the institution of the tribute children was the very keystone of the Ottoman dominion. They won the empire for the Turk and they kept it for him.... During the most brilliant days of Ottoman greatness the native Turks were well-nigh brought down to the condition of a subject caste. Manumitted bondmen from the East, voluntary renegades from the West, Greek and Slavonic tribute-children directed the councils and commanded the armies of the Sultans. A Grand Vizier or a Captain Pasha born in the faith of Islam was indeed noted as a portent. Never did the craft and subtlety of devil or man devise such a tremendous engine of tyranny. The chains of the conquered nations were riveted by their own hands. Their best blood was drawn away to provide against any degeneracy in the blood of their conquerors. Their strongest and fairest children, the most vigorous frames and the most precocious intellects, those whom nature had marked out as chiefs and liberators of their own race, were carried off to become the special instruments of their degradation. This fearful institution, combined with the possession of Constantinople, and with the marvelous hereditary greatness of the ruling family, preserved the House of Othman from the common fate of Oriental dynasties. According to a long prevalent opinion, the Osmanlis are a Turkish race who achieved the conquest of Asia Minor before they invaded Europe and before they became masters of the Byzantine Empire. The fact is they had subjugated the entire Balkan peninsula before they obtained possession of more than the northwest corner of Anatolia, and had maintained Adrianople as the Ottoman capital eighty-seven years before Mohammed II, after the conquest of Constantinople, transferred it to its present location on the Bosphorus. Nor were the Osmanlis, even in their earliest days, composed entirely, as is so often asserted, of Turkish nomads from the East. Far from it. They were welded from the heterogeneous elements--Greeks, Carians, Phrygians, Galatians, the followers of Osman, and other peoples who then inhabited the north-western part of Asia Minor. And, as early as the reign of Orkhan, the son and successor of Osman, this complex blending of peoples became not only a distinct race but a race with a national consciousness. So far are the Osmanlis from regarding themselves as heirs of the Seljukian Turks or as transformed Turkomans that they have always endeavored to remove this erroneous impression which has so long prevailed concerning their people. The distinguished historian, Mouradja d’ Ohsson, declares: