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The Sultan had never before manifested a desire for any reform whatsoever; and it was not until December 19, 1876, that he named as Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha, who was known to have long been weaving constitutional schemes. This Turkish Siéyès was thrust to the front in time to promulgate that fundamental reform.
Before the year was out Midhat presented himself before Abdul Hamid with a formal demand for the promulgation of a Constitution, proposing not only to put into execution the pious hopes of the two Hatti Sherifs of Abdul Mejid but also to limit the sovereign and govern the empire by representative institutions.
In Turkey liberals actually headed the government during much of the generation between the Crimean War and the despotism of Abdul Hamid, and Turkish liberal ministers like Reshid Pasha and Midhat Pasha made earnest though unavailing efforts to liberalize and modernize the Ottoman Empire. Even the dreadful Hamidian tyranny could not kill Turkish liberalism.
But within the last eight months, events have marched rapidly. Abd el Hamid has played his cards successfully in Greece, in Albania, and with the Kurds. He has not been afraid of England and has shown a bold front against infidel reforms. He has had the courage under the eyes of Europe to arrest their protégé, Midhat, and to try him for murder.
In failing, however, Midhat left bad to become so much worse that the next reformers would inevitably have a more convinced public opinion behind them, and he had virtually destroyed the power of Mahmud's bureaucracy.
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.
If I were drawing up the terms of a treaty of peace meant to be really lasting I should lay down three absolute bases; the rest needn't matter" the Authority paused a moment and then proceeded to count off the three conditions of peace on his fingers "These would be, first, the evacuation of the Sandjak; second, an international guarantee for the Capitulations; and third, for internal matters, an arrangement along the lines of the original firman of Midhat Pasha."
His tenure of power, like that of the French constitution-monger in 1799, ended when the scheme had served the purpose of the real controller of events. Midhat obviously did not see whither things were tending. It therefore only remained to set the constitution in motion.
Two years later the palace of Údí Khammár, on the construction of which so much wealth had been lavished, while Bahá’u’lláh lay imprisoned in the barracks, and which its owner had precipitately abandoned with his family owing to the outbreak of an epidemic disease, was rented and later purchased for Him—a dwelling-place which He characterized as the “lofty mansion,” the spot which “God hath ordained as the most sublime vision of mankind.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s visit to Beirut, at the invitation of Midhát Páshá, a former Grand Vizir of Turkey, occurring about this time; His association with the civil and ecclesiastical leaders of that city; His several interviews with the well-known Shaykh Muḥammad ‘Abdu served to enhance immensely the growing prestige of the community and spread abroad the fame of its most distinguished member.
A true liberal party has thus been formed, which includes in its ranks not merely political intriguers of the type familiar to Europe in Midhat Pasha, but men of sincere piety, who would introduce moral as well as political reforms into the practice of Mohammedans.
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