or being put out of the way by the Sultan whom Midhat would instal in his. stead, did he yield and consent to accept the thorny crown of the Ottoman Empire. So it came to pass that Murad was formally deposed and Abdul Hamid reigned in his stead.

II. SULTAN.

"Yildiz, the palace of the Sultan," says a recent writer, "like the Seraglio of the good old times,' contains all the dramatis personce of the tales of the Scheherazaide, the eunuchs, mollahs, pashas, beys, astrologers, slaves, sultanas, kadines, dancing-women, Circassian and Georgian odalisques, whose main object in existence is their own self-advancement. Above this anthill of picturesque folk the interesting figure of the Sultan stands out in striking relief."

When Abdul Hamid was installed as Sultan of Turkey above this picturesque anthill, the situation was such as might well have appalled the stoutest heart. Possibly the Sultan's ignorance-for although he is no fool, he, like all the other Turks, has never quite grasped the. elementary facts which underlie the modern worldmay have helped him. If he had had a wider range of knowledge or a more vivid imagination he might have gone the way of Murad.

ALONE.

Without training, without preparation; without a single friend whom he could trust, Abdul Hamid was suddenly brought forth from his seclusion by the men who had deposed his uncle and his brother, and established on a throne reeling from the blows of domestic insurrection and foreign war. The last days of the Ottoman Empire seemed to have come. Among all the Powers not one would promise him any help. Among all his pashas there was not one whom he did not believe would depose him to-morrow if private gain or public policy appeared to demand such a step. treasury was empty. The credit of the Empire was at such a low ebb that no new loan was possible, yet armies had to be retained in the field to keep Servia and Montenegro in check. Preparations had to be pushed forward to prevent the threatened Russian invasion.

The

« PreviousContinue »