TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE COMPROMISE AT CONSTANTINOPLE. THE Sultan, it is said, and we can readily believe, is much more disturbed by his great unpopularity among Mussulmans than by all the pressure which the Ambassadors of three Powers are just now applying to him. He can cheat the Powers, or divide the Powers by great concessions to Russia ; but Mahommedan disaf- fection threatens his throne, and perhaps his life. With an intellect of wonderful keenness, though imperfectly supplied with information ; with nerves perpetually quivering with vague apprehensions ; and with a tenacity which has sometimes the effect of sullen obstinacy, and sometimes of genuine will-power, Abdul Hamid has in some ways been a successful Sultan. He has rebuilt the throne, which was, when he ascended it, crumbling under repeated shocks ; and is at this moment as absolute as the strongest of his predecessors, who, with all their faults, have been marked among Euro- pean dynasties for the number of strong rulers they have produced. The dread inspired in all Pashas by that trembling little figure is as deep as the dread inspired by Abdurrahman Khan, the boldest of soldiers and most severe of all civil administrators in Asia. The Sultan, however, has on other sides been most unsuc- cessful. He has ruined his fleet, which is essential to his sea-divided Empire ; he has enfeebled discipline in his army by permitting irregularity of payment, and by raising hosts of irregulars—Kurds, Circassian s, Albanians, and Arabs—none of whom have the Osmanli genius for military obedience ; he has profoundly irritated and alarmed all Christians, and he has not conciliated even the Ottoman section of his Mussulman millions. He probably hates all Christians, partly because he has the Kalifate on his brain, partly because they furnish the lever for the detested pressure of Europe, and partly because he is aware that the fanatics in their malignity say that he himself looks just like an Armenian. On the other hand, though he is a strict Mussulman, fulfils all the obligations of his faith, and trusts only his co-religionists with high office, the Mussulmans do not love him. He is too far re- moved from their ideal Lord, the " Amurath " of tradition, the conquering, man-slaying, cruel, but efficient and visible ruler of their world. They do not mind his oppressions ; he may kill a dozen Giaours an hour for all they care ; but they hate his system of government by es- pionage, his endless precautions for his own safety, his seclusion, and his perpetual change of agents,—a practice wholly opposed to the Ottoman tradition. They are hungering, too, with their grand history, for a little suc- cess, for some policy which shall at least preserve them from endless bullying by Ambassadors ; and we suspect, though we do not quite know, from endless hints from " protected " Christians as to their approaching downfall. That would be a disagreeable temper for any Government to meet, but in Constantinople it is a dangerous one. The loyalty of the Turks is of a special kind. They will die in heaps for the House of Othman which gave them their dominion, and which has in their tradition an indis- soluble connection with Islam, but they do not quite forget that the Kalifate is not hereditary, and they vividly remember that within the House of Othman they have some right of choice. Soldiery and mob together have repeatedly altered the succession, and the old Sultans so feared this right that they used to kill out all Princes not in the direct line. It would be nothing unusual if the soldiers were to demand a stronger Sultan, or to approve a palace revolt which gave them another descendant of Othman as their Lord. Beyond this possibility they do not look, all the talk about new dynasties and Parlia- mentary institutions or "limitations upon absolutism" being café talk among men who repeat, like parrots, the ideas of the West, and who would be crushed as Midhat was, the only strong man they ever produced, by a. wave of the Sultan's finger. This, however, is sufficient to give the Sultan agonies of apprehension, and it is between two fears—fear of a Mussulman rising and fear of seeing British ironclads in the Bosphorus— !.hat he has been hesitating, begging for time, and trying in an adroit yet rather feeble way to set the Powers by the ears. He will probably fail, for there are only two Powers at Constantinople,—Russia and Great Britain,. and sooner than retire absolutely defeated the British would have run the risk of seeing Armenia occupied by a Russian force. That is the only risk to be run iw forcing the Dardanelles, and it is less than the risk of shocking opinion, as it would have been shocked if Lord Salisbury, by a visible retreat, had delivered up the Christians of the East to their oppressors. They would have been compelled to try insurrection ; and though the Armenians are almost powerless for want of cartridges, and the Greeks not much better off, a real rising in Macedonia could not end without either a great war, or a, partition of Turkey, which might not be confined to Europe.
