In a word, all classes in the empire are learning that religion is a matter of conviction and life, and not of form, and that it manifests its true character in the acts of its followers, and not in the boasted declarations of its leaders. XXIII. AMERICAN RIGHTS It has been stated by American officials in 1895 and 1896 that the missionaries, having forced themselves into Turkey against the will of the government, had no legal rights there and no claim to protection. The officials who made these statements must have been wilfully ignoring the facts of recent history. The missionaries were supported and encouraged by the three sultans, Mahmud the strong, Abd-ul-Medjid the weak, and Abd-ul-Aziz the weaker. They stand on a firm basis of treaties, special enactments, and concessions,—a basis in which the present sultan, with all his acuteness and his hatred of mission work, could find no flaw. Had it been possible to argue with a shadow of plausibility that the mission was against the law, or that it was not guaranteed by enactments inviolable even by a sultan protected by the six Powers, the property would have been destroyed and the mission silenced. The attempt was made, but failed; and the action of officials who destroyed mission property at Kharput, etc., was ostensibly disowned. Further, the action of strong, free American life in Turkey must always tend to strengthen the movement there towards that freer and more elastic order which belongs to all the English speaking peoples. But, though the mission work has, undoubtedly, exerted a great influence on the political situation in Turkey, the mission policy has studiously and consistently been non-political, and has zealously inculcated the doctrine of non-resistance and obedience to the existing government. —PROF. W. M. RAMSAY, D. C. L. in Preface of “Impressions of Turkey.” The right to exercise their functions as a class possessing special privileges had been granted to ecclesiastics of Christian nations by the voluntary extension of the Edict of Toleration of 1453 given by the Ottoman government after the fall of Constantinople. Turkish usage for nearly four hundred years was the warrant for the entrance of American missionaries into the country and their assurance of immunity from official molestation.