So totally, indeed, had the Turks failed to keep any of their promises of reform and so hopeless did the condition of these hapless Christians appear, that they at first refused the mediation of the Powers, declaring that they preferred death to Turkish rule. "If you are not willing to help us to attain our liberty," they said, "at least you can not compel us to enter into slavery again. We will never fall into the hands of the Turks alive." About this time Turkey partially repudiated her national debt, pledging for the payment of the interest for some five years the tribute from Egypt and the tobacco revenue. Bondholders became aroused. Commercial interests, not interests of humanity, prompted some action; for if the Christians, who are the cultivators of the soil, were exterminated, what would become of their per cents.? The Powers intervened by the Protocol, known as the Andrassy Note, which proposed among others the following measures:-- 1. Religious liberty, full and entire. 2. Abolition of the farming of taxes. 3. A law to guarantee that the direct taxation of Bosnia and the Herzegovina should be employed for the immediate interests of the provinces. 4. A special commission composed of an equal number of Mussulmans and Christians to superintend the execution of the reforms proclaimed and proposed. 5. The amelioration of the rural population. The representatives of the six powers under instructions from their governments supported these measures of reform before the Porte, all of them heartily, except the English minister, Sir Henry Elliott, who acting evidently under secret instructions, expressed his belief that they would amount to nothing; and his fear that they trenched upon the right of the Ottoman Porte to manage its own affairs without foreign interference. The Grand Vizier did not reject them, but replied that he was preparing a constitution which would, he believed, embody these and other measures of reform. The Powers believed or affected to believe these brilliant promises. England even tendered to the Sultan the cordial expression of her hopes that "he would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects and restoring order." And this meant, as England ought to have known and as all the world knows now, that the Turks might put it down in the only way the Turk ever does put down a rebellion--with fiercest cruelty. It meant liberty from British interference while they proceeded to slay, kill, torture, burn, outrage, violate men, women and children with fiendish lust and delight. These promises of reform were made February 10, 1876, and the Turks' answer to the cordial expression of the hope of England that they would soon succeed in quelling the revolts of his subjects, was the awful Bulgarian horrors executed by the orders of the Porte during the first two weeks in May.