Alibeg, in his youth, had been a very great favourite of the Sultan Mahmud: he had been the partner of his childish sports, and, as they grew up, the companion of his more manly amusements. He entrusted him with all his secrets, and generally followed his advice in most matters of importance. Mahmud, therefore, out of gratitude, advanced him to the first office of state in the empire.
Alibeg was a man of a noble and generous heart, and of a complexion of mind very different from those who generally flock about royalty, like drones about the hive, only to rob it of its sweets. The inferior ministers of Mahmud were avaricious, cruel, and oppressive, and sacrificed the ease and happiness of the people to gratify their own pleasure, avarice, and ambition. Alibeg was determined, whatever might be the consequences, to set about a reformation of many shameful abuses.
An attempt of this nature naturally brought upon him the united opposition of the imans and grandees. They first endeavoured to ruin Alibeg in the opinion of the sultan, by charging him with those very crimes, which he was in reality endeavouring to correct; but their endeavours were for a long time ineffectual. The sultan loved Alibeg, and well knew that all the accusations against him were false and groundless.
Men in power, who have no other object in view but the gratification of their unbounded passions, dread nothing so much as the influence which wise and virtuous minds sometimes have over good princes. The wicked courtiers finding they could not prevail on the sultan, by fair means, to give up his favourite Alibeg, called in to their aid diabolical rebellion.
The deluded multitude rose against their best friend, whose only wish was to make them happy, by freeing them from the shameful tyranny in which the ministers and great men held them. What a pity it is, that the lower class of people, on whom the prosperity of almost every nation undoubtedly depends, should be so often blind to their own interest, as to be persuaded, by artful and designing men, to forge fetters for themselves!
The sultan, finding he must either give up his empire or his favourite, consented to the disgrace of Alibeg; but not till the leaders of the rebellion had sworn, by the holy Prophet, that Alibeg should be permitted to retire where he pleased, without being insulted or molested.