paid by tributary subjects, is assessed on the provinces 

 without any attention to the changes of wealth or popula- 

 tion, when these happen to be (diminished by any public 

 calamities, the levying of the impost becomes a work 

 of extermination, and this barbarous government, which 

 expects to effect everything by brute force, desolates the 

 country to punish the poverty of the inhabitants. This 

 wasting of the source of revenue has gone on with increased 

 rapidity of late years, while at the same time peculation 

 frustrates all the intentions of public expenditure. Mus- 

 tapha III. a well-intentioned prince, was blamed by his 

 ministers for his parsimony ; but he excused himself to 

 De Tott by expressing his conviction, that, if he were to 

 make liberal disbursements for the public service, they 

 would only go to feed the avarice of his servants : funds 

 appropriated to public institutions were often diverted into 

 channels of private interest. The attempts of the emperors 

 to maintain schools for military instruction, and to promote 

 by liberal rewards the science of gunnery, appear to have 

 been baffled in a similar manner : even the pay of the Jani- 

 zaries was not allowed to reach undiminished its proper 

 destination ; one third of it at least went to support the 

 pomp of the chief ministers, and the pensions of half a 

 dozen veterans were often accumulated on the head of a 

 single slave. This corrupt system is not an accidental 

 evil, but a vice inherent in the nature of the government, 

 and all the details of office are arranged in accordance with 

 it. The desire of extending a lucrative patronage has in- 

 creased to a prodigious multitude the inferior offices of the 

 Porte; and as these offices are the only school of politics 

 with which the Turkish statesmen are acquainted, it is no 

 wonder that so few objects enter into their field of view, or 

 that while the diplomatic corps of Pera plot the partition 

 of the empire, the divan are wholly intent on pecuniary 

 gains, or the intrigues of the Seraglio. A despot reared 

 in captivity, sensuality and ignorance, ministers raised 

 from the dregs of the people, and still further disabled by 

 the instability of office, religion and law wedded to ignor- 

 ance and abuses, and deeply engaged to resist innovation, 

 such are the props that support the tottering fabric of the 



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