Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/129

Rh at the door of his own church, and as the greatest possible indignity which could be offered in the eyes of his nation his body was delivered to the Jews to be dragged through the streets. This was what "the honors and ranks" of the above quoted proclamation meant and as understood by the sultans.

"The Hatti Sheriff," sacred document "of Gulbane," promulgated by Sultan Mejit, the father of the present Sultan, as a concession of "equal rights and justice to all classes of the Ottoman subjects," infuriated the bitter feelings of the fanatical Turks, who, unable to bear the idea of being placed on the same level with the "infidel dogs," excited the ignorant population in the capital and provinces and imposed insults and outrages upon the Christians.

The 61st article of the Treaty of Berlin (1878), signed by the Turk, together with the six great Powers of Europe, to bring an end to the Kurdish and Circassian atrocities committed in Armenia, resulted in the Sassoun massacre of 1894, and the last issue of the scheme of reforms signed by the Sultan and published in eight columns of London papers caused the slaughter of 80,000 innocent Armenians with such horrors that 800 pages of the same papers could not describe and eighty centuries will not be able to wipe away this unparalleled blot on the eighteen Christian governments of Europe.

3. Constitutional Privileges of the Armenian Church. Nearly thirty-five years ago, after repeated appeals and great struggles, the Armenian mother church secured a constitution granted by the Sultan