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110 I don't admire that system of ' indemnification,'" pursued Erceldoune, giTvng himself a shake like a staghound where he leaned against the marble mantlepiece. "A single scoundrel, or a gang of scoundrels, commits an insult, as in this case, on England, or any other great power, through the person of her representative, or perhaps merely through the person of one of her nation; the state to which the rascals belong is heavily mulcted, by way of penalty. Who suffers? Not the guilty, but the unhappy multitudes, peasants, traders, farmers, citizens, gentlemen—all innocent—who pay the taxes and the imposts! With an outrage from a great Power, if accidentally committed on a traveller by a horde of thieves, you would take no notice whatever; if one were obviously done as a political insult, you would declare war. But when the thing happens in a small state, she is punished by an enormous fine, which half ruins her, for a crime which she could no more prevent than you can help in Downing-street the last wreckers' murder that took place in Cornwall. Pardon me, but I fail to see the justice or the dignity of the system; and for myself, when my own conviction is that the assassins who stopped me were not Moldavians at all, what compensation would it be to me to have the money