Page:The promises of Turkey.djvu/7



nearly forty years the Government of the Ottoman Empire, at the instigation of the Powers of Europe, has been making promises to its subjects—especially to its non-Mussulman subjects. The Hatti-Sheriff of Gulhané proclaimed on the 3rd of November, 1839, the establishment of religious equality. Abd-ul-Medjid, then a boy of seventeen, had just been placed on the throne of his father, Mahmoud II., and the Empire of Othman was in great danger, Mehemet Ali, the victorious Egyptian, was advancing towards Constantinople. He had gained Candia, he was master of a great part of Arabia, he possessed Syria, and there were many in the capital willing to declare him Sultan and supreme protector of Islam.

The peril was imminent. The Powers—substantially the same Powers whose unanimous counsels have now been rejected—interfered, and Mehemet Ali was pressed back to his African dominions, and forced to confine his sovereignty to the banks of the Nile. But in thus preserving the dynasty, the Powers demanded from the Sultan a Magna Charta for the Christians, and this, the result of their first united act of intervention on behalf of the non-Mussulman subjects of the Porte, was produced in the Hatti-Sheriff of Gulhanế, which, after setting forth the several concessions, declared that—

"'These Imperial concessions shall extend to all our subjects, of whatever religion or sect they may be; they shall enjoy them without exception. We therefore grant perfect security to the inhabitants of our Empire in their lives, their honour, and their fortunes.'"

The promises of Gulhanế were promises and nothing more.