FUAD PASHA..
TT is curious, considering the keen interest felt by politicians in 11. Turkish affairs, how little we know of Turkish statesmen. They have histories like other men, and sometimes very eventful histories; but the public treat them as labourers treat a new comet—admire its brightness, without the slightest wish to know anything of its ante- cedents. For nearly twelve months Englishmen have read of the doings of Fuad Pasha, and an indescribable lama, coming no one knew whence, and guaranteed no one knew by whom, produced an impression that lie was a capable officer. His nomination as Foreign Minister was popular, and a faint glow of satisfaction was perceptible among attaches and Greeks addicted to Turkish bonds; but of any reason for approval there was not a vestige. He had succeeded in Syria, it is true, but the details of Syrian affairs are not popular, and outside the Turkish Embassy scarcely a dozen men were acquainted with the history of a man who is, in a very singular degree, the re- presentative man of the modern school of Turkish officials.
Fuad Mehmed Pasha was born at Constantinople in the year 1814— an epoch remembered in Europe for the capitulation of Paris, and the hopes it held out of the final conclusion of a long and disastrous war. His father was a mollah, or judge, of one of the districts of the capital, and went by the title of Izzet Mollah, though his family appellation was Izzet-Effendi-Kitchegizade. His name is still popular in Turkey as that of a poet whose verses rank high, even in a land where that art is cultivatedby persons of every rank, from the Sultan downwards. Fuad's mother, Laila Khatoun, was also a proficient in poetical composition, and indeed may be said to rank as one of the few Ottoman poetesses whose works have been printed, and are quoted equally by all classes of society. Fuad may, therefore, be said to have been born in an atmosphere of poetry. It is certain that he had published some verses of his own before lie was fifteen, and some subsequent achievements in the same line, to which we shall have occasion to refer, prove that he inherited from his parents, in some degree, the poetic fire. In the year 1828, however, these predilec- tions, whatever intensity they may have possessed, had to yield to the stern-realities of life, which were forced upon his notice in a way that could not be ignored. His father fell into disgrace with Sultan Mahmoud. That inexorable monarch, whose ordinary inflexibility of purpose was probably not much mitigated by the requirements of the new war with Russia, just then breaking out, sentenced him to exile, and confiscated all his property. Fuad did not accompany his father. He resolved to face the world and follow a profession. After due reflection he chose that of medicine, and for the ensuing five years studied assiduously in the schools at Galata. His progress was very rapid, for in 1834, when little more than twenty years of age, we find him in the service of the Turkish Admiralty, then under the direc- tion of Taliir Pasha, whom he accompanied in an expedition against Tripoli, in one of those periodical disturbances which the unsettled state of government at the capital rendered so common at that time. Fuad's return to Constantinople inaugurated a new phase in his career. We have already alluded to the literary character of both his parents. There seems to be little doubt that this circumstance was the cause of his receiving a much more liberal education than is ordinarily accorded to the Ottoman youth : he was early a man of letters as compared with others of his own degree, and to this fact may be attributed his rapid attainments in the profession he had adopted, and his early promotion in the public service. However this may be, at the period we speak of he began to turn his attention to a very different class of employment to that lie had hitherto pur- sued. Suddenly throwing up his profession, he entered the inter- preter's office of the Ottoman Government, an establishment partaking at once of the nature of a school for politicians, and a department of the public service. This sort of training is now the novitiate through which nearly all Tarkish statesmen have to pass, and is rapidly superseding the old system of the Dragomans in the transac- tion of business between ambassadors and cabinet ministers. All Pasha, the present Grand Vizier, went through it equally with Fuad. In this position he passed several years in preparing himself for diplomacy, and in studying history, languages, and political economy. His first debut in public life was at a most critical period for the Turkish empire. Mehemet Ali, the great satrap ofE t, had a second time rebelled against the Sultan Mahmoud. AU son, the notorious Ibrahim Pasha, had defeated the imperial troops near Aleppo, and had captured their artillery and baggage. Mahmoud, long suffering from an internal disease, had died, and Abdul Medjid, a mere youth, had succeeded to the throne. The danger was so imminent, that the cabinet of the new Sultan resolved on making a strenuous effort to procure assistance from the European Powers, and especialiy from Great Britain. That country had refused it to his father on the first revolt, a proceeding which had since been as
to be a capital error, seeing the danger it brought on Europe by leaving Russia the sole protectress of the Porte. A mis- sion, therefore, was despatched to Loadon under Chekib-Effendi, to which Fuad was attached in the capacity of secretary. The results of that negotiation are too well known to need recapitulation here. Owing to the promptitude of the allies, and in face of the menacing attitude of France, Beyrout and Acre were stormed, the Egyptians were compelled to retreat to their own country, and the independence of the Porte was, for that time, at all events, assured. It was no small thing for the young diplomatist to have commenced his political life in connexion with a mission so successful and so full of felicitous results.
