Thus far the theory is not unlike that of the West, but there were two facts which changed the entire situation. The first was the brevity of time of enslavement in most cases; the second was the absence of odium attached to the position of a slave. In regard to the first fact, it was not considered humane to keep persons long in slavery, and it was a general rule to enfranchise them either before their marriage or on their coming of age, or when they had served sufficiently long. Enfranchisement is a voluntary and private act by which the patron frees his slave from the bonds of servitude and puts him into the free class.[33] It is also considered by the Turk to be a noble action, one especially befitting a dying man, who often frees his slaves in his testament. The enfranchisement of slaves was regarded by the Moslem as the highest act of virtue.[34] A less disinterested form of enfranchisement has a pecuniary inducement, the slave buying his freedom from his master.[35] Thus the slave never thought of himself as by nature servile, nor always to be a slave, but could look forward to his freedom in a few years more or less. This fact induced self‐respect and hope. The slave’s dress did not in any way distinguish him from the free man; he was in no way branded. Sir Henry Bulwer said of white slavery in Turkey in 1850, “It greatly resembles adoption, and the children often become the first dignitaries of the Empire.”[36] This statement is confirmed by Fatma Alieh Hannum, a living Turkish lady, who gives a most attractive picture of the home care and affection given to slaves,[37] and my own observation of slavery in Constantinople would bear her out. The condition described by Bulwer would seem also to have obtained in the sixteenth century. George Young in his _Corps de Droit Ottoman_[38] speaks of two systems of slavery in Turkey, the Turkish system and the Circassian system, which have been fused in our day, but of which only the former existed in Ibrahim’s day, and in contrasting them he says: “The Turkish system by its moderation scarcely went beyond the limits of apprenticeship, and could be classed with the voluntary servitude that for a determined time was permitted in some of the European colonies. While the Circassian system fixed the slave forever in the servile class, the Turkish system has always permitted and in some cases prescribed his enfranchisement. Furthermore the social situation of a slave under the Old Regime of the Empire favored his advancement even to the highest office.... The Turkish system made a career of slavery.... Many slaves by birth have played leading roles in the history of the Empire.” The last statement admits of no argument, but the question how far the Turkish system made a career of slavery, and how far slavery was beneficent, demands further consideration.