There can be no doubt that during the last twenty years a great change has been worked in the establishment of law and order and in the security of life and property. If oppression has the disadvantage of grinding the people and making their lives miserable, it, at all events, has the merit of intimidating them and restraining them from acts of violence and crime. If the unjust judge and extortionate tax-gatherer are taking the heart out of the people, they are taking the pluck out of them, too, and one result is that the stranger can now travel in safety through regions where he was once sure of being plundered and possibly murdered, and walk unmolested through Moslem crowds, where formerly he might have been subjected to insult. Nor is this due to the direct action of any foreign power or to the exercise of any diplomatic pressure in favor of reform. On the contrary, the influence of foreign powers was never so low as it is at present, and I am convinced that all attempts on the part of foreign powers to enforce reforms on Turkey only hinder them. The influence of the sultan and his government is not to be maintained throughout Islam by any action in obedience to the dictates of Christian powers. They resent it, just as the South used to resent the interference of the North in the matter of slavery; but this does not prevent their being alive to any advantages which accrue to the empire by enforcing, as far as may be, a respect for law and order; and, so far as it is possible, to develop its resources without being beholden to foreign capital, or increasing the power and influence of the native Christian population. The difficulty is that the instinct of the Moslem is not in favor of progress, and that he is always outstripped in the race by his Christian neighbour.