In fact, the firmans of reform now and again issued with so much ostentation have never been looked on by good Moslems as binding, because the chief spiritual functionary, the Sheikh-ul-Islam, whose assent is needed to give validity to laws, has withheld it from those very ordinances.

As he has power to depose the Sultan for a lapse of orthodoxy, the result may be imagined.

The many attempts of the Christian Powers to enforce their notions of religious toleration on the Porte have in the end merely led to further displays of Oriental politeness.
[Footnote 86: "Islam continues to be, as it has been for twelve centuries, the most inflexible adversary to the Western spirit" _( History of Serbia and the Slav Provinces of Turkey,_ by L.von Ranke, Eng.edit.p.

296).] It may be asked: Why have not the Christians of Turkey united in order to gain civic rights?
The answer is that they are profoundly divided in race and sentiment.

In the north-east are the Roumanians, a Romano-Slavonic race long ago Latinised in speech and habit of mind by contact with Roman soldiers and settlers on the Lower Danube.