A Turkish sovereign, if he should be judged by the body of that law to have acted against its principles, (unless he happens to be secured by a faction of the soldiery,) is liable to be deposed on the sentence of that law, and his successor comes in under the strict limitations of the ancient law of that country: neither can he hold his place, dispose of his succession, or take any one step whatever, without being bound by law.
Thus much may be said, when gentlemen talk of the affairs of Asia, as to the nearest of Asiatic sovereigns: and he is more Asiatic than European, he is a Mahomedan sovereign; and no Mahomedan is born who can exercise any arbitrary power at all, consistently with their constitution; insomuch that this chief magistrate, who is the highest executive power among them, is the very person who, by the constitution of the country, is the most fettered by law.
Corruption is the true cause of the loss of all the benefits of the constitution of that country.

The _practice of Asia_, as the gentleman at your bar has thought fit to say, is what he holds to; the constitution he flies away from.

The question is, whether you will take the constitution of the country as your rule, or the base practices of those usurpers, robbers, and tyrants who have subverted it.

Undoubtedly, much blood, murder, false imprisonment, much peculation, cruelty, and robbery are to be found in Asia; and if, instead of going to the sacred laws of the country, he chooses to resort to the iniquitous practices of it, and practices authorized only by public tumult, contention, war, and riot, he may indeed find as clear an acquittal in the practices as he would find condemnation in the institutions of it.

He has rejected the law of England.