matter of fact, where it may be possible to place the evenness of the balance above all suspicion. On this ground we should suggest, that the Consul of the complaining party should be an assessor of the Consular Court, and as such, entitled to bring to the attention of the Court any involuntary shortcomings on its part to give due regard to the evidence produced on the part of the complainant.

We forbear to go into further details, but we venture to think that an International Court of the character above sketched out, will be more likely to prove acceptable to the civilised nations of the world than a further development of a system of Naval Courts, as instituted under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1854, and amended by the Merchant Shipping Act Amendment Act of 1855. But we must not omit to make a few observations about the necessity of a common Law. We are not disposed to think that offences. on the sea can reasonably be dealt with on precisely the same principles as offences on the land. The driver of a waggon on terra firma has more control over his course if he meets another waggon, than the oarsman of a barge on the River Thames if he meets another barge. There is something in the navigation of vessels on the high seas, "quod pendeat ex insidiis fortunæ ;" and if it be found expedient to institute International Courts to punish culpable negligence in not observing the International rules of navigation, our own Merchant Shipping Acts have set us an example in defining the offences of mariners on the high seas and in fixing their appropriate punishments.

But after all, the true remedy for these wholesale sacrifices of human life by the collision of ships is not to be sought for in new and enhanced penal enactments against the parties in charge of them. The bane of the present day is the excessive speed of the steam vessel; the antidote must be found in the superior safety of her construction. It has been recently ascertained, with a totally different object in view, that iron steam vessels may be without

difficulty constructed in compartments so adjusted that, although a compartment may be so sorely wounded as to fill completely with water, the buoyancy of the other compartments will be sufficient to keep the vessel afloat. It is in this direction that the attention of the Board of Trade may be properly directed, so that after a certain period no sea-going steam vessel should obtain a certificate as a seagoing passenger steam vessel unless she be divided into water-tight compartments. The various Corporations of Maritime Assurance may also co-operate in promoting the building of iron vessels with similar compartments for the conveyance of goods, by reducing the rate of assurance in the case of vessels so constructed. Of two things we may rest assured, that iron will become more and more the ordinary material for shipbuilding, and that a fast vessel will always be regarded as the most brilliant feather in the cap of the shipbuilder. The last discovery has been the application of steel (a condition of iron) to shipbuilding under circumstances, which have enabled a steam vessel to attain the speed of twenty-five knots an hour on the waters of the Thames. The circumstances however, under which such vessels shall be allowed to put forth all their speed, will deserve serious attention from the Governments which think it fitting to employ them. Meanwhile, there can be no doubt that every measure which tends to secure a more careful observance of the International rules of navigation, tends to diminish the hazard resulting from the increased speed, at which the various mail steamers traverse the ocean under heavy penalties if they do not keep their time. It is for England to set an example to other nations of securing for the passengers on board of British steamships the greatest possible degree of safety on the high seas. The risk of life in our iron steamships need not be greater than it was formerly when only wooden ships were in use, and when the pen of the Roman satirist described the condition of those who ventured on the high seas as that of men who

lived within a few fingers' breadth of death: "digitis a morte remoti, aut quatuor aut septem, si sit latissima tada." It should be the triumph of modern science to make the iron ship safer than the wooden ship. The chances are at present that an iron ship, not built in water-tight compartments, will prove to be little more than an iron coffin for her passengers, if she comes into collision with another iron vessel and receives the blow anywhere else than on her stem.

TRAVERS TWISS.

WE

II. LAW IN CYPRUS.

our new

E have gained a new acquisition. The press generally, and writers of the usual flow of "ad captandum" publications and articles, have rung the changes on the phrases "our new colony," "our dependency," neither of which appears to us to be either an adequate or an accurate description of the nature of our new acquisition. It is easier indeed to say what Cyprus is not, than what Cyprus is, in its new relation to the Crown of Great Britain and Ireland. It is not a fresh gem added to the Imperial Crown, for in so far as it may be worthy of being counted a gem, it is still a gem of the Padishah's Crown. The allegiance of the Cypriots has not been transferred to us, but we have, out of our benevolent interest in alleviating the difficulties of our Ottoman brother and ally, undertaken to lighten his burden of Administrative Reform by relieving him of the labour of administering the Government and collecting the revenue of the island. We have started a newspaper, and are organising a body of. native police, two palladia of the British Constitution

without which our rule would not be perfect. The new policemen, it appears, are “Turkish," whatever that phrase may mean in the hands of Our Special Correspondent in Cyprus, and they take an oath to be "faithful to the Queen of England in Cyprus." If any members of the force were to take a vacation and go to Rhodes, it is to be presumed that they might conspire against the "Queen of England in Cyprus" without breaking their Cypriot oath. What would happen if the Shadow of God upon Earth, the Commander of the Faithful, were to order these "Turkish " policemen in Cyprus to break the oath which the British High Commissioner has administered to them, on their superior allegiance to him as alike their Spiritual and Temporal Lord, is a question which those who know Turkish policemen in Turkey proper may be left to solve for themselves. Meanwhile, British traders, British merchants and bankers, and British speculators, are each and all anxious to share in the spoils of this gem of the Levantine Sea. They have hastened to the spot, regardless of possible malaria, ready with many a plan for dredging this harbour, rebuilding that mole, and reviving the long extinct commerce of the island. They have also had an eye to bringing its ancient repute for mineral wealth once more to the front. But their ardour is abated, their zealous self-devotion is cooled by the unpleasant fact which stares them in the face, that they do not know under what law they are living, and they do not know who may claim to be lord of the mineral treasures which they had proposed to unlock from the mountain fastnesses of Cyprus for the benefit of Great Britain and themselves. This is reasonably felt as a serious drawback, and it must act as a material check upon the prosperity of our new acquisition. We have little doubt that the majority of those who either went in person or sent representatives to open branch houses in Cyprus, assumed that where the British flag had been hoisted with so much of religious and political ceremony,

guarded by Goorkhas from the Himalayas, and blessed by picturesque Greek priests, there British law would hold undisputed sway. But it is not so, as the would-be commercial benefactors of Cyprus have discovered, to their no small dismay. And as they cannot have what they would, they must be content with what they can get, only they may be excused if they press for the earliest possible settlement of their present most undesirable state of suspense and blank ignorance as to what is law in Cyprus. It was doubtless an unpleasant surprise to many of them to learn that they were under Turkish law; as to what that Turkish law might have in store for them, they have, perhaps, preferred not to enquire too closely. On paper, we believe, it will be found that our would-be colonists. might have fared worse. But the difficulty which we shall inevitably experience in bringing practice into the necessary conformity with theory, is strikingly exemplified by the fact, that even under the so recently hoisted and profusely blessed British ensign, the old inveterate, apparently ineradicable, Turkish rejection of Christian evidence has caused trouble in Cypriot Courts of Law. Will it be possible, with these warnings sounding in our ears, to entrust any part of the administration of the law to Mohammedan Moollahs and Cadis? Or will it not be found more expedient to constitute Courts modelled somewhat after the Egyptian plan, consisting of a British judge with native Christian assessors acquainted with the text of the Ottoman Code? For this it is, no doubt, which alone has the force of law in Cyprus, and this it is which our Commissioners and Judges will have to put in practice. The law itself appears to have obtained the general approbation of Sir Adrian Dingli, who was sent for from Malta to come and investigate the subject. It has since been reported that he was to proceed to Constantinople to lay certain suggestions before the Porte, calculated to render our enforcement of the law more beneficial to the people for whom we are to administer it. In