In 1843, Fuad made another step in advance. He was nominated atConstantinople second interpreter to the Porte, and very shortly afterwards despatched on a mission to congratulate the present Queen of Spain on her accession to the throne. His success in the discharge of this duty—not a very arduous one, it is true—probably first de- signated him to politicians as a man of mark. It must be borne in mind that, though Mahmoud had been a reforming monarch, and had worked out his changes with invincible determination, and although his successor, Abdul Medjid, was pledged to a similar policy, most of the public men of the country were Turks of the old school, men who would sacrifice the prosperity of their country, and their own, to uphold the tenets of Mahommedanism in their most rigid sense. The younger generation of politicians, who were to appear before the world with European sympathies and European ideas of government, had not yet come forward. A few only of the old race who were enlightened enough to accommodate themselves to the signs of the times were in prominent positions, but they were mostly at home, and in confidential posts near the Sultan's person. On Dyad's arrival at Madrid, European diplo- macy became acquainted for the first time with that class of diplo- matists which the transition state of the Ottoman empire was bring- ing into existence. His amiable deportment, his polished address, the purity of his French, and an utter absence of that supercilious- ness of demeanour which was inseparable from the Turk of former days, rendered him all the more popular because such traits in him were totally unexpected. A French writer, who seems to be quite in ecstasy on the subject, declares of him on this occasion that "he spoke French to perfection, made bons mots like a Talleyrand, and was galena like an Abencerrage." Fuad subsequently discharged a mission at the Court of Donna Maria of Portugal, and returned home decorated with the Orders of the Tower and the Sword, and of Isabella the Catholic. His report of his mission to the Sultan attracted the notice of that monarch's cabinet from the breadth of the views expressed, an,d from the interesting details it submitted. He also gained considerable eclat among men of letters in his own country at this period by the publication of a poem on the Alhambra, which embodied the results of his recent travels, and the traditions of the country he had visited. In the following year, 1845, Fuad was nominated Grand Inter- preter to the Porte—a fortunate appointment for him in point of time, for it just preceded the visit of the Duke of Montpensier to Con- stantinople, with whom, in virtue of his office, he was thrown daily into communication, and who forwarded him, on his return to France, the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Nothing remarkable in his career occurred during the next fiveyears. That general tranquillity which precedes the storm pervaded Europe, and both Turkey and her Government enjoyed a few years of tranquillity after nearly forty years of distraction. The revolution of February, however, broke out, and though it certainly affected the Ottoman empire, in a less degree than most of the nations of Europe, it caused her some disquiet. The Principalities became disturbed. The liberals of Moldavia and Wallaelua, impatient of the thraldom in which their country was held by Russian influence, set up provisional governments of an ultra-democratic nature. The policy of the Porte in this com- plication has never been satisfactorily explained. It is certain that the malcontents were not unfavourably disposed to the Sultan, and it is doubtful whether even his suzerainty was in danger. Yet he plunged almost at once into the hands of Russia, soliciting her joint military occupation of the disturbed countries. During the negotiations which preceded this result, Fuad was the Ottoman commissioner at Bucha- rest, and however well he may have fulfilled his master's instructions, he drew down upon himself the most furious recriminations from the Moldo-Wallacli,ians. The Hungarian war and the protection granted to the refugees by the Porte afforded him another opp ortunity o f displaying his abilities. He was sent on a mission to St. Petersburg, and rewarded for his efforts by being appointed, on