About the beginning of the Armenian revolt there was an energetic revival of the reform agitation. The would-be reformers earnestly tried to upset the misrule of the Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid. They wanted a brave Sultan to rule over a brave people; they wanted an honest sovereign, not an intriguer, clever enough when his personal safety is concerned, but otherwise a lunatic, who has shut himself up in his fortified palace for the last six-and-twenty years; they wanted a worthy Caliph, who would impress the Mohammedan world with the fact that as a Mohammedan power Turkey had a respectable position among the civilised powers of Europe; they wanted a responsible Turkish Ministry, not a cosmopolitan clique of adventurers, whose misrule brought the very name of the Turkish nation into contempt. Persecution of some twenty-five thousand Young-Turkish adherents did not prove sufficient to suppress this movement. Therefore the Sultan had to devise further ingenious means for bringing it to naught Many of his spies fled to Europe as though they were Young-Turks, and joined the different Young-Turkish committees; they reported secretly everything they discovered concerning them to the Sultan, and tried to sow discord among the members. As most of the fugitives depended for their livelihood on their resources in Turkey, the Sultan succeeded in driving them into the utmost destitution by cutting off these resources. Meanwhile his emissaries came forward with large sums of money and with promises of appointments in Government offices, to induce the refugees to return to Turkey. Some of them accepted the pecuniary assistance of his benevolent Majesty, and therefore lost the sympathy of the Turkish people. Certain office-seekers and concession-hunters, some of whom were not Turks at all, pretending to be Turkish reformers, published seditious papers in London and elsewhere in order to blackmail the Sultan, and in this way brought shame upon the honour of the Young-Turks. Thus the Young-Turkish movement is disorganised, but it has not been wholly suppressed. It may reorganise its forces, and continue its campaign against the Yildiz monsters, though in a pacific manner; because an armed uprising against the tyranny of Abd-ul-Hamid by the Turks alone would be represented in Europe as prelude to a 'massacre of the Christians.' Moreover, such a revolution would be a bloody one, for Yildiz Kiosk is guarded by armed men of different races, hostile to one another. Besides, in case of an extreme danger to his person, the Sultan would open the gates of the capital to the forces of the traditional enemy of Turkey, as he has on more than one occasion hinted. CHAPTER XII. ENGLAND AND THE CALIPHATE.