Thus to the highest office of all, the Grand Vizierate, men of long administrative experience have been appointed. So soon as the Sultan had submitted to the will of the people, the then Grand Vizier, Ferid Pasha, and his ministers had to go, for they were too closely connected with the Hamidian system to be trusted; but the three Grand Viziers who have so far succeeded Ferid—Said Pasha, Kiamil Pasha, and Hilmi Pasha—have all taken a prominent part as servants of the State under the old _régime_, Said and Hilmi having already been Grand Viziers on several occasions. Said Pasha, the first Grand Vizier under the new _régime_, has been the Sultan’s friend and adviser—disgraced at intervals like the rest—from the commencement of the reign. First, as the Sultan’s secretary, he helped his master to overthrow Midhat Pasha’s Constitution and to destroy the power of the Sublime Porte. A few years later, as Grand Vizier, he encouraged the Sultan in his Pan-Islamic dreams, and in his effort to deprive the Christians in Turkey of their ancient privileges. He had proved himself an upright and strong man, and in his old age he had modified his views and recognised the evils of the despotic system which he had helped to build up, but he was scarcely the right sort of man to be Prime Minister under a constitutional government, and it is not astonishing that his term of office lasted for but a few days. His first mistake was in the execution of the Imperial _Iradé_ that liberated all political prisoners. He took it upon himself to free all the criminals as well, letting loose upon the capital, at that critical time, a crowd of murderers and robbers. The ever-watchful Committee, mindful of Said’s career, suspected that he had acted thus in order to cause disorder in the city, and so injure the cause of the Young Turkey party in the interest of the reactionaries. A week later a discovery was made that precipitated the crisis. Said, while drawing up a statement of the principal points of the Constitution, to which the Sultan’s signature was to be appended in token of adhesion, had altered a clause so as to leave the appointment of the Ministers of War and Marine to the Sultan, instead of to the Grand Vizier, as had been laid down by Midhat’s Constitution. To leave the control of the army in the hands of the Sultan was to place more trust in his word than the Young Turks were willing to do. So the Committee, as guardian of the nation’s hard-won liberty, gave the word that has to be obeyed. Said had to resign, and his Ministers of War and Marine were at once placed under arrest, as a precautionary measure.