body of the people, or at least the whole electorate, must have the capacity to associate together for public ends, and this capacity is not so much a matter of intelligence or even honesty as of temper and habit. Men who have been used to work together, in whatever public cause, it may be only to collect subscriptions or to run an orphanage or to safeguard a threatened interest, learn to give and take, to subordinate private to public interests, to trust each other, to follow a leader, in one case to guide opinion and to take responsibility in another; they acquire rather by practice than precept the temper necessary for working political institutions.

It must be confessed that Muhammadans have hitherto had little practice in this association for public purposes. Arbitrary monarchs have always been jealous of the existence of power in local bodies, and, indeed, of any power that was not derived from themselves. Louis XIV, as Saint-Simon tells us, was jealous of the few privileges which remained to the French nobility, because

il ne vouloit de grandeur que par émanation de la sienne. . . . Il sentoit bien qu'il pouvoit accabler un seigneur sous le poids de sa disgrace, mais non pas l'anéantir ni les siens, au lieu qu'en précipitant un Secrétaire d'Etat de sa place ou un autre ministre de la même espèce, il le replongeoit, lui et tous les siens, dans la profondeur du néant d'où cette place l'avoit tiré.

The same malignant vanity in Oriental despots has killed out all but the rudest germs of political institutions in Muhammadan countries. Muhammadans like to think that because the Commander of the Faithful was in early days elected by a sort of popular vote, therefore democratic government is natural to all Moslems. I fear that a precedent which has been in abeyance for twelve centuries carries little weight in practical politics. I do not see that Socialism in Christendom derives any assistance from the fact that the early Christians held all their goods in common. Muhammadans must build up their institutions with the materials which the last two or three hundred years have put into their hands, and I am compelled to recognise that their task is a difficult one, for these materials are extremely scanty. But the difficulty of their task is not due to their religion, but to the previous existence of a centralised despotism, and it is only fair to recognise that Christian Russia is confronted with exactly the same problem. Indeed, any autocracy which manages all a people's affairs for them and permits them to do nothing for themselves, weakens their power of self-government, and the more efficient the autocracy the more the political capacity of the people is atrophied. This may partly explain the fact mentioned by Lord Cromer that the Turco-Egyptians, who might perhaps have been able to govern the country in a rude fashion in 1883, were incapable of doing so when the full tide of civilisation had set strongly in '-that is to say, by the time that Lord Cromer had raised the Administration to so high a pitch of efficiency.

Perhaps it is of good augury for the political future of Muhammadan

countries that Oriental despotisms, though excessively centralised, have rarely been highly efficient, and that, through weakness rather than policy, they have usually been obliged to leave some power in the hands of sections of the people. Thus, for example, the village has usually been allowed to manage its own affairs; the religious leaders of certain communities have often been given authority over their own co-religionists; and certain noble families exercise, de facto, a great deal of power in their own localities. These are germs from which indigenous political institutions might perhaps be developed. These and all other forms of self-government native to the soil should be carefully cherished, for the people will work them better than any theoretically superior institutions with which they are not familiar. Situated as the Muhammadans are, they need to preserve all the elements which conduce to the stability of their social order, for if they attempt to reconstitute their government upon abstract principles, they may find, in the pregnant words of Taine, that what they hoped was a revolution may prove to be dissolution.

THEODORE MORISON,

TURKEY IN 1876

A RETROSPECT

AT a time when the attention of Europe has been arrested by recent events in Turkey it may not be amiss to recall something of the history of that country during the period which immediately preceded the promulgation of the short-lived and ill-fated Constitution of 1876. By so doing we shall, perhaps, gain some insight into the causes which led to the cold and even hostile reception accorded to it in England— a reception which unfortunately greatly encouraged the Sultan to set about quickly to recover his authority and to re-establish the autocratic form of government which had been so fatal to the prosperity of the Empire.

In many respects the political position of Turkey to-day closely resembles that of 1876, but there are now two hopeful factors which were then entirely absent: namely, the friendly attitude of Russia and the sympathetic disposition of Europe in general towards the new Constitution. In 1876 great ignorance prevailed as to the conditions of the country, and people were accustomed to divide the inhabitants roughly into Turks' and 'Christians.' This ignorance has very largely disappeared, and the world has realised something of the difficulty attending on the government of so many different nationalities, whose mutual antipathies and sympathies depend far more on racial than religious distinctions.

