On the morning of the 23rd December, 1876, in the big open space in front of the Sublime Porte, facing the apartments reserved for the Sultan, a large platform was erected, profusely decorated with Turkish flags. Hither all the notabilities and Ulemas and Ministers were convoked to hear the promulgation of the new Constitution which, in the view of its promoters and supporters, was to inaugurate a new era for the sorely tried empire of the Osmanli. It might indeed have been a day marked in red, the greatest date in Turkish history. As it was, it was only the first act of a stupendous comedy.
The notabilities were now assembled, and in spite of a downpour of rain, an immense crowd of people came to witness and applaud the ceremony. The troops lined the road between Sirkedji and the Sublime Porte, and along it, at mid‐day. Saïd Pasha, the first Secretary to the Sultan, in full uniform, preceded by a military band, arrived at the Sublime Porte, bearing the Sultan’s letter (Hatti Humayun) of promulgation, addressed to the Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha, and the text of the Constitution. The letter ran as follows:—
Rescript (Hatti Humayun) of the Sultan promulgating the Ottoman Constitution.
“My Illustrious Grand Vizier, Midhat Pasha,—The power of Our Empire was lately declining. Foreign affairs were not the cause of this, but men had strayed from the right path in the administration of home affairs, and the bonds that attached Our subjects to the Government had been relaxed. My august Father, the late Sultan, Abdul Medjid, granted a Charter of Reform, the Tanzimat, which guaranteed, in accordance with the sacred law of the Cheri, life, property, and honour to all.
“It has been in consequence of the salutary effect of the Tanzimat that the State has, up to the present time, been able to maintain itself in security, and that We have been enabled to found and proclaim this day the Constitution which is the result of ideas and opinions fully expressed.
“On this auspicious occasion I desire to recall with a feeling of special devotion the memory of My late august Father, who has been rightly considered the regenerator of his country. I doubt not that he would have himself inaugurated the Constitutional era that we are about to enter this day, if the period of the promulgation of the Tanzimat had been adapted to the necessities of our own times. But it has been to Our reign that Providence has reserved the task to accomplish this happy transformation, which is the supreme guarantee of the welfare of Our peoples. I thank Heaven for allowing me to be its instrument.
“It is evident that the principle of our Government had become incompatible with the successive modifications introduced into our internal organisation, and the increasing development of our foreign relations. Our most earnest desire is to cause the disappearance of all obstacles to the full enjoyment by the nation of all the natural resources it possesses, and, in a word, to see Our subjects put into the possession of rights which appertain to all civilised society, and to be united together in a common bond of progress, union, and concord.
“In order to attain this object it was necessary to adopt a salutary regular organisation, to safeguard the inalienable rights of the Governing body by the abolition of faults and abuses of all kinds, which result from illegality—that is to say, from the arbitrary power of one or more individuals: to accord the same rights and to prescribe the same duties to all the members of the several communities composing our Society, and to enable them all to profit, without distinction, by the blessings of liberty, justice and equality—these being the only possible methods of guaranteeing and protecting the interests of all.
“From these essential principles flows the necessity of another eminently useful work: viz., that of connecting Public Right with a deliberative and constitutional System. That is the reason why in the Hatt that We promulgated on Our accession to the Throne We declared the urgency of creating a Parliament.