text: [4] "All classes from the noble to the peasant are alike oppressed; yet it is amusing to hear them expatiate on the institutions of their country fancying it the freest and themselves the least oppressed of any people on earth! They are constantly talking of the tyranny and despotism of Oriental governments without having set foot in any of those regions or knowing any thing about the matter except what they have gleaned from the imperfect accounts of superficial travellers--deploring the state of Turkey Persia and other Mahommedan countries and calling their inhabitants slaves when if the truth were known there is not a single kingdom of Islam the people of which would submit to what the English suffer or pay one-tenth of the taxes exacted from them