So Strongly Have Sultans Of Morocco Felt This, That Many Anecdotes Might
Be Cited Where The Emperor Has Indemnified The Foreigner For Injury Done
To Him By His Own Subjects, Whilst He Has Represented To Them That He
Has Decided The Case Against The Stranger.
It is surprising how a
British Government could surrender the settlement of the dispute of
their subjects to the
Final appeal of the Court of Morocco in the
nineteenth century, and, moreover, allow them to be decided, according
to the maxims of the Mohammedan code, or comformable to the Moorish law!
It is not long ago since, indeed just before my arrival in Morocco, that
the Emperor decided a dispute in rather a summary manner, without even
the usual Moorish forms of judicial proceedure by decapitating, a
quasi - European Jew, under French protection, and who once acted as the
Consul of France.
There is something singularly deficient and wrong, although to persons
unacquainted with Barbary, it looks sufficiently fair and just, in the
provision - "he (the English guilty subject) shall not be punished with
more severity than a Moor could be," fairly made? In the first place,
although this does not come under the idea of "serious personal injury,"
would the English people approve of their countrymen suffering the same
punishment as the Moors for theft, by cutting off their right hand?
Moors and Arabs have been so maimed for life, on being convicted of
stealing property to the value of a single shilling! Who will take upon
himself to enumerate the punishments, which may be, and are inflicted
for grave offences?
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