tinople of the Latin Caesars should be transformed into the Stamboul of the Ottoman Turks-that a city once acknowledging the graceful mythology of Greece should successively become the seat of the most illustrious councils of Christendom, and at length the capital of an anti-Christian Powerinvolved a destiny of vicissitude too stupendous to have been entertained by the speculation, and too wild to have been conceived by the fancy, of man. Yet the changes of dominion which the surrounding territories underwent were even more numerous and rapid; and no prediction would perhaps have been regarded as more preposterous, in the view of the political prophets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the Constantinopolitan Empire was fast tending to decay, and was threatened by the apparently invincible hostility of surrounding states, than that it was its destiny to be reserved for overthrow by a race which was not then existing on the theatre of the world.

The rapidity with which the Ottoman Turks rose from the most signal obscurity in Asia to the most overwhelming preponderance in Europe is an extraordinary feature even in their unexampled career. Two centuries before Constantinople surrendered to the victorious standards of Mahomet II., their name as a race distinct from the other Turkish hordes was altogether unknown, not simply to the politicians of Europe, but even to the Governments of the. East. Scarcely more than a hundred and twenty years before the gates of Adrianople opened to the arms of Amurath I., the Ottoman sword had obtained no dominion whatever among the tribes of Asia. So lately as the middle of the thirteenth century they are described as a nomad section of a race, dissevered from the great Turkish body, consisting of four hundred families, and protected by some four hundred armed horsemen. These families, too, are described not as a belligerent but as a pastoral community, defended by a small cavalry force against the contingent hostility of the wandering tribes of Western Asia. In this period they were moving slowly but surely to the westward, in obedience to that unvarying impulse which, in all ages, has fixed the tide of universal emigration

towards the plains of Europe. They were then led by one Ertoghrul, a name signifying " the Right-Hearted Man." He died in 1288, and was succeeded in the chieftainship of his tribe by his son Osman, or Othman. Hence the tribe of Osmanli' has attached to the European Turks, and hence that of the House of Othman' to the imperial dynasty of Constantinople. The Sultans of Iconium were then absorbing a large share of the dominion of Western Asia. Ertoghrul had been the vassal of these Sultans; and Othman, in 1307, declared himself an independent potentate. So early as 1301, this Chieftain came into collision with the Byzantine arms, and after successive victories extended his dominion to the shores of the Black Sea, completely surrounding the fortresses of Broussa, Nicomedia, and Nice. In 1326, the former city fell, and became the capital of the Ottoman race. Hence the sanctity with which the Osmanli views the city of Broussa, which is still perhaps regarded as the religious capital of his sovereign, and still possibly is looked to as the eventual refuge of the Ottoman dominion, when the fulfilment of the prophecy universally credited by their race shall compel them once more to seek their fortunes on the soil of Asia.

Having thus passed, in the short space of seventy years, from the condition of a pastoral and nomad band, no larger than the population of a small country village, to an almost uncontested domination over the vast territories of Western Asia, we may cease to wonder at the force of that elastic impulse which sent on the Ottoman race, in a career of unslackening conquest and subjugation, against the representatives of the Roman Power. We may rather thank the energies of the West, in subordination to the beneficent dictates of an overruling Providence, that that career was finally checked, and restrained within the limits of a single empire of South Eastern Europe.

The causes, then, which thus produced the rapid overthrow of the political system of the East are not difficult to penetrate. The vigour which had pervaded the Governments of Western Asia during the first few centuries of the Mahomedan Power, had altogether passed away. Feuds,

dissensions, wars, and a glaring absence of all political centralisation in those vast territories, had made way for the irruption of a resolute and hardy force, guided by a chieftain who appears to have possessed the energy, the genius, and the intrepidity of Charlemagne. This is, perhaps, the most extraordinary incident in the Ottoman career. When such a race had thus emerged into the lands bordering upon Europe, and had once consolidated an Asiatic dominion, their further success required a less powerful impulse. The Byzantine monarchy was now shaken to its base it had been exposed successively to the assaults of the Asiatic states, and to the struggles for independence of the European races whom it had subjugated in earlier campaigns. Moreover, in the period in which this new danger began to threaten the Christian powers, the spirit which developed the crusades had passed away. Europe, in the

fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, during which the struggle between the Turk and the Byzantine took place, was gradually passing from the medieval to the modern age. In that interval she neither possessed those moral elements which would have been essential to the development of crusading war, nor those political elements which would have been essential to the development of modern war. The religious spirit of the crusades had been compounded partly of enthusiasm and partly of superstition; and in the last age of the Byzantine empire neither enthusiasm nor superstition had any force over the minds of men. The political spirit which afterwards devised extensive combinations against distant dangers had not then dawned upon the princes and statesmen of Europe. The House of Plantagenet and the House of Valois were content to waste their energies in mutual slaughter; their political vision did not extend like that of the House of Brunswick and the House of Bonaparte. The struggle between the Turk and the Byzantine was, therefore, for a long period necessarily a solitary one, except in so far as the latter was aided by the naval prowess of the Italian Republics; and it is obvious that by the relative strength of these two

Powers the fate of Eastern Europe must chiefly have been decided.

The reign of Amurath I.-which commenced 33 years after the capture of Broussa and lasted for 30 yearsmarks the first European warfare of the Ottoman Turks. They had then for the first time to encounter the warlike Sclavonians. This hostility soon brought them into collision with the Latin Church. It was undoubtedly a political blunder on the part of Amurath, that he did not discern aright the religious relations of Christendom but his military strategy served to atone for the defects in his political character. The Popes were not unwilling that war should subsist between the Courts of Broussa and Constantinople-that the heretic and the infidel, in a word, should" be set by the ears." But when the Mahometan power began to threaten Hungary, Pope Urban V. immediately preached up a holy war against the Turks. Thus, chiefly at his instigation, Hungary, Servia, Bosnia, and Wallachia leagued against the invaders. But the superior force and ability of the Turks defeated this project, and the infidels were once more victorious. There were then few powers capable of withstanding the House of Othman. Even the chivalry of France, which on a later occasion was arrayed against them, soon yielded to their valour. The Turkish dynasty, though at one time severely shaken by civil war, continued to increase in power, until the declaration of war between the rival governments of the Bosphorus, in 1451, brought about the final overthrow of the Byzantine Empire, and established the Turks in uncontested authority in the East of Europe.

It is not, however, our design on this occasion to follow these dreary annals of barbaric bloodshed and unphilosophical warfare. But it is singular to reflect upon the simultaneous consolidation of all the territories of Europe during this latter half of the fifteenth century which witnessed the triumph of the Crescent at Constantinople. France, under the adroit policy of Louis XI., had strengthened its dominion by the subjugation of its vassals. The progressive amalgamation of the Spanish Governments, which had been formed through the

gradual retrocession of the Mahometan power in that peninsula, had now been consummated in the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand. The Germanic Empire had awoke from the anarchy and dissension which succeeded to the stern rule of its Suabian Cæsars; and the vigorous policy of Albert II., of Frederic III., and of Maximilian I., had gradually restored it to the condition of a powerful government. The civil hostilities waged by Edward IV. in this country simultaneously established the strength and international influence of England. We might quote other examples and to these were added, as perhaps in that period the greatest of all, the empire of Mahomet II. at Constantinople.

It must have seemed, we think, to all the thoughtful politicians of that age, that old Europe (then supposed by many to be near the end of its days) was about to put on a new faceto develope a new character and a new history. Feudalism, indeed, was not a thing gone by. But the extension of individual dominion, and the rise of standing armies, heralded a totally different species of warfare. Contests Iwere to be carried on upon a far grander scale. It became obvious that Europe, after having seven centuries before surmounted the fearful peril of Saracenic subjugation from the West, and after so many ages of fancied security, was now about to encounter a corresponding danger at the hands of votaries of the same religion, from the East. To these threatenings, indeed, of Turkish conquest, we may fairly ascribe the rapid cohesion of Western Europe into a definite political system.

Let us, however, here pause for a moment with the fifteenth century, and consider the character of the political institutions by which Mahomet the Second endeavoured to consolidate his splendid dominion. The two principal sovereigns to whom we may chiefly refer the political construction of the Turkish Empire, in its internal relations, are the second Mahomet and Solyman the Magnificent. The former laid the base, the latter raised the superstructure. These laws, as they stood with the death of Solyman, do not appear to have undergone any signal re-construction, until the revolutionary policy of

Mahmoud, at a period singularly coincident with our own Reform Bill, totally changed the constitution of the Empire. We might fill volumes with a description of the wars that were waged, and of the murders and other atrocities that were committed, under the Turkish rule. Such records, however, as these serve far less directly to elucidate the problem of the Ottoman dominion in Europe.