his return, to a post which answers to that of our Home Secretary, Ali Pasha being then Grand Vizier. Early in 1853, Fuad Pasha published a pamphlet, entitled The Truth upon the Question of the Holy Places, which caused the greatest irri- tation at St.Petersburg, and the manner of Prince Menschikoff, who was then in Constantinople, towards him, became so offensive that he was compelled to tender his resignation to the Sultan, who sent him on a mission to the Viceroy of Egypt on matters 'connected with the then impending crisis. On the brealinp; out of thewar he was nominated Government Commissioner at the head-quarters of the army of Omar rasha, from whence he proceeded to Epirus, where, by his tact and energy, he succeeded in stifling an insurrection of the Greeks, who fancied the critical condition of the Porte a favourable opportunity for throwing off its yoke. On this occasion he exhibited military as well as civil capacity, and first gave evidence of the possession of qualities which were so eminently called forth in the Drum revolt of last year.
On his return to Constantinople in 1855, Fuad was nominated to the Council of the Tanzirnat, then newly instituted, with the rank of Mushir and the title of Pasha ; and the following year, celebrated by the Treaty of Paris, lie was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs. burin his administration of this high position, several reforms and improvements were effected. To him is attributed the hatti-sherif of 1856, the improvement hi the foreign relations of the Porte, besides the erection of lighthouses and several new lines of telegraph. But
the great achievement with which his name must ever remain asso- ciated, is his mission into Syria during the Druse troubles of last year. Acquiescing as Abdul Medjid did in the French occupation and in the joint intervention of the combined fleets, he was still in- flexible on the point that Turkish justice should be administered by a Turkish official. Europeans, for a considerable period, saw nothing in this but a renewal of the shuffling which characterized the punish- meat of the Jeddah criminals but two years before; and, indeed, the duty to be performed was most delicate. If the new com- missioner punished the Mahommedan miscreants as justice de- manded, the subjects of the Porte would be confirmed in the already deep-rooted suspicion that the Sultan by his course of reforms was faithless to Mahommedanism. If, on the other hand, he spared them, he would convince Europe that his master was not sincere in his desire to put down the revolt. But Fuad Pasha's first acts gave the lie to these suspicions. The rigorous justice which he dealt out to the monsters who, under the pretence of keeping order, murdered women and children, must have as much astonished his own countrymen as it did the foreigners who were prejudiced against him. The energy, tact, and impartiality which he displayed throughout what must have been, under the circumstances, a difficult as well as a revolting duty, speak for themselves. His appointment again to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs by the new Sultan Abdul Aziz, is not only a just recompense for long service, but it is another guarantee of the genuineness of those reforms which the latter is pushing forward so energetically.
In "addition to his other distinctions, Fuad Pasha is a member of the Academy of Sciences of Constantinople, which was founded in 1851, and lie is decorated—besides the orders, already specified— with that of the Medjidie of the first class, with the Grand Crosses of the Orders of the Iron Crown, of Leopold, of the Saviour, of the Red Eagle of Prussia, of St. Anne and St. Stanislas of Russia, and of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus of Sardinia. In the literary circles of Constantinople lie ranks very high. He has published an excellent and most useful Ottoman grammar, and his communications figure more than once in the scientific proceedings of the " Deutsche Mor- genlandische" Gesellschaft of Leipzig. Men like him, with their native vigour unimpaired by the cultiva- tion of Europe, would be the surest guarantee for that resurrection of Turkey of which it is the policy of English statesmen at least to express a hope.
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