Outwardly, Abdul Hamid had the manners of a gentleman, but inwardly he was as mean a villain as could be found in the purlieus of his capital. He was avaricious to an extreme, and though his expenditure was most lavish and his charities wide, he amassed immense wealth, which he invested secretly through German bankers against the rainy day which he expected. When it came and he was deposed, amid universal execration and loathing, his life was spared in the hope mainly of extracting from him these secret investments. He was not above receiving bribes himself, on a great scale, from financiers in search of concessions. He did nothing to check the chief evil of Turkish rule—the sale of offices and the necessity for officials to recoup themselves for their outlay by local exactions. Though he was not without some instincts for good government, and was free from any fanaticism, his system was such that everything went to the bad in his reign, and that many years of peace, after the treaty of Berlin, were attended by no improvement in the condition of his people, but the reverse. The result of his policy was that his Empire suffered a greater dismemberment than had been the bad fortune of any of his predecessors, and as he monopolized power, he must be held mainly responsible for its evil results. At the very outset of his reign Abdul Hamid was confronted with most serious questions affecting the integrity of his Empire. In 1875 an outbreak had occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the result not merely of misgovernment by the Turkish pashas and officials, their rapacity and exactions, and of the system of farming the taxes, but of a vicious agrarian system. The great majority of landowners, though of the same Slav race as the rayas, the cultivators of the soil, were Moslems by religion. Their forbears had become so when the Ottomans conquered their State in order to save their property. They were as rapacious and fanatical as any landowners of Turkish race in any part of the Empire. No Christians were employed in the administration of these provinces. The evidence of the Christian rayas was not admitted in the courts of law. Justice or injustice could only be obtained by bribes. The police and other officials lived by extorting money from those whom it was their duty to defend.