Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/129

Rh into seven provinces; the religion is Mohammedan, and the king, whose power is arbitrary, is looked upon as a sort of divinity. The king's harem consists of about 500 wives, and all his sons, except the heir to the throne, are blinded with hot irons, a duty performed by the king of the smiths, who is also the surgeon of the harem. The people are skillful workers in iron, but given to the drinking of an intoxicating beer, a practice which great efforts are made to repress. Spies are extensively employed for that purpose, and any man upon whose premises the forbidden liquor is found is punished by having his wife's head shaved. The king has an army of 40,000 infantry and 6,000 cavalry, and the country is heavily taxed for the support of the king and his expensive government."

Judge Daly quietly compares our own "best Government on the face of the earth" with one of these African governments, and finds the comparison "not complimentary to our intelligence." Here is the passage:

had occasion some time ago to refer to the unscrupulous critical spirit which animates a London weekly called the Academy, a periodical established and conducted on the principle of bullying itself into notice by copying and exaggerating the most arbitrary features of British journalism. A special effort has been made to push the circulation of the Academy in this country, which makes it proper to point out the policy it has adopted toward American as well as English authors. A little American book on botany was republished in London, and attacked by the Academy in the most vicious way. The criticism was a string of the grossest misrepresentations, by which the whole character of the book was falsified and libeled. Its author happened to be in London at the time, and wrote a letter to the editor of the Academy, exposing the character of its criticism. The editor refused to print it, and the author was compelled to seek another channel to get the true state of the case before the public. The letter declined by the Academy was printed by the Examiner.