As soon as he had filled the principal offices of State with the best material he could find—Chirvani Rushdi Pasha, Djémil Pasha, and Sadik Pasha—the first and most pressing necessity that confronted him was to endeavour to put the Finances in order. This was no easy task. The public accounts presented were entirely fictitious. His first discovery was to the effect that whereas the budget showed a surplus of half a million (£T), there was in point of fact a deficit of three millions. The actual appropriation of the sums debited in the accounts presented another difficulty. A sum of £T100,000 disbursed by the Treasury was not accounted for at all. Midhat insisted on a full inquiry, and, discovering that this sum had been appropriated by the late Grand Vizier, directed an investigation into the matter before the members of the Council of State, who ordered its immediate restitution by Mahmoud Nedim, and recommended his banishment. He, however, alleging in private that this sum in question although nominally attributed to him was really allotted to the Palace, found in the Valide Sultan and her entourage most powerful allies in his duel with Midhat. Banished by the insistence of the Grand Vizier, first to Adrianople and then to Trebizond, he soon obtained permission to return to Constantinople.
Two distinct parties began now to stand out in clear relief. On the one side was Midhat, warmly supported by public opinion in the capital and in the provinces, and by all that was most enlightened among the Softas and Ulemas, headed by Chakir Effendi, and on the other side the whole army of corruption, headed by Mahmoud Nedim and protected by the Valide Sultan and the Palace Camarilla. Another powerful ally of the late Grand Vizier was General Ignatieff, who by the most ingenious and persistent methods—condescending even to the resources of the stage—worked on the mind of the Sultan in order to restore Mahmoud Nedim to power.
An incident soon occurred which brought matters to a crisis. The Khedive of Egypt, desirous of changing the order of succession in his family and of obtaining various privileges and prerogatives from his suzerain, was in the habit of making periodical visits to Constantinople, carrying away with him each time, by judicious payments, some shred of the sovereign rights of the Porte. These visits became a regular source of income and emolument to the Palace and all its myrmidons. Arriving at Constantinople on the occasion of one of these visits he found Midhat Pasha installed as Grand Vizier, and to his surprise and disappointment, and to the discomfiture of the Palace clique, he was obliged this time to return to Alexandria with his presents, re infectâ.
It soon became apparent that one of two things must happen: the Sultan would either have to change the whole régime and scale of expenditure of the Palace, or change his Grand Vizier; and as he never really contemplated the former course, he adopted the latter. The determining cause was Midhat’s action with reference to certain scandals—incidents connected with Baron Hirsch’s railway schemes.
It is only in a despotic country, where State contracts are signed in the dark, and cahiers de charge are examined by carefully chosen experts and passed by complaisant accountants, that such a scandal as the Hirsch railways is possible or conceivable. If the cynicism of the whole transaction had not become notorious, and thus excited as much laughter as its nefariousness caused indignation, it would be worth while to set out in detail all the circumstances of this stupendous business.
To obtain a contract giving unlimited control over the richest forests in the world, on the pretext of cutting sleepers, is in itself a pretty smart stroke of business. To stipulate for payment of railways according to the mileage executed, irrespective of topographical considerations or local requirements, is a triumph of contracting skill; but to claim payment for work done in the plains only, on the basis of an average calculated for working through plains and mountain‐chains alike, is the very glory of financial genius. The secret, too, of the art was as simple as the result was lucrative. Backsheesh in adequate amounts, distributed at appropriate moments in the right quarters, was the alpha and omega of the business.
Midhat, in his determination to strike at the root of the whole system of corruption, irrespective of persons or of consequences, having discovered that the highest person in the land was himself a recipient of the largesses of the Austrian baron, insisted on the restitution of the sums received. The Sultan listened to the advice tendered, returned the money, and dismissed his Grand Vizier.