members of the First Parliament of the Ottoman Empire. If anything could put life into the rapidly declining descendant of Othman the bone-breaker, it would be the outspoken demand for reform on the part of the still dominant caste, the Turkish minority in the Ottoman Empire, who are themselves all that remain of what was once a body instinct with life.

So far are the Western Powers from being likely to give up readily the protection afforded to their subjects by the Capitulations that, as M. Louis Renault observes in his Paper on the Egyptian Judicial Reform, they have even been accused of stretching those rights. One of the gravamina of the Egyptian Government, in fact, was that the Consular Jurisdiction had been greatly extended by encroachments on the Capitulations. These encroachments, assuming their reality, are certainly evidence of European distrust of the local courts in Mohammedan countries. And this distrust, says M. Renault, was so great that the Viceroys themselves respected it, and endeavoured to meet it by the creation of special commissions for the judgment of suits against foreigners. M. Renault sets forth in the strongest language the fact that the Egyptian Government was obliged to yield to the feelings of the Europeans who, he says, "would certainly never have gone before the local courts either in civil or criminal cases." These statements, it should be noted, are based on the Diplomatic Documents published by the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs in November, 1869, and January, 1875. It should also be remarked that the various governments which agreed to the suspension of the Consular judicial privileges of their respective nationalities, in order to give the proposed International Courts a fair trial, only agreed to that suspension as a temporary measure during the period of five years for which the appointments of the judges were made. The rights guaranteed by the Capitulations are therefore not extinct, even in Egypt, but only suspended

for a definite period, at the expiration of which they will ipso facto revive,* unless a further suspension be then decreed. In Cyprus, however, nothing of this sort has taken place. The Sultan is still "Lord of Cyprus" as he was in the days of Louis XV., and he has not consented to the establishment of any International courts in Cyprus. On the other hand the Western Powers have in no one case known to us suspended any of the rights and privileges accruing to their Consuls and their subjects in Cyprus, or indeed in any other part of the Levant, save Egypt. The conclusion therefore is inevitable, to our mind, that wheresoever throughout the Ottoman Empire the Capitulations have not been "totidem verbis," suspended or abrogated, there they are still in force. And for Great Britain to assume the opposite would be, apart from the grave questions of Law and Fact, a very ungracious return towards at least one of her nearest neighbours on the Continent. For it was very properly pointed out by M. Louis Renault, long before the British administration of Cyprus was dreamed of, that in the first French Capitulation with the Porte, that of 1535, Francis I. caused the insertion of clauses reserving similar rights and privileges for the Pope and the King of England. But neither King nor Pope took advantage of these rights, and for a long time, says M. Renault, the French flag protected the commerce of all Europeans trading with Turkey. We do not, even after the answers given in the House to the questions of the honourable member for Chelsea, know very much about the way in which the Action against Mr. di Cesnola was brought. So far as we can understand, it must have been a mixed action, partly concerning moveables, partly immoveables. It might be interesting, as a

* After the expiration of five years, "if experience is not favourable to the practical utility of the Judicial Reform, it shall be lawful for the Powers either to return to the old state of things, or to make new arrangements with the Egyptian Government." Renault, op. cit.

matter of theoretical justice, to know whether all the somewhat remarkable provisions of Book XIV., of the Ottoman Civil Code were duly carried out. By Art. 1619, it is laid down that the subject of litigation must be determinate, or the action is null and void. By Art. 1620, it is laid down that when the subject is a moveable and determinate, it shall suffice, if it be before the Judge, to show it to him, and if it be not before him to draw up its description and declare its value. If it be an immoveable, it is necessary that its limits should be stated. This requirement is greatly im proved upon in Art. 1623, which enacts that when the subject of litigation is an immoveable, the plaintiff and his witnesses must describe the town or village, the district and street in which it is situated, the property contiguous to it on three or four sides, the names of the owners of such property, and of their fathers and grandfathers.

It will thus be seen that it might prove to be a very serious matter if the British assessor in the Court which condemned Mr. di Cesnola did not see that the presiding Judge, the District Cadi, took care to have put in before him a statement of the value of the soil in which the antiquities claimed by the Ottoman Porte were found, the value of the antiquities themselves, and the names of the fathers and grandfathers of the adjacent proprietors of land on three or four sides of the soil which Mr. di Cesnola had broken up. And if any coins were among his discoveries, it would not be sufficient for the State simply to claim them under the generic designation of money, for by Art. 1626, when money is claimed it is necessary to specify the number of pieces, and the mintage, whether Ottoman, English, &c., and whether the coins be of gold, silver, or copper. There is yet another point worthy of remark: By Article 18 of the Imperial Ottoman Constitution of 7 Zilhidjé, 1293 (23rd December, 1876), it is enacted that, "a knowledge of the Turkish language, which is the official language of the State, is necessary for admission to public

functions." It would be interesting to learn whether the British Assessor in the Cypriot District Court which condemned Mr. di Cesnola, had this necessary knowledge, as if not, he was clearly not a public functionary in the eyes of Ottoman Law, and his presence, or the presence of any such nominal Assessor in any Cypriot Court, must have been, and must continue to be, a work of supererogation, and such works, we know on good authority, cannot be taught without arrogancy and impiety. We should be sorry to think so ill of the British Administration in Cyprus.

II. ON EVIDENCE AS APPLIED TO HISTORY.

I

PROPOSE to take, in illustration of my subject, the character of the Duke of Marlborough as drawn by Lord Macaulay.

All technical rules as to the admission or rejection of evidence in any system or systems of Law, are to be disregarded by the writer or student of history. Admitting everything from which any rational inference can be drawn, still he who has to judge of fact, including character and motive, and in consequence to infer the unknown from the known, must proceed upon sound principles of induction. Whether his inquiry be judicial, scientific, or historical, an investigator is subject to the equal rule of reason.

If the imaginative faculty had been wanting in our most attractive writer of English history, Lord Macaulay, his work would never have become a household book, ministering alike to the amusement and instruction of millions. The critical essayist on history writes to the few. In early youth, that history pleases the reader most which

is mixed with fable and is dramatic in effect. A story in the mouth of an illiterate repeater falls naturally into a dramatic shape. Exaggerations, not immoderate, please and attract. The orientalisms which pervade our Sacred Scriptures tend to make them popular reading. All sacred writings, with which I am acquainted, gratify this popular taste, which one, who writes for the million, almost unconsciously indulges.

Lord Macaulay's style abounds with metaphor. Metaphors are chartered libertines in language. Exaggerations come as naturally from the pen of such a writer as leaves follow the flow of the sap. I translate Lord Macaulay as I read, and when I read of Marlborough as a man of "a hundred villainies, having a seared conscience, and an incurable moral disease," then, since the first is an exaggerated and the two following are metaphorical expressions, I read them, as I read orientalisms in Scripture, with the allowances and deductions which the sense requires.

A great writer, overflowing with knowledge, with an ardent enthusiasm for freedom, the growth of a vehement positive mind, a strong party-man, a suppressed poet endowed with a rich and fertile imagination, setting before himself a lasting work for millions and for all time, will necessarily display all the parts of his nature in his labour of love. His history reproduces himself. As I read it, I seem to hear him once more. Exactness of estimation I did not expect to find in his work, for the character of such painters is to dash off rather than touch and re-touch a likeness. The history, not faultless, is yet a noble work, a lasting rich possession for the lovers of liberty in its true sense, "for who loves that must first be wise and good." We must follow the spirit, rather than the letter, of his history. Johnson ridicules, in Sir John Dalrymple, that style in history which Sir John was not equal to manage, in which secret actions and thoughts of some person are detailed by an author to his reader with the fulness and