t it was when
it came to them. I cannot find that they have commented upon it; I
cannot find that they are the channels of any of those famous traditions
by which the Koran is interpreted, and which they themselves accept; or
that they have exercised their minds upon it at all, except so far as
they have been obliged, in a certain degree, to do so in the
administration of the law. It is true also that they have been obliged
to choose to be Sunnites and not Shiahs; but, considering the latter
sect arose in Persia, since the date of the Turkish occupation of
Constantinople, it was really no choice at all. They have but remained
as they were. Besides, the Shiahs maintain the hereditary transmission
of the Caliphate, which would exclude the line of Othman from the
succession--good reason then the Turks should be Sunnites; and the dates
of the two events so nearly coincide, that one could even fancy that the
Shiahs actually arose in consequence of the Sultan Selim's carrying off
the last of the Abassides from Egypt, and gaining the transference of
the Caliphate from his captive. Besides, if it is worth while pursuing
the point, did they not remain Sunnites, they would have to abandon the
traditional or oral law, and must cease to use the labours of its four
great doctors, which would be to bring upon themselves an incalculable
extent of intellectual toil; for without recognized comments on the
Koran, neither the religion nor the civil state could be made to work.

The divine right of the line of Othman is another of their special
political bonds, and this too is shown by the following extract from a
well-known historian,[88] if it needs showing, to be simply external to
themselves: "The origin of the Sultans," he says, "is obscure; but this
sacred and indefeasible right" to the throne, "which no time can erase,
and no violence can infringe, was soon and unalterably implanted in the
minds of their subjects. A weak or vicious Sultan may be deposed and
strangled, but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor
has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful
sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually
subverted by a crafty visir in the palace, or a victorious general in
the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of
five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the
Turkish nation." Here we have on the one hand the imperial su