Let us return to the classes of slaves spoken of above. Some, we saw, were put into public works; these could have found no career in their forced labor, although they might have bought or otherwise earned their freedom, and then have made a career for themselves. Some were owned by private individuals where they were given no opportunity to rise, although life in a private house, as in the case of the widow of Magnesia, might prepare a slave for a career. But the only slaves who would naturally have an opportunity for a career were those who served in the royal palace or in the house of some important officer. To them slavery truly opened a career. We cannot perhaps agree with Mr. Young that the Turkish system “made a career of slavery”, but it certainly was no barrier to a career, and it even opened up such opportunities as could not come otherwise to a Christian youth, nor indeed to most Moslem youths. The mild and even beneficent quality of Oriental slavery has been maintained by many writers. Busbequius, writing from Constantinople in Suleiman’s reign, commends Turkish slavery on economic grounds, and then, moved by the contemplation of this fatherly system, bursts into a defence of slavery in general.[39] Robert Roberts in his monograph says that the condition of slaves in modern Moslem lands is “not so bad”, and that the slavery he himself saw in Morocco “is only formally to be distinguished from Christian service”.[40] The Baron de Tott speaks of seeing Moslem slaves in 1785 “well fed, well clothed, and well treated,” and adds, “I am inclined to doubt if those even who are homesick have in general much reason to be satisfied with their ransom. It is possible in truth that the slaves sold into the interior parts of the country, or to individuals who purchase them on speculation, are not as happy as those who fall to the lot of the sovereign or the grandee. We may presume, however, that even the avarice of the master militates in their favor, for it must be confessed that the Europeans are the only people who ill‐treat their slaves, which arises no doubt from this cause,—that they constitute the wealth of the Orientals, and that with us they are means of amassing wealth. In the East they are the delight of the miser; with us they are only the instrument of avarice.”[41] In interesting support of de Tott’s idea that Oriental slaves might not care to be ransomed is the fact that after the treaty of Carlowitz, when the Porte engaged to set European prisoners at liberty for a ransom, and did attempt to do so, there were a large number of captives who rejected their liberty and their fatherland.[42]