Now, however, there were signs that the Turks declined to take the good advice of the Powers seriously; and on December 23, when the "full" meetings of the Conference began, the Sultan and his Ministers treated the plenipotentiaries to a display of injured virtue and reforming zeal that raised the situation to the level of the choicest comedy. In the midst of the proceedings, after the Turkish Foreign Minister, Safvet Pacha, had explained away the Bulgarian massacres as a myth woven by the Western imagination, salvoes of cannon were heard, that proclaimed the birth of a new and most democratic constitution for the whole of the Turkish Empire. Safvet did justice to the solemnity of the occasion; the envoys of the Powers suppressed their laughter; and before long, Lord Salisbury showed his resentment at this display of oriental irony and stubbornness by ordering the British Fleet to withdraw from Besika Bay[111]. [Footnote 111: See Gallenga (_The Eastern Question_, vol. ii. pp. 255-258) as to the scepticism regarding the new constitution, felt alike by foreigners and natives at Constantinople.] But deeds and words were alike wasted on the Sultan and his Ministers. To all the proposals and warnings of the Powers they replied by pointing to the superior benefits about to be conferred by the new constitution. The Conference therefore speedily came to an end (Jan. 20). It had served its purpose. It had fooled Europe[112]. [Footnote 112: See Parl. Papers (1878), Turkey, No. 2, p. 114, for the constitution; and p. 302 for Lord Salisbury's criticisms on it; also _ibid_, pp. 344-345, for Turkey's final rejection of the proposals of the Powers.] The responsibility for this act of cynical defiance must be assigned to one man. The Sultan had never before manifested a desire for any reform whatsoever; and it was not until December 19, 1876, that he named as Grand Vizier Midhat Pasha, who was known to have long been weaving constitutional schemes. This Turkish Siéyès was thrust to the front in time to promulgate that fundamental reform. His tenure of power, like that of the French constitution-monger in 1799, ended when the scheme had served the purpose of the real controller of events. Midhat obviously did not see whither things were tending. On January 24, 1877, he wrote to Saïd Pasha, stating that, according to the Turkish ambassador at London (Musurus Pasha), Lord Derby congratulated the Sublime Porte on the dissolution of the Conference, "which he considers a success for Turkey[113]." [Footnote 113: _Life of Midhat Pasha_, by Midhat Ali (1903), p. 142. Musurus must have deliberately misrepresented Lord Derby.]