armed households large in proportion to their revenues. After the model of the sultan’s household, every _kul_ according to his means built up a military establishment which followed him and his master to war. Immunity from taxation grew naturally out of the slave status. There would be no advantage to the sultan in exacting taxes from persons whom he supported and who were supposed to devote all their energies to his service and use all their income for him. As long as the Ruling Institution was kept firmly to its purpose, pressure was applied, not so that successful _kullar_ would surrender part of their income to the master, but so that they would bring as large a contingent as possible to fight his battles. Suleiman’s grand vizier, Rustem, following a long-disused precedent of the time of Bayezid I,[404]—a reign which had in various ways foreshadowed later evils,—established a tax upon the greater offices of the empire;[405] but, since the sultan did not receive the whole of such charges, the custom amounted to the sale of offices. Not only was such a practice out of harmony with the theory of the Ruling Institution, but it proved very injurious in operation, and was rightly accounted one of the causes of the decay of the empire. The sultan took pay at the granting of an office, and so presently did every official from the men under him; until in time the practice became so systematized that a regular tariff was arranged and brought into use on the occasion of every appointment.[406] Those who thus were put to great expense on coming into office felt the necessity of recouping themselves by whatever means lay in their power.[407] Hence arose not merely oppression of the sultan’s subjects, both Christian and Moslem, but also a partial recovery of losses at the expense of the sultan himself. His servants were forced to devote to personal affairs a large part of the attention that should have been all his, and to curtail by various devices the contingent which they furnished for his military service. When the members of the Ruling Institution began to prey upon each other, the grand vizier, on behalf of the sultan, taking the lead, the solidarity of the institution began to be broken. It may be true that in the West, as Montesquieu said, the honor of a monarchy was not inconsistent with the sale of office;[408] but in the Ottoman Empire it opened the door to fatal corruption.