STATE OF AFFAIRS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 527, 25 February 1876, Page 3

STATE OF AFFAIRS AT CONSTANTINOPLE.

A correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette writing on November 14th, says : During the last three days it has taken a tragical turn, and ventured into the innermost recesses of the Sultan’s palace. His Imperial Majesty is said on good authority to have been excited nearly into fury; to have dismissed more than one of his aides-de-camp; to have had “high words” with his Grand Vizier; and to have almost quarrelled with his mother, the august Yalideh. That there has been serious commotion in the palace is certain, and also that Mahmoud Pasha has passed more than one whole night within its walls. He himself has been said to be under arrest, in disgrace, and even in prison; but, as he gave a dinner-party last night, the last report at least is untrue. And the reports that appear to stand on surest ground are not against the Grand Vizier, but against his master. Very strong feeling is openly expressed against the Sultan; and, in fact, public opinion is so loud that if any special hope could be directed towards either of his probable successors, Murad or YussufIzzedin, the Sultan’s days upon the Imperial throne would not be very many more. It would appear that he is aware of this, and that the danger to himself is as great within the palace as without. The day before yesterday the Sultan, in spite of the present awful state of the Treasury, demanded money; he was respectfully refused, even after a second and more peremptory demand. The impoverished state of the country was again set before him ; but money had just been sent in from Broussa, and the Sultan would have it. He sent an escort of soldiers to the Treasury, and took by force, report says, £150,000 ; but on better authority it is believed to have been £40,000. The immediate necessity was for presents within the palace. The meaning of these presents is well understood. All the next day reports flew about that the Sultan was to be deposed; that he was to be carried in the night to one of the islands, &c,

Meantime the troops are ordered back from the Servian frontier, where they are worse than useless, and where also four thousand poor fellows are reported sick in hospital in and about Niksicb, probably for want of food. Thirty thousand pounds a day was at first calculated as the cost of the Herzegovinian insurrection ; but, as more and more troops have been sent, and as winter is closing in, it is believed that double that sum will scarcely cover the daily expense. A vast proportion of those troops will never leave the Herzegovina. The “ powers that b ' ” evidently do not intend the insurrection to flatten down, but will keep it in a high state of simmer, ready for the boiling up in spring. There will be six long months to be got through before the snow and the Bora will render any fair fighting or military strategy of the remotest use.

The magnificent fleet of ironclads, of which the Turks may well be proud, assembled yesterday at their winter anchorage within the Golden Horn ; and a beautiful sight they are. It may be, however, that the present gloomy and oppressed state of the atmosphere prevented their picturesque appearance from being quite as striking as the thought of their possible usefulness ; at all events, the first result of their change of position was a brilliant rumour that his Imperial Majesty had placed them there with a view to the bombardment of Pera and Galata on the first provocation. Two things remain to be noticed which may certainly be called cheering. One is a belief in the activity, energy, and moral force of the Minister of War, Riza Pasha The other is a conviction that the Ottoman mind has really recognised the fact that the day of foreign aid is ended, and is steadily setting itself to the development of the country and the doing away with the intolerable taxation. Of course the late Minister for Foreign Affairs announced this desire in the language most appropriate to his august master and to his own meek and gentle nature, and met with due, or rather undue, ridicule for so doing. But there are not a few of the best Turks who do thoroughly see the crying need of reform ; and the only pity is the number of years that must elapse, even with any amount of energy and wisdom, before long-standing abuses can be remedied, and so many more before crops can be grown, roads made, and natural products, however rich, be brought to a profitable market.