Public enterprise being at so low an ebb, a spirit of indifference pervades the country and if you once pass the aristocracy, the actual necessities of the community are but few. They have no idea therefore of bettering their condition. If you offer them any new invention, they admire its ingenuity, and dryly tell you they have no need of it--consequently there is no need of patent rights for new inventions.
This indifference is not to be construed into a love of inactivity--but is rather the result of selfishness--each man's interests being circumscribed by the sphere in which he moves. In case of any emergency they are most indefatigable and persevering. It needs only to cite the fact that Pera, one of the suburbs of the city, has, in the course of twenty years, been destroyed by fire four times, and entirely rebuilt by native industry. Indeed, inactivity is against the spirit of the country, for there, there are no Rentiers--but every one must have a calling--even the sultan is traditionally supposed to belong to the tooth-pick trade!
Since the abolition of capital and summary punishments and the monopolies, by the promulgation of of the Tanzimat, which was an attempt at reformation, not without some beneficial results, a new impulse has been given to the activity of the population. In a word, give but the necessary impetus, and as much genuine go-a-headism may be found in Turkey, as in Yankee-land itself.
With such a population, and so many internal resources, it may be deemed a matter of wonder that this empire should be in so ruinous a condition.
The survey that has been taken of the Turkish empire, political and social, will furnish the component parts of this wonderful structure of human power and religious fanaticism. Owing to the remarkable sway attained by the sword of the Prophet, the various ingredients mingled by the power of conquest, have all been brought together, like so many antagonistic elements, to be wrought into some degree of unity of spirit and purpose, and to be rendered subservient to one great potentate, absolute and despotic.
The dread power of the Turk, ravaging and blood-thirsty, has only of late years ceased to inspire terror to the world in general, and to hold in trembling awe the subjects over which it domineered. Suddenly the dark cloud of barbarism began to disperse from this vast clime of the Orient, as Mahmoud, seizing the torch of civilization, scattered the light of science and reform over the land.