Mr. Bell on the growing power of Russia. 339 
succession of ignorant and incapable viziers,—whilst the sultans 
slumbered in the Haram, these elements began to operate, and de- 
cline commenced, a decline more rapid than the growth. The 
conquests of the Turks were not over tribes of the same religion 
with themselves, for in that case an amalgamation of the victors 
and the vanquished would have been the natural consequence ; but 
ever people and nations of a faith hostile to that of the conque- 
rors; and as compulsion, but not conviction, is the ruling principle 
of the Islamitish creed, so unless they conquered the minds as well 
as the bodies of the vanquished, amalgamation was impossible. It 
was one of the greatest misfortunes of the Ottoman empire that its 
wide spread population had a diversity of religious creeds, which 
not only severed the great mass from the religion of the conquerors, 
but even from each other, as the Greek, Arminian, Jacobite, Nes- 
torian, Catholic, and Maronite creeds, besides Zizides and Druses, 
avowedly hostile to the doctrines of the Koran. This medley of 
religious opinions, by producing mutual and persevering hatred and 
hostility, weakened the internal state of the empire. There is no 
hatred like religious hatred, and it is destructive to the happiness 
and strength of a state. It totally prevents that moral and_politi- 
cal union, that concentration of patriotic feeling, which, when 
brought to bear in one focus, insures the independence of a coun- 
try. It was impossible, therefore, that an empire of such discord- 
ant materials could be strong, and what strength it did possess and 
could exert, lay in the conquerors themselves and their progeny, 
the Mussulman population. In European Turkey the Mohame- 
dans do not compose one-fourth of the population, and in Asiatic 
‘Turkey not above two-fifths; or, in other words, out of a supposed 
population of 22 millions for both, not above one-third, or 7 mil- 
lions, profess the creed of Mohamed, including Koords and Arabs. 
The whole number of genuine Turks does not perhaps exceed 
5 millions, and these rule all the rest. We only speak from mere 
ealculation. Such a disproportionate number to the rest of the po- 
pulation could never furnish very numerous armies ; and even in 
the time of Solomon the Magnificent, when the empire was in its 
best state, that sultan had not above 150,000 men of a disposable 
army. With such a discordant population, hateful to, and hating 
each other—with an exclusive intolerant system of faith which pre- 
cluded every other, and thereby produced, preserved, and fomented 
the irreconcileable hate of two-thirds of the population,—how could 
such an empire exist for any length of time, and how can its exist- 
ence be now prolonged against the increasing power of an empire 
whose political maxim and conduct are directly the reverse? The 
Turks have no efficient military force to oppose the Russians ; they 
have no navy, and never will, as the independence of Greece has 
now deprived them of sailors. Mahmood abolished the disorderly 
ill-organized janissaries, once the military arm of the state, but for 
a long time fitted only to disturb, not to defend an empire. He at- 
tempted to introduce European tactics, and form soldiers capable 
