“I trust that I have not as yet committed any act compromising the responsibility that I feel, and I desire that the nation should be imbued with the sense of our responsibility towards it, otherwise no satisfactory result can ever be attained.
“It is now nine days, Sire, since you have abstained from giving a favourable answer to my petition. You thereby refuse to sanction laws indispensable to the welfare of the country, and without which our whole previous work will be rendered futile. Whilst Your Majesty’s Ministers are engaged in endeavouring to restore the governmental edifice which has with so much difficulty escaped total ruin, surely Your Majesty would not willingly add to the work of destruction.
“If Your Majesty should in consequence of the above named opinions consider it your duty to relieve me of my functions as Grand Vizier, I would pray Your Majesty to confide them into such strong hands as shall be able to reconcile the principles and ideas of Your Majesty with the necessities of the country and the gravity of the situation in which the Empire finds itself placed to‐day.—I am, Sire, Your Majesty’s humble servant,
“Midhat.
“18th January 1293, O.S.”
xxx(30th January 1877.)
For three days he abstained from going to the Palace.
The Sultan, who was now prepared for extremities, sent Safvet Pasha to him to inform him that all he demanded would be granted and to request him to come to the Palace. Safvet Pasha, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and one of the Turkish delegates at the Conference, was not what would be called a strong Minister. He was prone to conciliation and compromise rather than energetic measures and resolutions; but he was essentially an honest man: duplicity and treachery were absolutely foreign to his nature. If on this occasion he was intended as an instrument of duplicity, it was practised at his own expense, and he was merely an unconscious tool. Midhat, however, demurred to the invitation, and required the necessary Irades to be issued on the matters pending with the Palace, before he resumed his functions as Grand Vizier. Thereupon the Sultan sent his first aide‐de‐camp, Saïd (Ingless) Pasha, to him, to assure him that the Irades were ready, if he would, on the Sultan’s order, accompany him to the Palace. Midhat went. He perceived on his way an unwonted display of troops in the district of Tavshan Tashi, where his Konak was situated, but he was not aware then, on the night of the 4th‐5th February, that the Imperial Yacht Izzeddine was moored close to the marble steps leading up to the terrace of the Palace of Dolma‐Bagtche. If he had perceived it and guessed its purpose, it was too late to retreat, or to escape the snare laid for him. On his arrival at the Palace he was shown into a small ante‐chamber and told to await the Sultan’s orders.
The first aide‐de‐camp soon returned with the Sultan’s order to deliver up his seal of office, and to accompany him.
He then conducted him on board the Izzeddine, which, with steam already up, immediately weighed anchor and steamed off in the direction of the Sea of Marmora with Midhat on board. The Captain of the Izzeddine had sealed orders, which he was only to open in the Sea of Marmora. These orders were, that he should wait for twenty‐four hours in the Bay of Tchekmedje, and if he received no telegram within that space of time, he was to conduct Midhat to any European port on the Mediterranean that the ex‐Grand Vizier might select. No despatch arriving, he proceeded on his course to Brindisi, where he landed Midhat.