Year: 1879

| tnat the ''BoOu time coming 1or the Olto-
man Empire is yet in the misty future, and
that sound and regular government which
shall derive the initiation of it's acts from
the application of recognized principles in
politics cannot yet displace the ancient
system by which the welfare Of a nation Is
made mere football sent hither or thither,
as one or another intrigue or one or another
knot of sharpers is successful to-day and
run out Tomorrow. In short, the fall OF
Khaireddin Pacha seems to put that hlth-
erto fortunate politician in the category for
the moment of mere enthusiasts rather than
Of practical statesmen, since 1t proves, as
did the fall of Midhat Pacha in somewhat
similar circumstances, that the desire for
political progress is only sentiment in the
Ottoman capital. while the opposition to it
is a tenacious reality.


Every nation in Europe has passed at
one time or another through the crisis in
which Turkey now stands; and every sov-
ereign and every dynasty that has hap
pened upon such critical period in ma
| tional history has had to decide either to
stand by a rotten and obsolete system and
| endeavor to force it upon an age that had
outgrown it, or to accept unpalatable
changes and permit the royal will to be in
| spired by sense of the national needs as
these are shown by the vigorous men who
as the occasion requires come up from be-
low. Shall feeble prince be inspired by
the whims of his cronies or his relations,
and squander q nations opportunities
nd ho ta
fortune? or shall he accept q moral
dictator in the person of some ener-
getic man from low life-some Mo-
hammed Ali from tobacco shop-who
comes fresh with the impulse of national
vigor and sympathy with the present form
of the popular mind, and so move the gov
ernment in the direction OF national growth
and keep it in right relation with that
which it is to control? That is the essence
of the problem. And this problem, much
in this form, has confronted in modern
times every royal family in France, in Eng
land, in Germany. Spain. Italy and Rus
sia, and sometimes princes have decided
one way, sometimes the other; but when
they have decided to stand by the old sys-





sons who have vested rights in abuses, they
have always paid savage penalties for their
fault


Yet it is tolerably natural for feeble
princes to decide in that way at that period
in the history OF their countries when they
are called upon to make this decision
since then the old system is the only one
| with oh IN av fo pi1ior The r,roxytb
of nation and national forces about them
is fact that it requires man of genius to
perceive. Political genius lies principally
in the perception of the real Importance of
new facts. In feudal France, feudal
England, and feudal Germany every sover-
eign believed as completely in his own
primacy and his own suficiency for
all the occasions of government as
ever did any Sultan. In those coun-
tries, as down to more recent times in
Turkey, the State was Q military force, O
body whose only organization was with a
view to war. His Majesty was generalis-
siino his dukes were generals of division,
and the noblemen of minor dignity were
subordinate commanders all the way down !;
and all held their lands as subject to the
royal call to service with the force at their
disposal. The body of the population
traders, laborers, tillers of the SOIL all those
who in modern times are called the peo-
ple-counted for little in the sovereign's
dispositions and those visionary fellows,
the political economists, had not come into
existence. For q sovereign bred in those
ancient ideas to comprehend that he must
become the executive of the will of tho
lower mass was impossible. That is why
Charles l. s head had to be chopped off. 1t
required the French Revolution to convince
the Continental sovereigns.


Turkish magnates of the old school can
no more understand now what is necessary
to save Turkey than the princes and noble
men of Western Europe could understand
the analogous needs in earlier centuries;
and the Ulemas who have just decided on
texts from the Koran that the changes pro-
posed by Khaireddin are impossible are
not more absurd than the English judges
who declared on text from English laws
Charles right to the ship money. They
only stand by the law which, as it was the
product of the ancient system, knows no
other; and they declare that that system is
permanent even at the very moment that
its tumbling ruin is cracking their
crowns. Undoubtedly Turkey might
go ON lor great while under
the old system, if it had even that system in
its ancient vigof; but the Sick Man is un-
horsed on one side and will not m ount on
tba other With n Sultan of GREAT ca pacitv-
q real soldier and ruler of men, as his
function supposes him to be-the fact and
the theory would be in harmony, and the
presumptions of the Moslem law, which are
now the obstacles. would add their weight