But what is remarkably singular, the Turks, when they rose against a prince of the Ottoman dynasty, preserved a profound veneration for that dynasty. They immolated the tyrant to their vengeance, and were ready to immolate themselves for the tyranny. Thus license, in its greatest excesses, always respected despotism; and what carried disorder to its highest pitch was, that despotism in its turn respected license. The Turks lived in this state of decline as in their natural condition. Nothing is more remarkable in history than the carelessness of a nation in the midst of a revolution that is dragging it down to its ruin; and this revolution with the Turks was not brought about by new ideas, but by old ideas, not by love of liberty, but by habits of slavery. They respected the causes of their ruin, because these causes were connected with the history of barbarous times; and religion, by constantly repeating to them that “he who is in the fire ought to be resigned,” prevented them from seeking a remedy for the ills they suffered. Among nations which incline towards destruction, in the very bosom of corruption a certain politeness, a certain polish or elegance of manners, may be observed. The Turks, on the contrary, had a brutal and savage corruption, and their empire grew old without the nation’s losing anything of that fierceness of character, of that proud roughness, which belong to the infancy of society. We shall be asked why Christendom did not take advantage of this decline of the Turks to drive them back again into Asia. We have seen in this history, that the nations of Christian Europe were never able to combine and agree for the defence of Constantinople, when it was attacked by the Turks; and they showed no more inclination to combine to deliver it after it was taken. We may add that the less redoubtable the Turks became, the fewer were the efforts made to conquer them. They inspired, besides, no jealousy in the commercial nations of Christendom. It was in vain that fortune placed them between the East and the West; that she rendered them masters of the Archipelago, of the coasts of Africa, of the ports of the Black Sea and the Red Sea: their finest provinces were deserts, their cities were abandoned. Everything perished in the hands of an indolent and unpolished people. The Turks were spared, because they made no use of their advantages; and because they were, to employ an expression of Montesquieu’s, the men the most fit to hold great empires carelessly.