The Eastern tyrant orders any individual to be seized and put to death for a look, much more for a mutinous word. He walks through his capital, perhaps in disguise, and settles some dispute between his subjects by ordering one to give up his property to another, because he thinks, upon a moment’s inquiry, that the latter has a right to it, or merely because his caprice makes him lean to one rather than the other. He hears a charge against a man, and at once strangles him on the spot; or he takes a dislike, and, without any pretext at all, kills him, and sells his family for slaves. He covets some one’s house, or garden, or jewel, or wife, and instantly seizes it, or kills the owner that he may take it. Even this is not the worst that the people suffer; for, were this all, men might be safe by keeping at a distance, and the despot cannot be everywhere. But where he himself is not, his deputies, his bashaws, or, as in some countries they are called, his beglerbegs, are, and their subaltern oppressors. Each has all the sovereign’s prerogatives in his own person; and though they are all liable to be summarily punished, not only by removal, but by being strangled with the bowstring sent to be inflicted upon them, and although the prince does now and then so punish wicked governors, yet he has a direct interest in their exactions; for one of his largest revenues is the succeeding as heir to all persons in his service; and in case they should conceal, or secretly make over to their family the gains they have made in the public service, the Sultan, during their life, squeezes the money from them, and puts them to the tortures by the bastinado--severe strokes on the soles of the feet--and by other torments, in order to discover their property. The bowstring is used in a way quite characteristic of the Turkish despotism. The Sultan, or his vizier, if he be the person ordering the punishment, sends an officer, generally one of very inferior rank, to the bashaw who has been complained of, and whose conduct has, behind his back, been examined by the government at Constantinople. He carries a bowstring with him, and the order of the Sultan in writing, sealed with the imperial signet, dipped into black ink, and signed with the Sultan’s cipher of toghra. The bashaw, if he has a power in his hands which enables him to set the sovereign at defiance, and to rebel against his authority, avoids seeing the messenger, and puts him to death on some pretext, as having him waylaid, and representing him as killed by banditti. But if not, he at once, on receiving the messenger’s communication, kisses the sealed paper and the bowstring, bares his neck, and allows the man to strangle him, when his body is either buried privately, or thrown to be devoured by dogs, according as the people, or the troops, at the seat of his government, are well or ill disposed towards his person.