[gTORY OF TURKEY AND ARMENIA. 49
tion after generation produced warriors and statesmen who
were the terror of Christendom and the object of the envious
admiration of the Eastern world. Hence he did not hesitate, when the call came, to fairly shoulder his burden and to
undertake the task of saving the empire with qualifications
almost as scanty as those of Tommy Atkins for commanding
an army corps.
MIDHAT AND HIS CONSTITUTION.
When he became Sultan, Midhat had conceived the idea
of throwing dust in the eyes of Europe by proclaiming a
constitution. The Sultan assented to it as he would prob-
ably have assented to any other expedient which the Grand
Vizier proposed at that time. But he never liked it, and took
the first opportunity of dissolving the Parliament and put-
tng the constitution on the shelf. Parliaments indeed were
not in his line. The House of Othman has many virtues,
but those of constitutional kingship were not of them. The
founder of the dynasty and all his most famous descendants
had been men of personal initiative. They not only reigned,
but ruled. They first carved out their realms for themselves
with their own scimiters, and then governed it by their own
autocratic, theocratic will. To Abdul Hamid, who believed
only in two things--in God and in his house--the very
idea of a parliament or of any limitation on the sovereign
power of the Sultan partook of the nature of a blasphemy.
Not by such means would Allah deliver the faithful. Abdul
Hamid would stand in the ancient ways, walk by the ancient
light, and trust in the God of his fathers to deliver him from
