THE DEPOSED SULTAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 15025, 21 June 1912, Page 7

THE DEPOSED SULTAN.

ABDUL HAMID INSANE. By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright. Constantinople, June 19. It is reported that Abdul Hamid, the deposed Sultan of Turkey, is insane. DEPOSED SULTAN'S CAREER. Abdul Hamid 11., whose intrigues to restore the old system of absolute rule in Turkey resulted in his downfall in 1909, wa* born on September 22. 1842, and succeeded to the throne on the deposition of his 'elder brother, Sultan Murad V., on August 31, 1876. He has always had a great dread of disease, and fear of death. The late monarch, who has earned for himself the designation of "Abdul the Damned," has always hated Great Britain with a permanent and ineradicable hatred this feeling dominated his whole policy, and caused him to tolerate Germany, * which otherwise he disliked. England had alwayc been the friend of the Eeform party in Turkey and the Sultan was the great reactionary who had trodden the Reform party in the dust. But, worse than that, England, pretending to help Turkey against Russia in Asia Minor, took possession of Cyprus as'a "place of arms." Now, to j the Sultan the sting lay in this, that Cy-1 prus was his private appanage, and net part of the State. The whole revenue of Cyprus went to the Sultan's privy purse. But, worse still, at firet the English paid over the Cypriote revenue—about £95,555 a year—to Constantinople, but after the Gladstonian Ministry came into power, in 1880, this revenue was diverted to pay interest on the Turkish debt, emptying the Sultan's private purse into the lap of the European bondholders.