We have said above, that hereditary aristocracy has never been established by the side of despotism; and this is, perhaps, the reason why the Ottoman nation has remained in a state of barbarism. They who have studied the march of human societies know that it is by the aristocracy that the manners and morals of a people are formed, and that it is in the middle classes that knowledge has its birth, and civilization begins.[88] The absence of an aristocracy in oriental governments, not only explains to us the fragility of those governments, but it assists us also in explaining why progress has not been made in a country where nothing distinguished the men from each other, where no one had sufficient influence to guide the crowd, or was sufficiently elevated to serve as an example or model. In consequence of the indifference of the Turks for the arts and sciences, the labours of industry, agriculture, and navigation, were confided to their slaves, who were their enemies. As they held in horror everything new, or that they had not brought from Asia with them, they were obliged to have recourse to foreigners for everything that was invented or perfected in Europe. Thus the sources of prosperity and power, the strength of their armies and their fleets, were not at all in their own hands. Every one knows what the Turks have lost by neglecting to learn or to follow the progress of the military tactics of the Europeans. At the battle of Lepanto, disorder was introduced into their fleet entirely from their having promised liberty to their sailors, who were all Christians. Some modern writers, seeking everywhere for similitudes, have compared the janissaries to the pretorian cohorts. This comparison has nothing exact in it: among the Romans, the empire was elective, and the pretorians got possession of it for the purpose of putting it up to sale. Among the Turks, the idea of choosing their prince never suggested itself to the minds of either the people or the soldiery. The janissaries contented themselves with disturbing the government, and keeping it in such a state of disorder, that they could never be dismissed, and might always remain masters. All their opposition consisted in preventing any amelioration whatever in discipline or military usages. The abuses and prejudices the most difficult to be destroyed in a nation, are those which adhere to a body or a class in which power happens to be placed. All-powerful despotism was never able to overcome the opposition of the janissaries and spahis; and those redoubtable corps, which had so effectively contributed to ancient conquests, became the greatest obstacle to the making of new ones.