rich empire by exorbitant exactions.  Inexorable conquerors and insatiable masters, with one hand they flogged their slaves and with the other plundered them.  Nothing was superior to their insolence, nothing on a level with their greed.  They were never glutted, and never relaxed their extortions.  But in proportion as their needs increased on the one hand, so did their resources diminish on the other.  Their oppressed subjects soon found that they must escape at any cost from oppressors whom they could neither appease nor satisfy.  Each population took the steps best suited to its position and character; some chose inertia, others violence.  The inhabitants of the plains, powerless and shelterless, bent like reeds before the storm and evaded the shock against which they were unable to stand.  The mountaineers planted themselves like rocks in a torrent, and dammed its course with all their might.  On both sides arose a determined resistance, different in method, similar in result.  In the case of the peasants labour came to a stand-still; in that of the hill folk open war broke out.  The grasping exactions of the tyrant dominant body produced nothing from waste lands and armed mountaineers; destitution and revolt were equally beyond their power to cope with; and all that was left for tyranny to govern was a desert enclosed by a wall.

But, all the same, the wants of a magnificent sultan, descendant of the Prophet and distributor of crowns, must be supplied; and to do this, the Sublime Porte needed money.  Unconsciously imitating the Roman Senate, the Turkish Divan put up the empire for sale by public auction.  All employments were sold to the highest bidder; pachas, beys, cadis, ministers of every rank, and clerks of every class had to buy their posts from their sovereign and get the money back out of his subjects.  They spent their money in the capital, and recuperated themselves in the provinces.  And as there was no other law than their master’s pleasure, so there, was no other guarantee than his caprice.  They had therefore to set quickly to work; the post might be lost before its cost had been recovered.  Thus all the science of administration resolved itself into plundering as much and as quickly as possible.  To this end, the delegate of imperial power delegated in his turn, on similar conditions, other agents to seize for him and for themselves all they could lay their hands on; so that the inhabitants of the empire might be divided into three classes—­those who were striving to seize everything; those who were trying to save a little; and those who, having nothing and hoping for nothing, took no interest in affairs at all.