TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE HOUSE OF OTHMAN.
THERE is something, from one point of view, almost pathetic about the present position of the Ottoman Monarchy, dying, as it were, under the European microscope, of paralysis slowly induced by the very conditions which have made it great. That Government is essentially, and setting aside for a moment the chatter about impossible reforms and nonsensical constitutions, a dynastic despotism, with the succes- sion limited to a family considered by the armed caste which has placed the richest countries in three continents at its feet, as semi-sacred. That "with Othman, Islam falls" is the fixed belief of every uneducated Ottoman, whether he belong by birth to the tribe or has been thoroughly adopted into it, and while a male member of the House survives, no other ruler will be accepted by the caste. This semi-sanctity hitherto has been the grand preservative of the race, making rivalry from below impossible, and giving to the administration the fixity and permanence which are the redeeming incidents of any form of hereditary monarchy. The opposition of cadets of the House has been rendered impossible by their slaughter, and the opposition of great Generals, or Viziers, or rebels—and Turkey has had them all—has never so much as roused the jealousy of the throne. A Kiuprili might wield all power and transmit it to his son, but he could no more displace the Othmans than Bismarck could displace the Hohen- zollerns, no more retain power in defiance of an order from the Sovereign than Richelieu in defiance of Louis XIH. The semi-sanctity still exists, and protects the family as of old, but instead of strengthening the Government, it completely paralyses its little remaining strength. The steady slaughter of the cadet branches, continued for generations as a State policy, has reduced the House of Othman to a group of seven grown males,—Murad, Hamid, Mahmoud, and three still younger brothers, besides Yussef (the son of Abdul Aziz), and all these men descend from one man, and all are suspected by physicians of inheriting the same family curse, a tendency to brain-disease under circumstances of excitement. The disease is modified by the healthiness and physical beauty which natu- rally belong to the mothers of the House, under its singular family law—by which marriage is rendered impossible, and the mother of a prince is always selected for her attractiveness—but it is always latent, and is rapidly becoming the most important of Turkish political factors. Abdul Medjid at last was almost incapable of giving an order, an incurable melancholy weighing alike on his spirits and his brain. Abdul Aziz was in many moods a spoilt and dangerous child ; Murad showed on the day of his accession symptoms which rapidly developed into semi- idiotcy ; and now the telegrams are full of reports of Haraid's "meningitis," and the correspondent of the Telegraph, a pro- Turk, though no doubt friendly to Midhat, whose strongest feeling was detestation of the Sultanet and its capricious possessors, forwards this really terrible description of the Sovereign,—terrible, we mean, when it is remembered that the man described, though in danger of assassination or deposition at any hour, is while he lives and reigns the absolute lord of thirty millions of men—that nothing save a war could prevent his order, say for the extermination of all Armenians, from being executed :— "All the officers of the Palace, most of the grand officers of State, aides-de-camp, colonels, generals, marshals, walked slowly past on the way to the mosque. And then, attired in the plainest possible fashion as an ordinary Turkish gentleman, mounted on a white Arab, and sitting upon a gold-embroidered saddle, with his feet in stirrups of gold, rode the Caliph of the Ottomans. I had not seen his Paynim Majesty before; at any rate, the previous views I had had of him were distant ones ; and I was, therefore, the more careful now to note what manner of man he was. A thin unhappy face, the dark whiskers, beard, and moustache of which only served to increase the deadly hue of the sallow cheeks which they encompassed, a meagre somewhat round-shouldered body, a lank, lean, weakly frame—such were the characteristics of the Sovereign of the Ottomans. I know that in the West an idea prevails that Eastern nations are centaurs by birth; that the saddle is their cradle, their house, their home, and that the Grand Turk seated on a magnificent Arab must necessarily be the very model of the Saracen monarchs of old. Yet I must dissipate the pleasing illusion, and say at at once that Abdul Hamid would have been—if appearances are to be trusted—much more at home in a comfortable carriage. Do I not recollect one February morning, in Fleet Street, witnessing the progress of the City Fathers from Temple Bar to St. Paul's as they es- corted the Queen to the church of the capital? Shall I ever forget how one, who, when seated firmly on the aldermanic bench, was most em- phatically 'a terror to evil-doers and a praise to such as do well,' whose eye blanched the cheek of the most determined pickpocket, and whose dignity overawed the very oldest and most impudent tramp, (dung
nervously to the saddle, and could by no means be persuaded to loose his horse's mane ? I am bound to say that the impersonification of the Moslem religion neither grasped mane nor holster, and that he did his best to keep straight and safe in the saddle. Yet how sadly he failed, as he essayed to guide that troublesome nag! It was the old story of the Constitution over again. A bad rider and a restless horse, a vacillating, timorous Sultan on the throne, and a determined, wilful people to be ruled. As one looked at that pale, nervous face, it was easy to see why its owner failed as a ruler. It is said that Mahmoud, the Grand Vizier of Abdul Aziz, when once complaining of the obstinacy of his master, was asked why he did not dethrone him and place some one else in his stead. His reply was, 'What good would that effect? Murad is a drunkard, and Rancid is a coward ; of the rest I know nothing—the experiment is too dangerous.' There can, I think, be but little doubt that it is this very timid nature of Abdul Hamid which has prompted all the blunders of the past few days. The evidences of fear were, indeed, very close at hand. His Majesty's first object evi- dently was to reach the mosque without molestation, and to say his prayers ; that ceremony over, he had determined to run no more risk, and had actually arranged for a steam yacht to be drawn up close to the door, so that prayers over, he could step on board, and soon be far away on the Bosphorus."