It is the belief of some diplomatists of ability that the Mussulman rising in the near future is quite certain, though it may take the external form of a palace emeute;, and if that occurs, anything may happen, for the chance of the Ottomans securing a competent Sultan is terribly re- mote. No doubt an efficient ruler has once or twice emerged from the harem, the race having the instinct of government in its blood ; but that was in days when governing was a very different matter, when impudent Ambassadors were liable to arrest and confinement, and when the House dared delegate its absolutism to com- petent Viziers. A great Sultan is hardly to be looked for, and a little one would either irritate the Mussulmans by submission, or bring down Europe in wrath by continuing the persecution of the Christians. It is useless speculating on a contingency so vast, but if the rising does not occur, the Sultan will doubtless cease from persecuting, and there will be a momentary compromise between the warring influences. We entirely agree with those who argue that the compromise, which he has at last accepted, will be worthless, and that the Christians will not be protected. It is simply impossible to protect them unless they are terri- torially cut off from the Sultan's dominion. The evil ia not that the Pashas will insist on cutting Armenian or Greek throats, but that the Mussulman mob will cut them, and that the police and soldiers will not coerce the Mussulman mob. Look at the last outbreak in Trebizond, right under foreigners' eyes, or the scene at Akhissar, in Anatolia, described in the Daily News of Tuesday, where the Mahommedan roughs of the market - place murdered forty - six Christians and wounded many more, no one resisting them except the Caimaican of a neighbouring station, who, " at the risk of his own life," induced the Mussulmans to abstain from completing their bloody work. That is the kind of scene which will go on over the whole Empire, until the Sultan is changed, or the threat of partition has been carried into effect. The Imperial Hatt will be of no more use than any other piece of paper, and the only order which would be effective, one threatening death to the chief official if any Christian life were taken within his jurisdiction, will not be issued ; indeed, from the point of view of justice, ought not to be. We cannot, however, blame Lord Salis- bury as energetically as some of our contemporaries are in- clined to do. It is excessively difficult to declare war single- handed—for that is the demand—when your enemy accepts your original terms ; when your allies who have kept step with you, declare themselves contented ; and when, if you act, it is nearly a certainty that all Europe will be in flames. We ourselves think, as we have persistently re- peated, that the case is so extreme that we should be disposed to justify the risk ; but we can understand that the British Premier, with the safety of an Empire to provide for, with a doubt in his heart as to the approval of his special party, and with his mind reluctant to face the terrible problems which a partition of Turkey would involve, may be reluctant to declare that hope is over. Probably he does hope that massacre, at all events, will stop. The Sultan in yielding implicitly pledges himself that it shall stop ; and it is very difficult, either to assert boldly that the pledge is a fraud, or to devise a scheme which, without upsetting the Sultan altogether, shall be efficacious. The demand given up, if it has been given up, is the appointment of a Christian High Commissioner with power to communicate with the Embassies ; but would the High Commissioner have been more than a poet-office? What could he have actually done that the Ambassadors cannot do ; or how could he have made any demand, not sanctioned by the policy of the three Christian Governments ? It is natural to give up such a clause rather than run the risk of a great war. As we have said, we should have supported the running of the risk, and we think the majority of Englishmen would also, but then neither we nor the majority have the awful responsibility of giving the orders, or the knowledge of foreign designs which Lord Salisbury probably possesses. The situation does not con- tent us ; we should even have been relieved if Pharaoh had hardened his heart ; but to shell Constantinople with the Sultan climbing down is a step upon which we had rather that the statesmen than the public gave the final decision. The one thing now left to be done, as the Sultan has " yielded," is to warn him emphatically that the slaughter of Christians must be stopped by his soldiers, or that his Empire will be thrown into the crucible of another Con- ference of Berlin, this time for the partition of the Otto- man dominions, and to carry out that warning inflexibly, and at once.
Previous page
