“This institution of the Nizam-y-Gedid has caused the established order of the world to be disturbed, and has given cause to the insolent conduct of the mountaineers in the country of Rumelia.” Such are the expressions employed by a set of contentious and ignorant men, incapable of learning reason. I have sometimes questioned such persons, saying as follows:—“Ho, friend! allow me in the first place to ask you a question. What is this institution against which you make such continual and senseless outcry? First know precisely what it is, and then continue to oppose it. If there be reason in what you say, I am open to conviction, and am ready to concede the point in dispute.” On hearing this, all they could say was, that what they call the Nizam-y-Gedid, is a body of troops trained and exercised; beyond which, and a mere profession of their aversion to it, they plainly showed that they knew nothing about the matter. Although I saw that an attempt to make this kind of rabble understand public affairs, is like trying to make a camel leap over a ditch, I proceeded to put some questions that occurred to me, as follows:—“Shall I give you some account of the troubles which occurred in the world before the Nizam-y-Gedid existed, during the reigns of their highnesses the former Ottoman Sultans, who have found mercy from God? Such as the disturbances raised in Anatolia by the Gellalli[57], and the insolence of Sarry Beÿ Oglou in the reign of Sultan Mahmoud, and especially the events which passed in Egypt, occasioned by Sacka-Yorghi Alli-Beÿ, the son of a glass-blower; and the affairs of Emir-Daher, of Abou-Vahib, all of which happened during the reign of Sultan Moustapha; and the calamities inflicted by the unemployed Levendis,[58] who turned the province of Anatolia upside down; and the continued bad success which attended the arms of the followers of Islam, for the space of seven years, during the Muscovite war, which began in the year 1182; the defeats which our great armies suffered every year, with the loss of so many thousand tents, such abundance of camp equipage, treasure, artillery, bombs, and military stores, sufficient for the consumption of many years, and so great a loss of our troops, either taken, drowned, or killed, and the capture as well of our small forts and retrenched posts, as of our large fortresses, some of which were reduced by famine and others by force; and the impossibility of delivering so many thousand women and children whom they contained, and who, still remaining in captivity, pass their lives in tears. These are things, the bitter remembrance of which can never be erased from our hearts. Some of these calamitous events may be found in our annals, and some have happened in our days. Pray was the Nizam-y-Gedid the cause of all these disorders and disgraceful occurrences? It did not exist at that time, and yet you see that confusion was already introduced, and the regular order of things interrupted.