us hopes of the two Hatti
Sherifs of Abdul Mejid but also to limit the sovereign and govern the
empire by representative institutions. The new sultan, hardly settled on
his uneasy throne, could not deny those who had deposed his two
predecessors, and, shrewdly aware that ripe facts would not be long in
getting the better of immature ideas, accepted. A parliament was summoned;
an electorate, with only the haziest notions of what it was about, went
through the form of sending representatives to Constantinople; and the
sittings were inaugurated by a speech from the throne, framed on the most
approved Britannic model, the deputies, it is said, jostling and crowding
the while to sit, as many as possible, on the right, which they understood
was always the side of powers that be.

It is true this extemporized chamber never had a chance. The Russians
crossed the Pruth before it had done much more than verify its powers, and
the thoughts and energies of the Osmanlis were soon occupied with the most
severe and disastrous struggle in which the empire had ever engaged. But
it is equally certain that it could not have turned to account any chance
it might have had. Once more the 'young men in a hurry' had snatched at
the end of an evolution hardly begun, without taking into account the
immaturity of Osmanli society in political education and political
capacity. After suspension during the war, the parliament was dissolved
unregretted, and its creator was tried for his life, and banished. 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. If
the only immediate effect was the substitution of an unlimited autocracy,
the Osmanli peoples would be able thenceforward to ascribe their
misfortunes to a single person, meditate attack, on a single position, and
dream of realizing some day an ideal which had been definitely formulated.

The Russian onslaught, which began in both Europe and Asia in the spring
of 1877, had been brought on, after a fashion become customary, by
movements in the Slavonic provinces of the Ottoman Empire and in Rumania;
and the latter province, now independent in all but name and, in defiance
of Ottoman protests, disposing of a regular army, joined the invader. In
campaigns lasting a little less than a year, the Osmanli Empire was
brought nearer to passi