find, on comparing the rate of the haratch in the island of Cyprus with that in the most fertile parts of Thessaly (which two places exhibit the extremes of population in Turkey), that while individuals in Cyprus are taxed twelve piastres, the rayahs of Thessaly pay only two piastres and a half per head. This, however, is not the case in the capital: the rayahs there have been denominated free and happy, when their condition has been compared with that of the tributary subjects who are placed at a greater distance from the centre of this vast monarchy. The payment of the legal taxes is indeed enforced with no less rigour than in the remotest provinces, but the more immediate presence of the sovereign protects the rayahs from extortions practised in the name, and under the authority, of government. The amount of the capitation tax is therefore levied on the inhabitants of the metropolis in its due and legal proportions, and being carried to account in the public registers conformably with the certificates issued, must represent with tolerable precision the state of the rayah population within the circuit or jurisdiction of the capital; and if it do not enable us to ascertain the number of the inhabitants, may at

least assist us in forming a judgment on the accuracy of results from other calculations. Now it has been asserted in a late publication, that the total population of the city of Constantinople does not amount to three hundred thousand souls, and this conclusion is said to be drawn from calculations founded on the annual consumption of corn and cattle, the number of deaths within the city, and the extent of ground which it occupies. But the same author asserts, that he has ascertained the receipts of the haratch in Constantinople and its environs to be two thousand nine hundred and sixteen purses, or about a million and a half of piastres; therefore, on taking six piastres as the medium contribution, and one rayah in four as subject to this tax, we shall find, that the number of tributary inhabitants alone, which is confessedly inferior to that of the Mahometans, amounts nearly to a million of souls. Again if we compare the result of the receipts of the haratch for Romelia and Anatolia with the total population of the empire, according to the statements of both as given by the same author, we shall be scarcely less astonished at the difference. The total of the revenues arising from the haratch is as

serted to be about twenty millions of piastres, which, according to the proportion before established, should correspond with a population of between thirteen and fourteen millions: but what a vast disagreement between this conclusion, which respects the rayahs alone, and the total population of the Ottoman empire, as estimated by the same au thor! "If we take it for granted," he says, "that there were fifty millions of people on the continent two centuries ago" (which indeed must be considered as the maximum of the population of Turkey when in its most flourishing state), "that the births are to the burials as twelve to ten, or that one in thirty-six die every year in the common course of mortality, or that the number of births to the living are as one to twenty-six, twentyseven, or twenty-eight, or any calculation more favourable to the increase of population, we shall still find the mortality occasioned by the plague, taken on an aveage, would reduce these fifty millions to little more than ten at this day." But the pro

1

*See Survey of the Turkish empire, p. 41, 45, 272, 279, 280, 283.

I find, in Rigaud's généalogie du grand Turc, &c. p. 46, the following notice of the rayah population in the Turkish empire

monopoly,

gress of depopulation, in countries so pro-
ductive and so favourably situated as are
those which compose the Ottoman empire, is
infinitely over-rated in this calculation. The
errors of
government, to which even the ex-
istence of the plague is to be attributed, are
combated and extenuated by the vigorous
fecundity of nature: under the most faulty
and depraved system of administration, a
genial climate and a luxuriant soil animate
the human race to bear up against tyranny
and oppression; and in spite of all the ex-
cesses of arbitrary power, the intolerance of
fanaticism, and the madness of superstition,
the bounties of nature, diffused over the
smiling vallies of Europe and of Asia, con-
tinue to encourage industry, to alleviate toil,
and to charm, almost into the forgetfulness of
misery, an inexhaustible succession of native
inhabitants.

The public treasury is also augmented by the produce of monopolies, as in the instance

in the fifteenth century." On fit le compte au temps du Sulthan Baiazie, on trouuoit qu'il auoit sous son empire vn million cent et dix mille Chrestiens, payans tribut, sans les autres Chrestiens qui sont ses vassaulx, qui sont affranchis par priuilege, sans les enfans des Chrestiens, qui sont petits et ne sont point encores en aage de payer tribut.">

of bread-corn, which the grand signor receives from the provinces, at a very low rate, and sells out in retail to the bakers, at such prices as he thinks proper to fix.

The general evils of vicious administration are augmented by the limitations which are imposed by government, not only on the exportation of native produce necessary for the support of life, but on its free circulation through the different parts of the Turkish empire: and no regulation is more injudicious than the arbitrary fixation of the price and other conditions of sale between the dealer and the purchaser. The corn-trade at Constantinople is under the inspection of the istambol effendi, a magistrate of the order of ulema, to whom are confided the ordinary government and civil jurisdiction of the metropolis: his naïh presides in the office called un capan, which is situated on the shore of the harbour between the Seraglio point and the Fanal. All ships loaded with grain, whether from the Black Sea or the Archipelago, discharge their cargoes at this wharf. The naïb keeps a register of the quantity delivered, and after fixing the price to the merchant, distributes the corn to the bakers in such quantities and on such terms as he judges