The troubles which came upon Turkey, beginning with the Herzegovinian insurrection in 1875, followed by the wars with Servia and Montenegro, the rising in Bulgaria with its bloody repression, the unfortunate Conference of Constantinople, and the disastrous war with Russia, were beyond all question attributable to the once famous though now almost forgotten Drei-Kaiser-Bund, or league for common action between the Governments of the three Northern Empires. The effect of it was to secure for Russia the whole weight of Austria in pursuing her traditional policy of weakening and embarrassing Turkey, though this was far from being contemplated or intended by Count Andrassy, who was then at the head of the AustroHungarian Government. Austria, when she went into the alliance, no doubt hoped to check the Russian intrigues in Turkey, but she

speedily became entangled in the tortuous Muscovite policy. The consequences of the Drei-Kaiser-Bund quickly became apparent in the breaking-out of the Herzegovinian insurrection in July 1875, which began immediately on the return from banishment to Montenegro of a number of turbulent Bosnians in favour of whom the Russian Embassy had strongly interceded. They first attacked and murdered a party of Turkish travellers, and then robbed and burnt the villages whose inhabitants refused to join them, and in this way their numbers were soon increased, though at first by very unwilling recruits. The country had been so quiet that there was no force at hand to put down the disturbance, and when the Governor asked for a couple of hundred men the Russian and Austrian Embassies remonstrated, urging the Porte not to give unreal importance to an insignificant rising. Advice to do nothing being always agreeable to the Porte, that course was followed, and this farce took place again and again. The Governor-General continued to beg in vain for reinforcements as the movement acquired greater extension, his applications being always counteracted by the objections of the three Embassies. So little did Russia conceal her sympathy with the rebellion that the chiefs used to meet and concert their plans at the house of M. Yonine, her Consul-General at Ragusa, and on one occasion when an insurgent chief was killed the Russian flag was displayed at half-mast, and the Consul attended the funeral in full uniform. The Austrian frontier was under the charge of Count Rodich, GovernorGeneral of Dalmatia, and his feelings being strongly Slavophil he permitted the armed bands when too hotly pressed to pass over the frontier, where they could not be pursued. They received supplies and ammunition, and reappeared in another quarter, and this in spite of assurances from Vienna that any armed body crossing over into Austria would be at once disarmed and interné. Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that the insurrection grew in extent and went on for month after month, till the three Powers determined to take the matter in hand, and the Andrassy Note was issued in December 1875. This proving fruitless, it was followed in the month of May by the famous and equally fruitless Berlin Memorandum, which our Government were afterwards blamed for having rejected instead of amending, by which course it was said they had prevented common action by the European Powers. There is little justice in the accusation, for the Drei-Kaiser-Bund itself had put an end to all general concert.

The Prime Ministers of the three Emperors-Prince Gortchakow, Prince Bismarck, and Count Andrassy-met at Berlin, and there, without consultation or communication with any other Government, drew up the famous Memorandum, simply informing the different Cabinets by telegraph of its substance, and contemptuously asking that their 1 May 13th. See Turkey 3, 1876, No. 248.

adherence should at once be telegraphed back; for the three Chancellors did not consider it necessary to remain at Berlin long enough to allow of their receiving written answers, or discussing any observations or objections which others might wish to make. The Memorandum was flung to us as an intimation of the decision of the three Emperors, to which, indeed, we might give our adhesion, but without a hint that any amendment would be listened to. The terms of the Memorandum were such as to make it difficult to believe that its authors can ever have supposed it likely to lead to a pacification, for it was evidently far more calculated to insure a prolongation than a termination of the struggle. The objections to the Memorandum were mercilessly exposed by Lord Derby in a conversation with Count Münster, the German Ambassador, and the refusal of the Government to have anything to do with it was, at the time, unanimously approved by all parties in England; it was not till later that Mr. Gladstone reproached them for the course they had followed. This famous document had at last rather an ignominious end. It was to have been presented to the Turkish Government by the representatives of the three Powers on the 30th of May 1876, and on the morning of that day Sultan Abdul Aziz was deposed. There was then a little hesitation as to what was to be done about it; for, while the Russians wished it to be presented to the Ministers of the new Sultan as soon as he was recognised, Count Andrassy supported by Prince Bismarck was in favour of delay, the result being that after standing over for a time it was allowed to drop without ever having been presented at all. Such was the end of this famous instrument, which, though never acted upon, contributed much to keep alive the insurrection and to encourage the Servians and Montenegrins in their preparations for war, by convincing them that foreign pressure would in the end be laid upon the Turkish Government.

For some time before the year 1875 grave symptoms of discontent had manifested themselves throughout Turkey. The government of the country had up to 1871 been in the hands of Aali and Fuad Pashas, two men of such marked ability and strength of character that even Sultan Abdul Aziz felt their authority, and, though he chafed under it, could not emancipate himself from their control. During their administration Turkey had made slow but distinct progress, but when both Aali and Fuad Pashas died in 1871 the Sultan made Mahmoud Nedim Pasha Grand Vizier, and from that time forward began a reign of corruption and oppression throughout the land. Appointments of all kinds were purchased through the Imperial harem; the salaries of officials of all grades remained in arrears or unpaid, while the Sultan and his favourites squandered millions with the most boundless extravagance. This state of affairs brought to the front a strong party of reform, at the head of which stood Midhat Pasha. This remarkable man had distinguished himself as Governor

2 See Turkey 3, 1876, No. 259.