I. In order to do justice to the greatness of this Conqueror of the Byzantines and Legislator of the Turks, we ought to remember that he was not possessed of those elements of moral dominion by which his successors so effectually strengthened their internal despotism. The Turkish Sultans were not in that day regarded as the successors to the extinguished Caliphate of Bagdad, and consequently were not deemed the representatives of the Prophet. This authority was first secured for them early in the sixteenth century. Not only therefore were the sovereigns of that age devoid of a spiritual character; but in a political system in which religious elements were more closely interwoven than perhaps in any other, much of the supremacy over the Turkish Empire inevitably fell to the share of the Mufti. In this officer, indeed, a large part of the idiosyncrasy of the Turkish system seems to rest. The Mufti was, and is, at once a legal and sacerdotal personage. This union of functions forms the natural and almost necessary incident of a political religion in which the Founder of the Faith was also the Lawgiver of the State. The Mufti at Constantinople may be best described as at once Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. He was, however, removable at the will of the sovereign; but the sanctity of his character invested him with a species of moral independence, which materially trenched, in actual practice, on the exercise of the imperial prerogative of dismissal. His powers varied, no doubt, with the personal administration of the reigning sovereign; but the sacredness of his character is sufficiently demonstrated, in such a government as the Turkish, by the fact that the Mufti appears to have enjoyed an unvarying immunity both from the scymetar and the bow-string!

According to the principles of the

Turkish polity, there existed three supreme sources of law, to which the Sultans recognised a general subordination. These are:-1. The Koran itself. 2. The traditional sayings of the Prophet. 3. The decisions of the four Mahometan patriarchs.-It is singular to observe the analogy which this decision bears to three great sources of law in our Own country-viz., the Statute Law, the Common Law, and decisions of the Four Courts of Chancery, Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer. With this limitation, the Sovereign possessed, by the institutions of Mahomet II., the supreme legislative and executive power; and it is obvious, indeed, that his constitutional power of dispossessing the Mufti, who was the expounder of the law, must have rendered it no difficult task to assert the conformity of whatever edicts he might issue with these three sources of the Mahometan constitution.

When, moreover, we consider that the powers of the Sultan over life and death extend, according to the different theories current in the empire, to the decapitation, without any just cause, of numbers varying from seven to a thousand per diem, we are truly forced to the confession that the interests of Prerogative could scarcely have been carried to a greater height in any commonwealth under the sun. It is obvious, indeed, that popular insurrection could have constituted the sole effectual check on the despotism of the Sultan, with whom the claim of that Right of Petition which so affronted and astonished the House of Stuart, in England, was promptly answered by the immediate decapitation of the petitioning subject. The Janissaries, during the reigns of the elder Sultans, appear to have formed the principal check upon the exercise of the sovereign power. In later periods of Turkish history, the rising of the populace was not seldom appeased by the execution of the existing viziers; but under neither system, of course, has any substantial security been offered for the liberties of the subject.

II.-The Ottoman law of property, on the acquisition of territory by conquest, which was largely illustrated in the institutions of Mahomet II., was ably directed to the maintenance of the Turkish system. Land

-and we here offer a description more fully, we think, describing the scheme of the Ottoman polity than that of the learned professor-was divided into private and public. The former was partly allodial and partly feudal. The allodial was subject, if held by a Mussulman, to a tithe-charge to the State; if possessed by a Christian, to a capitation-tax, together with other burdens far heavier than those which fell upon the true believer. The feudal land was divided into military fiefs, held on the condition of military service, under which a large portion of the Turkish armies were wont to be equipped.

The latter, or public property, recognised a similar subdivision. Of this, one part was allotted to religious and eleemosynary purposes an institution under which the mosques have gradually grown to the acquisition of their present enormous wealth. The other was devoted to the expenses of the Sultan, of the imperial family, and of the officers of government. It is singular to observe how the claims of religion, the necessities of the army, the privileges of individuals, and the dignity of the Crown, established under the Mahometan system a fourfold division of property, almost exactly coincident with that which the commonwealths of Christendom recognised contemporaneously, as existing in the feudal, the allodial, the ecclesiastical, and the royal lands.

