aded cry of rebellion; and the exasperated
multitude that had surrounded the royal palace was not appeased until it
witnessed the public execution of the mint officers, whose only crime
was obedience to their master. This impolitic measure in the financial
department impoverished the people, and left the treasury still empty.
Foreign speculators bought the money--the circulation of which had
become illegal--and resold it to the sultan for sterling value!

Shortly after this he expelled about thirty thousand Christians from the
capital, which they had embellished and enriched by their labor. Their
fidelity had never been doubted. For this despicable act--their
expulsion--Mahmoud could adduce no better reason than that 'it was
solely on political grounds.' Strange politics this, for a sovereign,
who professed to have the magnanimity of Christian rulers! On the
expulsion of the Christians, Russia commenced hostilities, and a war
followed, in which the sultan paid dearly for his rashness.

In short, Mahmoud could not have given a better lesson to his subjects
than by reforming himself. He was cruel beyond measure--if the grand
seignior can ever be so called, who is taught that he may lop off a
score of heads each day 'for divine inspiration.' Still if he had been
as thoroughly skilled as he professed to have been, he should have shown
himself a humane as well as an innovating sovereign. Those who assisted
him in his reforms, he rewarded with the bowstring. His character was
blackened by ingratitude, an instinctive vice in oriental rulers.
Obstinate as he was suspicious, deceitful as he was cunning, he could
not rule his own passions, much less could he control the corrupt morals
of his people. He was to an extraordinary degree avaricious, a quality
everywhere odious, but especially in a land where generosity measures
love--where in the highest and in the lowest stations liberality is the
moving spring. While he mistook parsimony for economy, he did not
scruple to make war on trifling pretexts and waste his amassed treasures
in a hopeless cause.

In every attempted reform he wounded Ottoman pride and prejudice. Unlike
his cousin, he did not humor the faults of the people while making
innovations; he neither amused them with imposing shows, nor flattered
them by the pompous spectacle of his appearance in public--in one word,
he wanted the tact of a reformer. Selim, while he increased the navy and
established manufactories,