A few days before its close I attended one of the sittings of the House
of Delegates, accompanied by my wife, the only lady present, although
not the only one who had witnessed the deliberations. I observed a
marked change in the bearing of members since my previous visit in
April; much greater eagerness and earnestness in debate, and
consequently less regard for decorum of manner. Work rather than manners
had the upper hand. Spectators have not been admitted to the Senate. I
have not had access either to their acts or journals, printed
exclusively in the Turkish language, and am not prepared to speak of
either from a personal examination.
Those friends of Turkey who hoped for a new departure and great results
from the constitution, have not yet realized the full measure of their
expectation, and some of them have expressed their disappointment with
much bitterness of speech.
Among them was the Levant Herald, which had been very pronounced in its
vindications of the Sublime Porte. The daily issue of June 19 contained
an elaborate article, in both English and French, at once disparaging
the labors of the General Assembly and denouncing the parties alleged to
have operated their inefficiency.
It is an instructive commentary upon an interesting chapter of Turkish
affairs, and is therefore inclosed. It at once drew down censures from
the director of the press, and two days afterward the paper, the only
English publication in the capital, was suppressed.
The Ottoman constitution provides that the General Assembly shall convene
annually on the 1st of November, the session to be opened by an imperial
iradé—(solemn decree). Whether it convenes on the 1st of November next
will depend, probably, on events yet to occur.
Since the promulgation of the constitution, the affairs of the empire
have been so exceptional in character that it would be quite premature
to express any opinion of its workings. In times like these the laws are
proverbially silent.
[Inclosure.]
[Article from the Daily Levant Herald of
June 19,
1877.]
The first session of the Ottoman Parliament is at its close.
A brief review of the work it has done, and of the impression it has
made, therefore becomes seasonable; and it is pleasant to feel that
although the former has yielded little in the way of tangible
result, the latter is nevertheless distinctly hopeful, and for
instruction profitable.
The session has, it is true, been sterile of practical result, not
because men of practical views were wanting in the chamber, but
simply because practical questions have been studiously kept out of
Parliament’s way; and that for reasons which we may more closely
investigate hereafter, but upon which a few words in the way of
general explanation must now be said. The Ottoman Parliament is the
fruit, so far the sole fruit, of the constitution of January, 1877,
which is the outcome of the revolution of May, 1876. This revolution
was promoted by three distinct classes of men: first, those who
desired a dynastic change from a sincere conviction that the decline
of the empire was directly caused by the sins of the then Sultan,
but who had no predilections for a constitutional form of
government, and accepted the constitution only as an unavoidable
rider to the revolution which was to give the empire a new
sovereign; secondly, those whose views, hopes, and desires centered
on the constitution, and only countenanced the deposition as a
necessary preliminary to its proclamation; thirdly, those who joined
the revolution, without political feeling, because it offered better
chances of personal advancement than the existing régime. Personal
antipathy to the sovereign or his favorites tinged perhaps more or
less the political sentiments of the two former classes of
revolutionists. But there was no political or other mixture in the
pure egotism of the third; it was too genuine to bear alloy.
The strange fatality that broke the first rush of the revolution
dislocated also the mechanism which gave it its impulse.
It brought to the throne a sovereign who, in humanity, liberality,
and all the gentler virtues, was the equal, as in intellect and
force of character he was the superior, of the first successor of
Abdul-Aziz; so that the second dynastic change, necessitated by the
mental collapse of the unfortunate Murad, should have favored rather
than marred the prospects of the revolution.
Nevertheless, it failed to do so, because the second effort destroyed
the balance of the revolutionary forces.
The political force became divided against itself; and the personal
force, already re-enforced by realization of profit in the
adventure, gathered strength to overthrow the survivor in the
political contest that was to follow.
The first cabinet of the present Sultan, representing the first of
the three classes named above, naturally became conservative as soon
as its one object of dynastic change was attained; and therefore,
while it lasted, the constitution remained behind the scenes. The
pressure of the reform party (class 2), aided by that of individual
interest (class 3), overthrew it, and the constitution was
proclaimed. The conservatives being routed, there remained only one
political force to deal with. The cabinet of reform was soon
overturned, and the party of personal interest—the reactionists we
will call them—reigned triumphant.
The empire then presented a singular spectacle. It had undergone a
complete revolution. Two Sultans had been deposed, one driven to
suicide, another to madness; ministers had been assassinated in
cabinet council; society had passed through a period of great
agitation; and finally the country had obtained a sovereign,
intelligent, modest, humane, liberal, and conscientious; a
constitution had been granted, and a national assembly Created. And
yet, notwithstanding all this, such were the dominant influences,
that the worst vices of the old regime were rampant in the new one;
the blood of Abdul-Aziz proved to have been shed in vain—the
revolution had missed its mark.
