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 on the London & North Western railway. Pop. (1901), 4669. It lies in open country near the river Dane, having water communications by the Trent and Mersey canal, and a branch giving access to the Shropshire Union canal. The church of St Michael and All Angels is of various periods and contains numerous monuments. In the streets not a few old buildings remain, making for picturesqueness, and a number of the fine timbered houses in which Cheshire abounds are seen in the immediate neighbourhood. Middlewich shares in the salt industry common to several towns, such as Northwich and Winsford, in this part of the county; there are also chemical works and a manufacture of condensed milk.

MIDHAT PASHA (1822–1884), Turkish statesman, the son of a civil judge, was born at Constantinople in 1822. His father, a declared partisan of reform, trained him for an administrative career, and at the age of twenty-two he was attached as secretary to Faïk Effendi, whom he accompanied in Syria for three years. On his return to Constantinople Midhat was appointed chief director of confidential reports, and after a new financial mission in Syria was made second secretary of the grand council. His enemies, however, succeeded in ousting him from this post, and caused him to be entrusted with the apparently impossible task of settling the revolt and brigandage rampant in Rumelia. His measures were drastic and their success was startling and the government made him an official of the first rank and restored him to his place in the grand council. In similar vigorous fashion he restored order in Bulgaria in 1857. In 1860 he was made vizier and pasha, and entrusted with the government of Nisch, where his reforms were so beneficial that the sultan charged him, in conjunction with Fuad Pasha and Ali Pasha, to prepare the scheme for adapting them to the empire which was afterwards known as the law of the vilayets. After further administrative work in his province, he was ordered to organize the council of state in 1866, and was then made governor of Bagdad, where his success was as decisive as at Nisch, but attended with much greater difficulties. In 1871 the anti-reform influence of the grand vizier, Mahmoud Nedim, seemed to Midhat a danger to the country, and in a personal interview he boldly stated his views to the sultan, who was so struck with their force and entire disinterestedness that he appointed Midhat grand vizier in place of Mahmoud. Too independent, however, for the court, Midhat remained in power only three months, and after a short governorship of Salonica he lived apart from affairs at Constantinople until 1875.

From this time forward. however, Midhat Pasha’s career resolved itself into a series of strange and almost romantic adventures. While sympathizing with the ideas and aims of the “Young Turkey” party, he was anxious to restrain its impatience, but the sultan’s obduracy led to a coalition between the grand vizier, the war minister and Midhat Pasha, which deposed him in May 1876, and he was murdered in the following month. His nephew Murad V. was in turn deposed in the following August and replaced by his brother, Abdul Hamid II. Midhat Pasha now became grand vizier, reforms were freely promised, and the Ottoman parliament was inaugurated with a great flourish. In the following February, however, Midhat was dismissed and banished for supposed complicity in the murder of Abdul Aziz. He then visited various European capitals, and remained for some time in London, where he carefully studied the procedure in the House of Commons. Again recalled. in 1878, he was appointed governor of Syria, and in August exchanged offices with the governor of Smyrna. But in the following May the sultan again ordered him to be arrested, and although he effected his escape and appealed to the powers, he shortly afterwards saw fit to surrender, claiming a fair hearing. The trial accordingly took place in June, when Midhat and the others were sentenced to death. It was, however, generally regarded as a mockery, and on the intercession of the British government the sentence was commuted to banishment. The remaining three years of his life were consequently spent in exile at Taif in Arabia, where he died, probably by violence, on the 8th of May 1884. To great ability, wide sympathies, and undoubted patriotism he added absolute honesty, that rare quality in a vizier, for he left office as poor as when he entered it.

MIDHURST, a market town in the north-western parliamentary division of Sussex, England, 12 m. N. by E. of Chichester by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway; served also by the London & South Western railway. Pop. (1901), 1674. It is pleasantly situated on slightly rising ground near the river Rother. The church of St Mary Magdalen and St Denis is a large Perpendicular building. The town retains several picturesque old houses, and in the vicinity, by the river, are the ruins of the 16th century mansion of Cowdray, burnt down in 1793. A grammar-school was founded at Midhurst in 1672 and attained some eminence. After being closed for many years it was reopened in 1880. In 1906 a magnificent sanatorium for consumptives was opened about 4 m. from Midhurst; it bears the name of King Edward VII., who laid its foundation stone and opened it.

The name of Midhurst (Middeherst, Mudhurst) first occurs in the reign of Henry I. when Savaric Fitz-Cana held it of the honour of Arundel, then presumably in the king’s hands. The charter of Henry I., although no longer extant, is quoted in later confirmation charters of Richard I., Henry III., Edward III. and Richard II. Franco de Bohun inherited Midhurst from his uncle Savaric Fitz-Savaric, and the De Bohuns held the lordship until 1499 when Sir David Owen obtained it through his marriage with the daughter of the last male heir. He sold it to Sir William Fitz-William, from whom it passed to Sir Anthony Browne and descended to the viscounts Montague. Midhurst is definitely called a borough in the reign of Edward I., but the borough-court and market were probably in existence much earlier. It was governed by a bailiff, elected annually, until the office lapsed, probably early in the 19th century. In an act of 1883 it is mentioned as one of the towns which had long ceased to be municipal. No charter of incorporation is known. Midhurst returned two members to parliament from 1300–1301 till 1832, and from that date one member until 1885 when it was disfranchised. In the reign of Henry VI. a market was held by the burgesses every Thursday, and a fair on Whit-Tuesday, by grant from Sir John Bohun. In 1888 the fair-days were the 6th of April, the 9th of May and the 29th of October. The market-day was Thursday. Pleasure-fairs are still held on the 6th of April and the 29th of October, but there is no market.

 MIDIAN (properly Madyān, so Sept.), in the Bible, one of the peoples of North Arabia whom the Hebrews recognized as distant kinsmen, representing them as sons of Abraham’s wife Ketūrah (“incense”). Thus the sons of Keturah are the “incense-men,” not indeed inhabitants of the far south incense-land, but presumably the tribes whose caravans brought the incense to Palestine and the Mediterranean ports. So the Midianites appear in connexion with the gold and incense trade from Yemen (Isa. lx. 6), and with the trade between Egypt and Syria (Gen. xxxvii. 28, 36). They appear also as warriors invading Canaan from the eastern desert, and ravaging the land as similar tribes have done in all ages when Palestine lacked a strong government (see ). Again, they are described as peaceful shepherds, and the pastures of the Midianites, or of the branch of Midian to which Moses’s father-in-law (Jethro or Reuel, or Hobab) belonged, lay near Mount Horeb (Exod. iii. 1). The Kenites who had friendly relations with Israel and are represented in Judg. i. 16, iv. 11, as the kin of Moses’s father-in-law, appear to have been but one fraction of Midian which took a separate course from their early relations to Israel. Balaam, according to one version of the story, was a Midianite (Num. xxii. seq.) and his association with Moab has been connected with the statement in Gen. xxxvi. 35, that the Edomite king Hadad defeated Midian in the land of Moab; (see, ).