Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1887 — ABDUL HAMID. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ABDUL HAMID.

Hi.’ Fear of Plots—A Euler Who Read* Fetitious. The present Sultan is a man who sits quaking in hrs kiosk at Yildiz with his nerves all unstrung from fear of plots and his ears wide open to every suggestion for securing, not the safety of his dominions, but his own personal safety, writes a correspondent. To see him go to the mosque on a Friday in a closed carriage is a humiliating spectacle to old Turkish officers, who remember how proudly Abdul Medjid and Abdul Aziz used to ride on horseback through crowded streets to St. Sophia.

Abdul Hamid never lets anybody know an hour beforehand to which mosque he will go for the Selamlik. Visitors who have been invited to view the sight from the corps de garde opposite the new mosque, which stands close to the palace gates, , watch regiment after regiment march up the hill to Yildiz without any certainty that the ceremony will be held at this partiular mosque after all. It often happens that of a sudden cavalry and infantry, visitors in cabs and carriages, and sightseers on foot have to make a stampede down hill and race off to some other mosque a mile away. Yet, if there is any danger for the Sultan’s life and liberty, it can only be in his own palace, t.ud not in the streets. Wherever he goes men bow before him in abject reverence. He could ride through any part of the city without risk of harm, and if by mischance some madman were to raise a voice against him the insult would be instantly avenged by any Mussulman standing near. Faith in the Sultan’s power and justice is kept up among the people by the privilege which the humblest folk enjoy of presenting petitions to his Majesty. While the troops are being marshaled for the Selamlik, you may see a small crowd of wretched-looking people of both sexes with petitions in their hands, who are being ranged by a court official in a conspicuous position on the road which the Sultan has to pass. Flourishes of trumpets announce his Majesty’s coming; thousands of soldiers in fez, caftan, and turban—black troops from Nubia and brown-faced soldiers from Thrace—present arms and raise guttural cheers; about a hundred field marshals, generals, and staff officers, blazing with stars and walking eight abreast, precede his Majesty’s carriage, and then the Sultan himself is seen for just a few seconds. Though it may be a beautiful autumnal day, neither cold nor hot, he sits either in a brougham or in an open carriage with the hood up. If there be visitors of distinction in the corps de garde he leans forward for an instant and makes a sign of the hand. Again he is seen for half a minute as he descends from his carriage and mounts the steps of the mosque, where he turns round and salutes the whole crowd by lifting his two fingers to his fez. Meanwhile an aid-de-camp has run forward to collect all the petitions, which are placed in one of the imperial carriages, and it seems that these petitions are always read, and that many of them are granted to the full in a high-handed, lordly, capricious way, which makes the dispensation of imperial grace somethingJike the drawing of a prize in a lottery. Ito we ver, every case of lavish bounty or of wrong redressed (and there are some such cases every week) strikes deep on popular imagination and serves in a clumsy fashion to keep official extortioners and bullies in order. One hears of pashas dismissed through the petition of old women who have tramped to Yildiz from the most distant villages of Arabia. These things are .not fiction; and, in all that relates to the sudden setting-up or the sudden setting-down of placemen, the rule of Abdul Humid differs little from that of Haroun-al - Raschid.