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to all the transactions of the European states, and had observed the power as well as opulence to which the republic of Venice had attained by engrossing the commerce with the East. He now beheld Portugal rising towards the same elevation by the same means. Eager to imitate and to supplant them, he formed a scheme suitable to his character for political wisdom and the appellation of Institutor of Rules, by which the Turkish historians have distinguished him, and established, early in his reign, a system of commercial laws in his dominions, by which he hoped to render Constantinople the great staple of Indian trade, as it had been in the prosperous ages of the Greek empire.* For accomplishing this scheme, however, he did not rely on the operation of laws alone; he fitted out about the same time, A. D. 1538, a formidable fleet in the Red Sea, under the conduct of a confidential officer, with such a body of janizaries on board of it, as he deemed sufficient not only to drive the Portuguese out of all their new settlements in India, but to take possession of some commodious station in that country, and to erect his standard there. The Portuguese, by efforts of valour and constancy, entitled to the splendid success with which they were crowned, repulsed this powerful armament in every enterprise it undertook, and compelled the shattered remains of the Turkish fleet

* Paruta Hist. Venet. lib. vii. p. 589. Sandi Stor. Civil. Venez. part ii. p. 901.

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and army to return with ignominy to the harbours from which they had taken their departure, with the most sanguine hopes of terminating the expedition in a very different manner* Solyman, though he never relinquished the design of expelling the Portuguese from India, and of acquiring some establishment there, was so occupied during the remainder of his reign, by the multiplicity of arduous operations in which an insatiable ambition involved him, that he never had leisure to resume the prosecution of it with vigour.

If either the measures of Selim had produced the effect which he expected, or if the more adventurous and extensive plan of Solyman had been carried into execution, the command of the wealth of India, together with such a marine as the monopoly of trade with that country has in every age enabled the power which possessed it to create and maintain, must have brought an accession of force to an empire already formidable to mankind, that would have rendered it altogether irresistible. Europe, at that period, was not in a condition to have defended itself against the combined exertions of such naval and military power, supported by commercial wealth, and under the direction of a monarch whose comprehensive genius was able to derive from each its peculiar advantages, and to employ all with the greatest effect. Happily for the human race, the

* Asia de Barros, dec. iv. lib. x, a. 1, &c.

despotic system of Turkish government, founded on such illiberal fanaticism as has extinguished science in Egypt, in Assyria, and in Greece, its three favourite mansions in ancient times, was prevented from extending its dominion over Europe, and from suppressing liberty, learning, and taste, when beginning to make successful efforts to revive there, and again to bless, to enlighten, and to polish mankind.

APPENDIX.

I SHALL now endeavour to fulfil an engagement which I came under,* to make some observations upon the genius, the manners, and institutions of the people of India, as far as they can be traced from the earliest ages to which our knowledge of them extends. Were I to enter upon this wide field with an intention of surveying its whole extent; were I to view each object which it presents to a philosophical inquirer, under all its different aspects, it would lead me into researches and speculations, not only of immense length, but altogether foreign from the subject of this Disquisition. My inquiries and reflections shall therefore be confined to what is intimately connected with the design of this work. I shall collect the facts which the ancients have transmitted to us concerning the institutions peculiar to the natives of India, and by comparing

* See page 23.

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