XLIII. The barbarous maxim, of getting rid of brothers or relations, to remove the most dangerous apprehensions of, or incitements to, insurrections, does not require ingenuity to execute it, but cruelty only. We see the Ottoman emperors have practised it in a variety of ways; some have taken away the lives of their brothers and relations, others have deprived them of sight, and others of liberty, by shutting them up in close confinement. They were all equally apprized of the importance of preventing the danger, but they were not all equally fierce and cruel. Thus in proportion to the degrees of their barbarity, or their fears, their rigour in the practice of the maxim, was greater or less. Mahomed the third, when he mounted the throne, not satisfied with putting to death his whole twenty-one brothers, ordered ten Sultanas, likewise, who were then pregnant, to be thrown into the sea and drowned; whereas others, have contented themselves with confining those who were related to them in a prison, with reasonable accommodations appertaining to it. This great difference in their conduct, did not proceed from their distinct political ideas, but from the diversity of their tempers and dispositions. XLIV. As we are now treating on this subject, this seems a proper occasion, for taking notice of a common error and opinion, which prevails among many people with respect to the Ottoman emperors, viz. that the bloody maxim of sacrificing their own brothers to their safety, in order to their possessing the throne in security, is peculiar to the Ottoman race. This barbarous and atrocious policy, is much more ancient than the stock of Ottoman princes, and was more generally practised by other royal families than by them. Plutarch, speaking of those kings who were the successors of Alexander, and among whom the vast conquests of that hero were divided, says, that cruel maxim was so universally adopted by their descendants, that they considered it as an invariable political axiom, and as a self-evident first principle, indispensably necessary to be adhered to, and which followed of course, with as much certainty as geometrical postulata. _Fratrum parricidia, ut petitiones geometræ fumunt, sic concedebantur, habitanturque, communis quædam petitio ad securitatem, & Regia._ Plutarch. in Demetrio.