In the program of the Ruling Institution the policy of avoiding heredity of nobility fitted in exactly with the slave system, the educational scheme, and the army arrangements; for the knowledge that every man was considered to be “his own ancestry,” and that increased honor and privilege depended on achievement alone, made every ambitious member a devoted slave, an indefatigable learner, and a dauntless warrior. The reasons for this policy, the method of applying it by advancement through merit, and the vivid impression which it made on thoughtful Western observers have been described already;[420] but for its observance an additional reason of great weight may be mentioned. Not only did it prevent the accumulation of property and power in the hands of the members of one family, but it allowed no influence to become intrenched in the offices of central and local government. No _Beylerbey_ or _Sanjak Bey_ could hope to rebel successfully. All were “but strangers and foreigners in the countries they ruled,”[421] and held their positions by the most insecure tenure. The Ottoman Empire was not destined to go the way of that of Charlemagne or of the Seljuk Turks. Whatever decay it might undergo, it could not break up into small independent states under officials who had converted their governorships into sovereignties, so long as its two great institutions were maintained consistently.[422] Against this policy two main tendencies conspired, both based on “human nature,” the strife of favor against merit, and the desire of the excluded to share in privilege. The first was liable to disturb the order of promotion, the second to open the system to the sons and descendants of the officials and to other Moslems. No one but Selim the Grim was fitted to maintain the policy rigidly against such pressure. Suleiman yielded a little on the first point, in such matters as the promotion of Ibrahim and Rustem;[423] and the second began in his time to gain ground at the bottom, by the admission of sons of Janissaries to the ranks of the _Ajem-oghlans_. Within a generation after his death, however, the flood-gates were to be opened.[424] The body of Janissaries and the body of _Spahis_ of the Porte were gradually but swiftly to be made Moslem and so cut off from the Ruling Institution; the age at which the pages passed out of the palace was to be postponed; and in time the divided Ruling Institution was to cease to be the admiration of the West and was to become its laughing-stock. But Suleiman was spared the sight of such a decadence. Near the end of his reign, after Rustem and Roxelana had ceased to disturb, the system brought to the top one of the greatest of Ottoman statesmen, Mohammed Sokolli. At about the same time the Moslem Institution also raised up a great legist, Ebu su’ud.[425] These two upheld the institutions and the empire at the height of their glory for nearly thirty years, of which fifteen lay after the death of Suleiman.