The epithets attributed to Mahmoud are most unfair, Murad having been medically mad, while the reigning Sultan is ill, not cowardly, the victim of hypochondriasis, not of the ordinary fear of man, from which his race, to do them justice, Abdul Aziz even included, have been exceptionally free. But whatever the cause, the fact remains that after two revolutions and three coups d'e'tat there is still no Sultan, no man claiming supreme power by right of birth, yet competent to pursue a policy, to choose efficient Pashas, to use the strength that yet remains to the relics of the fierce caste which so nearly crushed by sheer valour and contempt of death the civilisation of Central Europe. And—and this is the terrible fact of the situation—there is neither certainty nor probability that there ever will be one. All the signs are in the air which in Asia portend the fall of Kings, and in Constantinople always precede a change in the occupant of the throne, but grant another Revolution accom- plished and another Sovereign placed in light confinement, and where is the hope of gain? A statement, said to be official, has been published in Paris, declaring the next brother to be "a lively and able-bodied young man of thirty-three," but neither health nor vivacity, especially when so asserted, are guarantees against brain-disease ; while if the next heir, by a happy chance, is healthy in body and mind, he has been bred a prisoner, in ignorance of all that it concerns a Sultan to know. By a strange irony of fate, the tincture of merciful feeling shown by the bloodthirsty House in its decadence has proved an injury to the throne. When the brothers were slaughtered revolu- tion was improbable, for sons dislike killing fathers in Turkey, as in England, and the system secured permanence, and occa- sionally an heir trained to war and to affairs ; but now the brothers are a constant temptation to revolution, while they are never so qualified as to make revolution justifiable. The Sultans are merciful enough to spare them, but not merciful enough to suffer them to become attractive candidates for the throne. There is therefore in Turkey none of the fixity of European dynasties, and none of the chance that the unfixed system may allow of the elevation of the needed man, possessed of the imprescriptable prerogative of birth, yet as able to govern as if he had never been enfeebled
by the purple.
In Western Europe a way has long since been found out of this dilemma. The Sovereign is left—even if hopelessly un- fitted to reign—in nominal possession of the throne, and some strong or acceptable person, under the title of Regent or Premier, or Chancellor or favourite, or even without title, exercises all his powers. He masters his master and is his substitute. But in Turkey this device is apt to fail. The strong man never masters his master, and mastering every- body else is of no use. A Regent-Khalif is as impossible as a Pope-Substitute, and no Grand Vizier can make his power independent. The authority of the Padishah is so nearly sacred, so nearly self-derived and independent of circumstance that the Mayor of the Palace, with a feeble Sovereign, can never be secure even for a day. If any other resolute man can win the Sovereign's favour for an hour, can coax or extort from him one order, all is over with the temporary lord. He falls, as Midhat fell, instantaneously, without resistance, without even making a commotion in the water. It is as if the last Merovingian could from his ox-cart have ordered the execution of Pepin with irresistible authority. The Sultan, however feeble, however sick, however paralysed, is, while still Sultan, the lord, and cannot by a conscientious Ottoman be disobeyed. No one who knows Turkey doubts that if Abdul Aziz, in the crisis of his fate, could have escaped physical arrest for ten minutes, could have summoned his
guards, or could have reached the Syrian regiments round the palace, his orders for the execution of all the conspirators would have been carried out instantly, and without a phrase of demur or remonstrance. And there never is any security that the order will norbe given. Turkey is now civilised so far that both power and enjoyment depend on the command of money. No strong Vizier could work without full control of a sufficiently full treasury, yet if the Palace is to be kept tranquil, the Treasury can never be sufficiently full. It takes the revenue of a State to keep the Palace tranquil, full as it is of grown children intent on enjoyment, all-powerful with their master, and knowing no more of the limits of his resources than little children in England know of their father's income. They are not so wicked in this matter as bondholders imagine, are much more ignorant than wicked, and simply do not know why their lord should not as readily draw an order for a half-million as an order for a double ration of roasted gazelle. They fret for the moon, and if the moon is refused by any one save the Sultan, sooner or later they beat that one to express their wrath. They break the thing in their way, not to get it out of their way, but to express their feelings, and whether it is a pipkin or an irreplaceable porcelain vase never causes them a thought. The fight for money between the Vizier and the Palace will always produce collision. The strong man at the head of affairs is, therefore, impossible, just as the strong Sultan is, and the system so carefully constructed and capable of working with such tremendous force when the strong man is present, in want of him collapses like a wheel without a tire. The scene presented in France in 750, that strangely pictures- que scene which has struck makers of school-books till every child recalls it, is repeated in Constantinople after a thousand years, without its alleviations. You have the Merovingian, the man of the sacred race, with his legal claim to every authority, led out to pay his religious homage amidst a reverential crowd, and then led back to his palace, to be kept amused like a weary child, the only difference being that instead of the cart and its oxen with gilt horns, you have the white horse which its master can scarcely ride and the stirrups of gold. Only Pepin is absent, and will never be present. With the fainéant of the East is bound up the safety of the faith, and against that spell neither the Charles nor the Pepin of the Mussulman world, neither warrior nor organiser, can find an adequate defence. Turkey is perishing for want of Turks, and the Sultanet for want of a Sultan.
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