_29th July 1881._—“Lord STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL, in rising to ask the Government whether their influence at Constantinople is being exercised to arrest proceedings in the case of Midhat Pasha, said he hoped that in the absence—which he regretted—of the noble earl the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, some member of the Government would be able to give an answer to his question. No doubt all the members of the Government knew what answer to give, because the Prime Minister really decided these matters, and his colleagues must be in possession of his views. The fate of Midhat Pasha was a question in which the people of this country took great interest. There was no doubt that he had not had a fair trial, and obstacles were put in the way of his defending himself. There was little doubt that Abdul Aziz had put an end to his own life; and he thought that the public law of Europe, about which so much had been said of late years, should be put in motion on his behalf. It might be said that public law would be an obstacle to exercising influence to arrest proceedings in the case; but if that were so, public law had been set at nought by every ambassador whom the Queen had employed at Constantinople recently. “Lord STANLEY OF ALDERLEY said he regretted the course which the noble lord had taken as damaging to his consistency, since he usually respected the law of nations; but now he asked the Government to do something which was quite contrary to it. He was not only asking them to obtain a commutation of the sentence passed on Midhat Pasha, but to arrest proceedings. A month ago the noble lord intimated that the Foreign Secretary had not the control of the Foreign Office, but that the Prime Minister had; and the Prime Minister had stated in ‘another place’ that this was a case in which the Government had no right to interfere. The noble lord should have been satisfied with that answer. When Midhat Pasha was Grand Vizier he was responsible for what was going on at Constantinople; and after the time that Sultan Abdul Aziz Khan’s death took place, he did not institute any enquiry into any of the circumstances that had surrounded it. No doubt, it was unfortunate that in the recent trial the Ottoman Government had adopted European forms, and it would have been better if the Turkish Government had followed their own forms of trial in this case. However, he had no doubt that substantial justice had been done to Midhat Pasha. The present question was, moreover, unnecessary, because the sentence had already been commuted, and Midhat Pasha was going into a healthy climate, where there need be no fear on account of his health. Midhat Pasha was a good administrator in Bulgaria, but he had been too much praised for what he had done, and, on the whole, he was an ignorant, rather than a learned man. However, in