The regime of Midhat Pasha, the father of the Turkish consti tution, as the governor of Nish, was so popular with all races and creeds that his methods were introduced into other Roumelian vilayets. The people elected their provincial councils and criminal and civil courts were first opened in those provinces. On March 1o, 1870, a firman instituted the Bulgarian exarchate, thus severing the Bulgarian Church from the jurisdiction of the Greek patriarch of Constantinople. In 1871, Russia, taking advantage of the weakened state of France, declared herself no more bound by the Treaty of Paris, which had restricted the number of Russia's warships on the Black Sea. An International Conference which met in London in 1871 recognized this by abrogating both the restrictions on Russia and Turkey. The passage of the Straits remained interdicted to warships.
A law promulgated on June 18, 1867, for the first time allowed foreigners to hold landed property throughout the empire except in Hejaz, on condition of their being divested of their right to the protection of their own authorities concerning such property. The grand vizier, Aali Pasha, also made the first amendment to the capitulations by inducing the Powers to accept Turkish juris diction over small cases for their subjects who lived at a distance from consular towns. In 1866 a Bulgarian insurrection, instigated by Russia, broke out in Tirnova on the pretext that the reforms promised by the firman quoted in the Treaty of Paris had not been carried out. Although Midhat Pasha pacified the rising, its real motive, which was nothing less than a desire for national independence, remained unaltered. After the death of such able statesmen as Aali Pasha and Fuad Pasha, Abdul-Aziz became despotic and began to exile people without trial. The palace ex penses increased and financial conditions became worse. Mahmoud Nedim Pasha, who was wholly under the influence of the Russian ambassador Ignatieff, declared that the Government could pay only a 50% annuity on her debts, whereupon Europe considered Turkey bankrupt, and she began to lose the prestige she had gained after the reforms. The agrarian conflict between the Muslim land-owners and the Christian peasantry in Hercegovina now spread to the Serbians and Bulgarians. The atrocities com mitted by the Bulgarians during this rising led the Turks to most sanguinary reprisals in 1875-1876, which turned public opinion in the West against Turkey still more.
A secret revolutionary society, formed at the time of Aali Pasha, and called "the Young Ottomans," was spreading its ideas and influencing public opinion. The great Turkish poet and patriot, Namik Kemal Bey and Zia Pasha, another poet and satirist, fled to Paris and published pamphlets inciting the people to demand a constitutional government and succeeded in smug gling them into every part of Turkey. Midhat Pasha, who shared
the opinions of the Young Ottomans, succeeded in winning over other members of the cabinet for constitutional change, and ob tained a fetva for the deposition of Abdul-Aziz, who was accord ingly dethroned in 1876 with the purpose of establishing a consti tutional regime. A few days after his deposition he committed suicide. His brother, Murad V., who ascended the throne, became insane after reigning three months and was deposed.