rrection. It is a natural question to ask whether the Osmanlis,
after centuries of indulgence, have the physical nerve and mental vigour
which carried them forward through such a course of fortunes, till it
enthroned them in three quarters of the world. Their numbers are
diminished and diminishing; their great cities are half emptied; their
villages have disappeared; I believe that even out of the fraction of
Mahometans to be found amid their European population, but a miserable
minority are Osmanlis. Too much stress, however, must not be laid on
this circumstance. Though the Osmanlis are the conquering race, it
requires to be shown that they have ever had much to do, as a race, with
the executive of the Empire. While there are some vigorous minds at the
head of affairs, while there is a constant introduction of foreigners
into posts of authority and power, while Curd and Turcoman supply the
cavalry, while Egypt and other Pachalics send their contingents, while
the government can manage to combine, or to steer between, the
fanaticism of its subjects and the claims of European diplomacy, there
is a certain counterbalance in the State to the depravity and
worthlessness, whatever it be, of those who have the nominal power.

A far more formidable difficulty, when we survey their external
prospects, is that very peculiarity, which, internally considered, is so
much in their favour--the simplicity of their internal unity, and the
individuality of their political structure. The Turkish races, as being
conquerors, of course are only a portion of the whole population of
their empire; for four centuries they have remained distinct from
Slavonians, Greeks, Copts, Armenians, Curds, Arabs, Jews, Druses,
Maronites, Ansarians, Motoualis; and they never can coalesce with them.
Like other Empires, they have kept their sovereign position by the
insignificance, degeneracy, or mutual animosities of the several
countries and religions which they rule, and by the ruthless tyranny of
their government. Were they to relax that tyranny, were they to
relinquish their ascendancy, were they to place their Greek subjects,
for instance, on a civil equality with themselves, how in the nature of
things could two incommunicable races coexist beside each other in one
political community? Yet if, on the other hand, they refuse this
enfranchisement of their subjects, they will have to encounter the
displeasure of united Christendom.

Nor is it a mere ques