It has been said that when Turks dismount from their horses, they become bureaucrats and paper-scribblers.[618] Undoubtedly the Ottoman government gave evidence of the truth of this statement. The twenty-five bureaus of the treasury and the appended bureaus, the three bureaus of the chancery, the treasuries and chanceries of _Beylerbeys_ and _Sanjak Beys_, the offices of the generals of cavalry and infantry, and of the _Umena_ and other household officials without and within, contained some thousands of men whose whole time was occupied in writing, recording, and transmitting laws, ordinances, diplomas, nominations, projects, deeds, grants, orders for pay, receipts, reports, addresses, petitions, answers, and the like. The existence of so many component institutions, connected only at the top and paralleling each other’s activities both near and far, together with the custom of verifying, authenticating, and recording many papers in different bureaus and by different officials, created a vast and growing amount of red tape that in time was greatly to hinder all government business. Even in Suleiman’s day it seems to have been the practice on the part of clerks and officials to demand a private fee for each act of writing or signing or stamping or recording or approving or inspecting.[619] In the time of prosperity, however, this practice can hardly have been so vexatious and dilatory as it became later. The bureaucratic tendency was no doubt based on a desire to keep everything in order by checks and cross-recording; but in the end it defeated its object by employing such a multiplicity of devices that order was lost in confusion. THE DIVAN OR COUNCIL[620] In a land where the law was nearly fixed, and where whatever power of legislation was allowed was definitely lodged in one man, the only deliberation possible was on administrative and judicial subjects. The oversight of these matters was given in charge to a council, the Divan, which held long sessions four times each week throughout the year in time of peace, unless perhaps in the month of fasting. This council was composed of _ex officio_ members who represented (when those who came only on special days are added to those who came each day) all the great component parts of the Ruling Institution. The Moslem Institution also was represented in the two _Kaziaskers_; for the grand vizier and the Divan constituted not only the supreme council of administration but the supreme court of the empire. It was thus not strictly a part of the Ruling Institution, but rather the cap-stone of both institutions, the body that gave final unity, immediately under the sultan, to the organization of the empire.