The striking way in which the Ottoman Ruling Institution, when regarded as a government, limited its operations almost exclusively to its own affairs seems to have resulted from its character as a single slave-family. Although its essential character is somewhat obscured by the facts that it was by far the largest slave-family in the empire, that it had ruling authority, and that some of its members exercised general governmental functions, it is nevertheless true that the legislation of the sultans and of Suleiman himself was largely directed to the regulation of the institution itself, most laws of wider and deeper import being included in the almost unchangeable Sacred Law. The business of the viziers was also largely that of the institution, aside from the fact that the grand vizier, as representative of the sultan, headed also the justice of the empire. The imperial treasury, again, was concerned, in the first place, with obtaining the revenues due to the sultan, such of them as did not come from his personal rights as the owner of domain lands being farmed out, so that the government did not even here touch the people directly. In the second place, the revenues were paid out to the members of the institution as soldiers, servants, officials, and members of the royal family. All who followed the sultan to war without belonging to his great household provided their own support. Even the officers of local government, though appointed from his _kullar_, were supported by the assignment of lands which they administered themselves by means of the Ruling Institution. The sultan’s chancery was similarly confined in its operations to the preparation and registration of acts, decrees, commissions, and the like, most of which were concerned with the adjustment and operation of the Ruling Institution. Finally, the officers of the army and the government rendered and administered justice to all the _kullar_, besides deciding many law cases under imperial laws. To a very great extent, then, the sultan’s government was that of a large slave-family, which secured its own interests and managed to the best advantage its own affairs, which cared little for the welfare of the great majority of the people of the empire, and which had dealings with them and attended to their affairs only when obliged to do so by the pursuit of its own aims. THE SULTAN AS HEAD OF THE STATE AND OF THE GOVERNMENT