evil, marks the presence of a life internal to the political
community itself. Some authors indeed maintain they have a literature;
but I cannot ascertain what the assertion is worth. Rather the tenor of
their annals runs thus:--Two Pachas make war against each other, and a
kat-sherif comes from Constantinople for the head of the one or the
other; or a Pacha exceeds in pillaging his province, or acts
rebelliously, and is preferred to a higher government and suddenly
strangled on his way to it; or he successfully maintains himself, and
gains an hereditary settlement, still subject, however, to the feudal
tenure, which is the principle of the political structure, continuing to
send his contingent of troops, when the Sultan goes to war, and
remitting the ordinary taxes through his agent at Court. Such is the
staple of Turkish history, whether amid the hordes of Turkistan, or the
feudatory Turcomans of Anatolia, or the imperial Osmanlis.

3.

The remark I am making applies to them, not only as a nation, but as a
body politic. When they descended on horseback upon the rich territories
which they occupy, they had need to become agriculturists, and miners,
and civil engineers, and traders; all which they were not; yet I do not
find that they have attempted any of these functions themselves. Public
works, bridges, and roads, draining, levelling, building, they seem
almost entirely to have neglected; where, however, to do something was
imperative, instead of applying themselves to their new position, and
manifesting native talent for each emergency, they usually have had
recourse to foreign assistance to execute what was uncongenial or
dishonourable to themselves. The Franks were their merchants, the
Armenians their bankers, the subject races their field labourers, and
the Greeks their sailors. "Almost the whole business of the ship," says
Thornton, "is performed by the slaves, or by the Greeks who are retained
upon wages."

The most remarkable instance of this reluctance to develop from
within--remarkable, both for the originality, boldness, success, and
permanence of the policy adopted, and for its appositeness to my
purpose--is the institution of the Janizaries, detestable as it was in a
moral point of view. I enlarge upon it here because it is at the same
time a palmary instance of the practical ability and wisdom of their
great Sultans, exerted in compensation of the resourceless impotence of
the barbarians whom they