III.-If such, then, were the character of the Central Government, and such the territorial law of property, what were, in theory at least, the relations of the Turkish State towards the Christian Provinces which it less completely vanquished? It is clear, by the terms of the Mahometan law, that the fanaticism inculcated by the Koran was simply political, and not religious. This may seem a startling fact, in consequence of the abandonment in practice of this principle during the early Saracenic wars. That "the bended head is not to be stricken off" is an axiom of the Mahometan policy, interpreted to mean that a vanquished Christian principality, on its acquiescence in a payment of tribute to the conqueror, is entitled to the rights of religious toleration.

"The Christian subjects," says Professor Creasy, "of Mahometan powers were bound to pay tribute; they were forbidden the use of arms and horses, they were required to wear a particular costume to distinguish them from the true believers; and to obey other social and political regulations, tending to mark their inferior condition. -vol. i., p. 173.

The extensive modifications of the Turkish policy towards the Christians do not render this description applicable-although perfectly true of three centuries of Turkish history— to the present relation of the Rayas to the Porte.

IV. In accordance with the policy of Mahomet II., and other sovereigns of Turkey, the introduction of foreigners into great offices of state was not deemed incompatible, even in that proud age of the Crescent, with Turkish dignity.

"If we look," says the Professor elsewhere, "to the period when the Turkish power was at its heightthe periods of Solyman I. and Selim II.--we shall find that out of the grand viziers of this period, eight were renegades. Of the other high dignitaries of the Porte, during the same period, we shall find that at least twelve of its best generals, and four of its most renowned admirals, were supplied to her by Christian Croatia, Albania, Bosnia, Greece, Hungary," &c.

This is a very important fact in relation to the existing condition of Turkey, inasmuch as it affords a refutation to the common theory that the present selection of Turkish statesmen and generals (such as Redschid and Omar Pashas) from foreign and Christian ranks, implies the degeneracy of the State. Undoubtedly there must be "something rotten" in the condition of any Government which is compelled to the adoption of a line of policy, which Great Britain would regard as a humiliating degradation. But it is, at least, a system which has prevailed in the most glorious age of the Turkish Empire, and cannot, therefore, be pleaded as an instance of modern degeneracy. It is singular that Venice-the great maritime rival of Turkey-had recourse to the same expedient, so far as her naval and military commanders were concerned, though from a very

different motive. The policy of Venice is obvious enough; but the policy of Turkey it is hard to ascertain, even on the supposition of national stupidity which it is plausibly enough the fashion to allege in these days. For it is certain that the House of Othman itself produced a large proportion of the ablest statesmen and of the most skilful commanders that have figured in the history of the East.

On the principles, then, implied in this fourfold basis; 1.-The supre macy of the Central Government. 2. The territorial laws of property. 3.-The dependence of the Christian Provinces upon the Porte, reciprocally with the toleration of their religion by the Porte. 4.-The introduc tion of aliens into political and military commands:-the whole fabric of the Turkish Government may be said not only to have rested during the ages of Mahometan conquest, but to rest for the most part at the present day.

It is obvious, however, that with all this political power, and all this vast constitutional machinery, Turkey never attained a condition either of social or political civilisation. Government has remained throughout absolutely barbarous. This is clearly evinced by the conduct of successive Sultans in their pacific relations. Professor Creasy's narrative contains a long list of hideous atrocities perpetrated through continuous generations, which can scarcely have been surpassed at the Courts of Tartary and China. Fratricide has been a traditionary axiom of the State. Where assassination is the key-stone of policy, there can be only a condition of the worst barbarism. Schemes for the deposition of ministers, and for the dishe rison of princes, have seldom, if ever, been attempted in Turkey, without reference to the bow-string or the block. In that empire Bills of Attainder, abdication, resignation, and exile, would have been regarded simply as so much formal trifling. Between such processes of equity, and these vindictive retributions of untutored nature, exists all the difference between the civilised systems of Europe and the barbarous governments of Central Asia. Mr. Creasy relates, that on one of the lieutenants of Selim I. respectfully approaching his