Special political bonds

The divine right of the line of Othman is another of their special political bonds, and this too is shown by the following extract from a well-known historian, if it needs showing, to be simply external to Gibbon.

themselves. “ The origin of the Sultans”, he says, “ is obscure; but this sacred and indefeasible right” to the throne, “ which no time can erase, and no violence can infringe, was soon and unalterably implanted in the minds of their subjects. A weak or vicious Sultan may be deposed and strangled, but his inheritance devolves to an infant or an idiot; nor has the most daring rebel presumed to ascend the throne of his lawful sovereign. While the transient dynasties of Asia have been continually subverted by a crafty visir in the palace, or a victorious general in the camp, the Ottoman succession has been confirmed by the practice of five centuries, and is now incorporated with the vital principle of the Turkish nation”. Here we have on the one hand the imperial succession described as an element of the political life of the Os- manlis,on the other as an appointment over which they have no power; and obviously it is from its very nature independent of them. It is a form of life external to the community it vivifies.

Extraordinary vigour and talent

Probably it was the wonderful continuity of so many great Sultans in their early ages, which wrought in their minds the idea of a divine mission as the attribute of the dynasty; and its acquisition of the Caliphate would fix it indelibly within them. And here again, we have another special instrument of their imperial greatness, but still an external one. I have already had occasion to observe, that barbarians make conquests by means of great men, in whom they, as it were, live; ten successive monarchs, of extraordinary vigour and talent, carried on the Ottomans to empire. Will any one show that those monarchs can be fairly called specimens of the nation, any more than Zingis was the specimen of the Tartars? Have they not rather been the Deus e machind, carrying on the drama, which has languished or stopped, since the time they ceased to animate it?