With such a percentage, were the sale repeated fifteen times, the original cost of the land would be doubled; so that there is an effectual check upon land speculation. Apart from this, the vakuf system is ruinous both to the community and to the government. If a man wants to raise a sum of money, by mortgaging his property for three months only, besides the customary interest of the country, which is 1 per cent., he has to bear the enormous expense of the transfer and retransfer, which amounts, as has been said, to 6 per cent. This added to the 3 per cent., the interest for the three months, making altogether no less than 9 per cent. for three months! This is not all. The natives not being allowed the privilege of borrowing foreign funds, by mortgaging their own property, are reduced to the necessity of resorting to their own capitalists, who usually demand 2 or 3 per cent. a month! The whole of this vakuf land, or church property, occupied and unoccupied, pays no taxes, so that a most profitable source of revenue is unavailable to the government. The immense incomes of the vakufs are partly appropriated to the erection of mosques, hospitals, schools, fountains, baths, and other charitable institutions; and above all to the support of the Ulema themselves. But there is always an immense surplus, which lies dormant with previously accumulated hoards, unless resorted to for the promotion of some of the fanatical schemes and personal aggrandizement of the Ulema themselves. These men, thus rendered independent of the government, and possessing unbounded influence over the minds of the superstitious people, and being, in fact, the ultimatum of every hope and project, have been the greatest barriers to national improvement; for, surrounded by wealth, and themselves of the lowest origin, they attach an undue value to worldly possessions; and trained in religious bigotry, they resist all innovations as infringing upon their own interests, temporal and spiritual; so that in destroying the janissaries, and leaving the Ulema unmolested, Sultan Mahmoud did but half the work of reform. CHAPTER XII. REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE. The revenue of the government is about thirty-six millions of dollars, and is thus divided: