The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-01-29

and are all of them bllndly obedient to his will, foremost among them being Luftl Bey, the valet, by-the-way, whom Said refused to receive when he came to him with verbal message from the Sultan the other day, declaring that in his official position as president of the council 1t was impossible for him to re- ceive any imperial message through mere menial
 These men, that is to say, Hassan Pacha, Lutfi Bey and the remainder of the so-called Palace gang" have dur ing the last twenty years, repeatedly worked upon the one defect in the Sul- tans character, namely nervousness which his enemies stigmatize as cow ardice. Abdul Hamid during the course of his life has been the witness of so many conspiracies, of so many tragedies, that he Is in perpetual fear of plots against his life and against his throne, and is ready to adopt the most extraordinary measures to defend him. self against them. It is upon this weakness, a weakness perhaps attribu- table to harem training and to a study of all the many sanguinary pages of Turkish history, that Hassan and his crew have traded in order to remove from their path all those who were in any way menace to their course of dishonesty, embezzlement and corrup- ton. It was only necessary to furnish Abdul Hamid with fictitious. proofs that this or that official was plotting against him in order to secure His Ma jesty's permission for the punishment of the alleged culprit in manner that seemed most suitable to the palace au- thorities.
 PROTESTS MEAN DEATH,
 Hundreds, nay, even thousands, have thus been put out of the way, some by drowning in the swift-flowing waters of the Bosphorus others by exile to chole- ra and fever-infected regions of Ara bia, while others again have suffered death within the palace precincts like the seventeen young students or cadets of the Turkish West Point who, having organized a petition in favor of the re- moval of their disreputable director, Riga Pasha, one of the palace gang and the most intimate friend of Hassan, were flogged to death by blows in the lower part of the abdomen in the pres- ence of Hassan and of Riza, the latter being two days later appointed to the post of Minister of War in the present administration
 Does the Sultan know of all these abominations? His friends say that he ignores them, while his enemies declare that he is cognizant thereof and that it is his compNcity in these crimes against humanity that gives the palace gang so much power over him, since they assure him that the revelation of their own crimes would result in his immediate deposition. But to this it may be replied, why should he have left Murad alive; Murad. whose exist ger to him than any mere conspiring bey, effendi or pasha?
 These, then, are the men who are hurrying on the unfortunate Sultan to his doom and destruction, for their own selfish purposes--these are the men from whom honest Said endeavored to escape when he took refuge at the Eng fish embassy the other day, rightly hes itating to accept the Sultans offer of residence within the palace precincts; and these, too, are the men whe are to be blamed for the horrible imbroglio in which the Porte has become involved an irnbroglio which would result in the disruption of the empire were it not for the jealousies of the great powers, and which may yet culnlinate in the deposit tion of poor Abdul Hamid.
 Ex-ATTACHE