The war declared by Russia was the necessary result of the policy which Abdul Hamid had proposed to follow. Having exiled Midhat Pasha, and closed Parliament without having executed a single reform, he was equally obliged to crush every liberal tendency in order that he might monopolise the supreme power, and spared no effort to rid himself of every force that was capable of thwarting his designs. He now began to get secret information as to the opinions of all the principal Ministers and Generals, and took care at once to deprive of all power those whom he feared might be dangerous to him. The contradictory instructions that he gave to the Generals, the absurd military orders that he issued from his Palace of Yildiz, were transmitted after reports which attributed revolutionary designs to certain of his Generals—designs which they were far from cherishing—had reached him. It was in consequence of these suspicions on the part of the Sultan that the Commander‐in‐Chief Abdul Kerim and the Marshal Suleiman Pasha were brought before a Council of War and condemned, _not_ on account of faults committed, but simply because one of these two chief officers had participated in the deposition of the Sultan Abdul Aziz, and the other was known to have liberal opinions. The Sultan’s efforts were crowned by the Treaty of San Stefano. The Circular of Prince Gortchakoff, which had appeared in the Official Journal of St Petersburg on the 9th April 1877, showed that what Russia had wished to obtain from Turkey by the Conference of Constantinople, differed but very little from the conditions which she imposed on the Porte in the Treaty of San Stefano, a fact to which Lord Salisbury rendered due justice in his despatch of 1st April. Although the Cabinet of Great Britain had firmly stated its intentions of not entering into the quarrel, the general interests of Europe and the special interests of England were so deeply involved in the dispute, that it was impossible for that Power not to be obliged sooner or later to take some share in the proceedings. The intervention of England, although unhappily it came rather late in the day, led to the Congress of Berlin, which blotted out the Treaty of San Stefano. As Midhat Pasha, however, played no part in the Russo‐Turkish War, nor in the events that followed, we will pass over them, and relate the vicissitudes of his journey in Europe, including the interviews which he had with the heads of States and celebrated politicians. Midhat arrived at Brindisi, 11th February, 1877, and after a few days’ rest left for Naples, where he had at first wished to live, withdrawn from the world and its capitals. The following statement, which we reprint from the _Neue Freie Presse_ of Vienna, was made by him on the future of the Constitution:—