Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/104

76 the European cigar. Opposite the divan stand the accuser, the accused, and the witnesses, who are brought in and out as they are wanted by a cavass, or policeman, in a rich dress, with three or four pistols and knives stuck sideways into his belt.

The proceedings open in a very slow and formal sort of way, with the reading Turkish documents by the Cadi; then the witnesses are called. If the case makes in favour of the Mahommedan accused or accuser, or other party to the suit, the Cadi lets it alone; if he sees that it is going against the Turk, he turns it in his favour by quoting some ready- made precedent, or by some other legal quibble. All that the Consrd can do, in such cases, is to protest, bully, threaten, and finally, if he can get no justice, report the whole story to Constantinople, where his Ambassador takes it up, and after a good deal of bullying and threatening on a greater scale, extracts from the reluctant Government a vizirial letter ordering the Mejhs to revise their decision. This vizirial letter would be practically a dead letter if the Consul did not make it his business to have it enforced; and after a good deal of active and passive resistance on the part of the local authorities, he generally succeeds in carrying his point. In the present case the decision of the Mejlis was so unjust that appeal to the Embassy will be unavoidable.

The advantages of British protection in a Turkish court are so obvious, that the Ionians are the object of general envy among the Christian subjects of the Porte. The desire to possess a British passport is so strong that every sort of ingenious