Nor was this all. The political advantages painfully won by the
patient statesmanship of Mehemet Ruchdi and Safvet, through the
trying season of the Slav rebellion and the conference labors,
shared towards their conclusion by Midhat and Edhem, were recklessly
pitchforked away by men wholly incapable of appreciating them; and
foreign opinion, misunderstanding the phenomena, began to exclaim
that Abdul-Hamid’s mind had gone in search of that of his elder
brother; began to sneer undisguisedly at the constitution which had
been paraded before Europe at the conference; began to mock the
so-called Parliament which came of it. Leaving aside the Grand
Vizier, who was alone induced to accept office by his strong
personal attachment and devotion to the sovereign, the civil offices
in the administration which ushered the new Parliament into life
were held, with one exception, by reactionists; and this exception
was due solely to the fact that the party of personal interest had
not in its ranks a man possessed of the education and knowledge of
routine, to say nothing of the statesmanship, requisite to preside
over the department of foreign affairs. These were the unpromising
conditions under which the first Ottoman Parliament assembled.
Regarded by the dominant
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party with outward disdain and secret fear, it was kept occupied as
much as possible with matters of form, and only on one occasion did
that party consult the chamber.
This was upon the Montenegrin question; a question for the calm
deliberation and decision of statesmen fully informed of all its
complex political bearings, and advised upon all military points
included in it. In any such council terms would have been made with
Montenegro, for every political and military consideration pointed
in that direction.
But in war lay the only chance of the reactionist party. The question
was accordingly referred to the chamber; a false enthusiasm was
stirred up by goading national vanity; and the chamber was entrapped
into committing itself to an opinion which perhaps had a spurious
ring of heroism about it, but which certainly compromised and
discredited the judgment of the assembly, and at the same time
played straight into the hands of its deadliest foe.
It would be eminently unfair, however, to gauge the judgment of the
chamber by the standard of this opinion. Uninformed on the question
itself, and, as yet, undisciplined and untrained, it was easily
hounded into the trap by the chauvinist hooting and hallooing of the
reactionists and their myrmidons. Light, therefore, will be the the
condemnation awarded to the chamber for their mistake, arising as it
did only from the want of self-possession which comes of knowledge
and experience. Only in one other instance does the judgment of the
chamber strike us as having been in fault, and that was on the
occasion of Zuhdi Bey’s mission to London.
A better opportunity might have been found for attacking at the root
a deadly evil, of which the case of Zuhdi was only a branch. In all
other matters the chamber has labored with wisdom and diligence, and
borne itself with dignity and patience under the trying conviction
that its labors were foredoomed to sterility.
Barren as they have been of direct result, however, these labors have
proved two facts, the demonstration of which cannot but influence
the future history of the people. The one is that the heretofore
almighty bureaucratic hierarchy does not monopolize all the
intelligence of the country, and that, outside its sacred zone,
there exist in this empire men in ample supply, possessing in a
remarkable degree the gifts requisite for members of a national
assembly. Habit only is wanting to fit these men thoroughly to
constitute the great working power of the state; such as it may be
hoped the chamber of deputies will ere long become. So little did
oligarchism know of the steed he bestrode that he held it to be but
a sorry beast, without vigor or spirit, and, in truth, his style of
equitation had been well calculated to break down both. But the
session has shown oligarchism to be in the wrong. The power of the
future is no longer in the rider, but in the ridden. The other
significant and instructive fact of the two which the session has
proved is that the Mohammedan is essentially and broadly liberal in
his sentiments. The whole series of debates has not discovered a
trace of fanaticism or of religious prejudice or exclusivism; more
than that, it has belied the existence of such sentiments and has
brought forward Mohammedan deputies as the most zealous advocates in
the chamber of equality of rights and duties, of the admission of
non-Mussulmans to the army, and of the distribution of public
offices without reference to race or creed. Thus, a clear and
emphatic refutation has been given-to the slander in which
oligarchism, jealous of all change, has found a pretext for staving
off the day of reform. The plea of the tenderness of the religious
susceptibilities of Islam can never be urged again as an argument
against social progress. The Mohammedans hold their own creed with
the devotion of a strong and true conviction; but they recognize the
sacred right of liberty of conscience; and so far from exercising
toward other creeds a “contemptuous tolerance,” as has been falsely
alleged, their principles are to promote social intimacy and
equality with those of different faith. In fact, this old bugbear of
popular fanaticism has been made to vanish. There is only one
fanatic in the empire—the oligarchy—and his is not a religious
fanaticism. As to the popular sentiment expressed by the deputies,
it is in perfect tune with the sincere protestations made the other
day to the Greek patriarch by the Sultan. Between the sovereign and
the Parliament exists a perfect unity of sentiment; the one and the
other are equally liberal, progressive, and humane. It does no small
credit, then, to the skillful maneuvering of the party of reaction
that it should have been able effectually to hold both in check.
