It is certain that the commerce of Turkey has increased of late years, thanks to the efforts of Greeks, Armenians, and Franks of all nations. The annual value of the exports and imports of the whole of the Ottoman empire in Europe and Asia is estimated at £40,000,000—a very small sum, if we bear in mind the resources of these countries, their many excellent harbours, and their favourable geographical position. The Turks themselves perform but a very small share of the work that is done in their empire. Various causes combine to render them less active than the other races. They are the governing class, and their ambition naturally aspires to the honours and the luxury of _kief_; that is to say, of sweet idleness. Despising everything not Mohammedan, and being, besides, heedless and of a sluggish mind, they but rarely learn foreign languages, and are thus in a certain measure at the mercy of the other races, most of whom speak two or more idioms. Moreover, the fatalism taught in the Koran has deprived the Turk of all enterprise, and once thrown out of his ordinary routine, he is helpless. Polygamy and slavery are likewise two causes of demoralisation. It is true that the rich alone can permit themselves the luxury of a harem, but the poor learn from their superiors to despise women, they become debased, and take a share in that traffic in human flesh which is a necessary sequence of polygamy. Yet, in spite of the innumerable slaves imported in the course of four centuries from all the regions bordering upon {148} the Turkish empire; in spite of the millions of Circassian, Greek, and other girls transplanted into the harems, the Osmanli are numerically inferior to the other races of the peninsula. This dominant race—if the term race be applicable to the product of so many crossings—hardly numbers ten per cent. of the population of European Turkey. And this numerical inferiority is on the increase, for, owing to polygamy, the number of children surviving in Mohammedan families is less than in Christian families. We are not in possession of precise figures, but there can be no doubt that the Turks are on the decrease. The conscription, to which they alone are subject, has contributed towards this result, and becomes more difficult from year to year.