ed
Christians of the Lebanon (1860). Unfortunately Abdul Hamid had now come
to regard the Concert of the Powers as a "loud-sounding nothing." With
the usual bent of a mean and narrow nature he detected nothing but
hypocrisy in its lofty professions, and self-seeking in its
philanthropic aims, together with a treacherous desire among influential
persons to make the whole scheme miscarry. Accordingly he fell back on
the boundless fund of inertia, with which a devout Moslem ruler blocks
the way to western reforms. A competent observer has finely remarked
that the Turk never changes; his neighbours, his frontiers, his
statute-books may change, but his ideas and his practice remain always
the same. He will not be interfered with; he will not improve[123]. To
this statement we must add that only under dire necessity will he allow
his Christian subjects to improve. The history of the Eastern Question
may be summed up in these assertions.

[Footnote 123: _Turkey in Europe_, by Odysseus, p. 139.]

Abdul Hamid II. is the incarnation of the reactionary forces which have
brought ruin to Turkey and misery to her Christian subjects. He owed his
crown to a recrudescence of Moslem fanaticism; and his reign has
illustrated the unsuspected strength and ferocity of his race and creed
in face of the uncertain tones in which Christendom has spoken since the
spring of the year 1876. The reasons which prompted his defiance a year
later were revealed by his former Grand Vizier, Midhat Pasha, in an
article in the _Nineteenth Century_ for June 1877. The following passage
is especially illuminating:--

Turkey was not unaware of the attitude of the English
Government towards her; the British Cabinet had declared in
clear terms that it would not interfere in our dispute. This
decision of the English Cabinet was perfectly well known to
us, but we knew still better that the general interests of
Europe and the particular interests of England were so bound
up in our dispute with Russia that, in spite of all the
Declarations of the English Cabinet, it appeared to us to be
absolutely impossible for her to avoid interfering sooner or
later in this Eastern dispute. This profound belief, added to
the reasons we have mentioned, was one of the principal
factors of our contest with Russia[124].

[Footnote 124: See, too, the official report of our pro-Turkish
Ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Laya