Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/328

 320] FOEEIGN HISTORY. [1899.

1. The abolition of the special measures for preventing the free movement of Armenians in the provinces, except in the case of suspected persons.

2. The rebuilding or repairing, with Government assistance, of the churches, schools, and monasteries destroyed during the Armenian troubles.

3. The payment of the sums due to Armenian Government officials who were killed or expelled during the massacres.

4. The building of an orphanage at Yedikule, near Constan- tinople.

5. The pardoning of fifty-four Armenian prisoners and the commutation into imprisonment for life of the sentence of death passed upon twenty-four Armenians.

In November a great number of Mahomedans belonging to the " young Turkish party," including several high Government officials and a general of division, were arrested at Constantinople and banished to Yemen, owing to the discovery at their residences of documents stated to be of a seditious character, and in the following month Mahmoud Pasha, the Sultan's brother-in- law, escaped to Paris, in order, as he said, to agitate for liberal reforms in a place where he could not be arrested by order of the Sultan.

In Bulgaria the Stoiloff Ministry, which had held office since 1894, resigned in the beginning of the year, after a series of stormy scenes in the National Assembly, in the course of which one of the Ministers spat in the face of the President. The cause of these turmoils was the encouragement by Bulgaria of the revolutionary agitation in Macedonia, and a convention which had been entered into by the Bulgarian Government with the Oriental Railway Company for a lease by the Bulgarian State of the portion of that railway which was on Bulgarian territory. The convention would have given the Bulgarian Government full control over the railway, and the Porte, at the instigation it was said of Russia, refused to sanction it, although it had been ratified both by the Bulgarian National Assembly and by Prince Ferdinand, as it was feared that the loan which was to be raised for the purpose of this railway would be used to arm Bulgaria against Turkey. A new Cabinet was formed under M. Grekoff, formerly Foreign Minister in the Stambouloff Ministry, and its first act was to give the Porte assurances of its determination to cease giving support to the revolutionary agitation in Macedonia. Among the .new ministers was the Liberal leader, Radoslavoff, who had been one of the most violent opponents of the convention, and three other Liberals.

This coalition Ministry did not, however, work well together, and its difficulties were considerably increased by the state of the finances, which, owing to a succession of bad harvests, had fallen so low that immediate steps were necessary to prevent a crisis. Various attempts were made to raise a loan, but in vain, and ultimately it was decided to pay part of the salaries