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sentative. In any case, it will be necessary to take such measures as will best obviate the confusion which, according to M. Dubois, is apt to reign paramount in cases where both parties are foreigners. These cases are tried by the Consul of the defendant's country, aided by assessors chosen from the same nationality, and the Consul invariably, we are told, applies the law of his Flag, not the lex loci contractûs, nor yet that of the plaintiff, if he be of a different nationality. This mode of rendering justice produces, it would seem, the most grotesquely different results. For instance, to take an example from our authority, suppose Primus, a Frenchman, and Secundus, a British subject, combine for certain Stock Exchange operations for which French law does not give an action. One sues the other for payment of monies. The result will be entirely opposite according as Primus or Secundus is plaintiff. If Primus şues Secundus, the case will be brought before the British Consul, who will apply English law, without troubling himself to enquire whether the particular operations in virtue of which the money is claimed are lawful either by French law or the law of the country in which the operations were agreed upon. In this case, Secundus will be sentenced to pay the claim. On the other hand, if it is Secundus who sues Primus, the case will come before the French Consul, who will at once decree the claim null and void, by Art. 1965 of the French Civil Code. It can scarcely be supposed that our merchants will desire the continuance of such a state of things in the Courts of Cyprus. Another point to which, no doubt, attention will speedily have to be given is the position of alien owners of immoveables in the Ottoman Empire. By recent Treaties, foreigners are allowed to hold such property, but as regards that property they are assimilated to native-born subjects of the Porte. We are quite unable to see anything that justifies us in believing that British subjects acquiring real property in Cyprus will be in any other

assessors.

position than this. The consequence in other parts of the Ottoman Empire is, that all real actions are brought before the native Courts, and that the parties have no right either to the intervention of the Embassy of their nationality, or to require the addition to the Court of competent foreign The Capitulations, in such cases, become so much waste paper, and the only law applied is Ottoman Law. It may be that in Cyprus the High Commissioner might, in the exercise of his somewhat mysterious and ill-defined powers, order such cases to be tried only before a British Civil Commissioner, sitting with native assessors. But on the other hand, His Excellency might not feel justified in doing more than securing the presence of a British Civil Commissioner as assessor to the native judges, perhaps with power to have the case referred to the High Commissioner on any doubtful point. But in any case we see no escape from the necessity of treating British subjects and other foreign immigrants in Cyprus as Ottoman subjects, quà rights over real property, and applying Ottoman Law, and that alone, to the decision of cases arising regarding such rights. We doubt whether this was in the bond, it may be said. Certainly, we do not suppose that the immigrants thought it was; and for their sakes, as well as for the alleviation of the otherwise sufficiently considerable difficulties of our position in Cyprus, we should be glad to think we were mistaken. The question is an eminently practical one, and cannot fail to come to the surface during the very earliest days of our occupation of the island. It appears, moreover, from the account given by the General Secretary of the Society of Comparative Legislation, in his review of this portion of M. Servicen's work, that the Foreign Embassies are not at one with the Porte on the subject of the contract of hiring. For instance, says M. Dubois, suppose the owner of the house is an alien, and his tenant does not pay his rent, to what Court is the owner to apply? If the tenant is an Ottoman subject, the native

Courts must be invoked; but if both landlord and tenant are aliens, and of the same nationality, the question arises whether their Consular Court is not the proper tribunal. Certain Embassies, and notably the Italian, says M. Dubois, decide this question in the affirmative, holding actions for payment of rent not to be real actions, and consequently not withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Consular Courts by the most recent conventions. These Embassies adhere to the view that the rule should be recourse to the Consular Court of the defendant's nationality, and that recourse to the Ottoman Courts should be a last resort, admissible only where it cannot be avoided. The French Embassy, it appears, considering such actions to be real actions, admits the Ottoman claim. It will be very desirable, if possible, to avoid causes of dissension between Foreign Consulates in Cyprus and our Judicature established there. What will be the relations between this Judicature and that already existing in the island, it may be difficult from the point of view of either International or Constitutional Law to decide, under the altogether singular circumstances in which we are placed. But it may be worth while to note the fact that, according to Ottoman Law, by Art. 81 of the Constitution of 1876,* "all judges named in conformity with the special law regulating those matters, and provided with a patent of investiture (berat), are irremoveable." It would seem to follow that His Excellency the High Commissioner would be exceeding his (at any rate theoretical) powers if he were to proceed to remove the Mohammedan judge who is stated to have recently caused difficulties by refusing to admit Christians to give evidence in his Court. It should also be noted that by Art. 86 of the same Constitution, "no pressure (ingérence) may be brought to bear upon the Courts."

*Cited from the French text given by M. Vitchen Servicen in the last "Annuaire de Législation Etrangère." Published by the Society of Comparative Legislation. (Paris: Cotillon. 1877.)

Hence it would appear doubtful whether our High Commissioner has the legal right to rebuke the Mohammedan zeal or bigotry of the Judge in question. Of course, in these remarks, we are assuming that the British position in Cyprus is that of Administrators of an Ottoman Government, in accordance with the laws and constitution of the Ottoman Empire. Whether the government of the Padishah be truly that of a "sick man," whether it might not be possible to go further, and to say that it is the government, so-called, of one sick unto death, are questions beyond our province in the present endeavour to ascertain what is, or may be supposed to be, the law in Cyprus. Equally, of course, we assume that it is not as administrators of British Law, vice Ottoman Law laid on the shelf for ever, that we appear in Cyprus. In that case, it would be clear enough that all the varied complications and subtleties, all the moss growing on the old wall of English Law, and rendering Codification so difficult, would have full sway in our new Levantine acquisition. And then, no doubt, the tables would be somewhat severely turned upon that "Græcia mendax" which has exercised the minds of some of our newspaper correspondents. The Greek merchant or trader, presumably well versed in the quips and quirks of Ottoman Law would, it cannot be doubted, stare blankly enough at the food provided for his intellectual assimilation in the first set of the Law Magazine and Review Digest of all Reported Cases which enterprising Cypriot booksellers would at once see the necessity of providing. But this consummation, however much some of the recent immigrants of British nationality might desire it, does not appear to be in accordance with all that can be learned concerning our status as administrators of the Government and collectors of the Revenue in

Cyprus. How we are to perform these functions, indeed, would seem to be already traced out for us by the Ottoman Constitution, and not to have required any Order

in Council, whatever may be the precise value of that mystic formula under the circumstances. By Art. 108 of the Constitution of 1876, it is laid down that "the administration of the provinces shall have for its basis the principle of decentralisation." It would seem, therefore, that neither Constantinople nor London should be the "centre" of Cypriot Administration, but that the cry of " Cyprus for the Cypriots" instead of having about it any suspicion of Levantine Fenianism, would be quite in accordance with the most orthodox Ottoman Constitutionalism. And on this principle it would certainly appear that there was constitutional ground for the cry Crete for the Cretans," only, perhaps, those who may from time to time be the wirepullers at the Sublime Porte, might not care to see the Constitution carried out in practice with such literal faithfulness. Indeed, the more we study the celebrated Constitution of 1876, the more we are impressed with the feeling that the framers or advisers of that Reform Bill of the Ottoman Empire were playing consciously or unconsciously with edged tools. To a certain extent, the discovery that this was the case, may have been one of the reasons of the rapidity with which the Constitution was "burked" almost before it had got into working order. That it contains within it valuable elements for the necessary work of educating the subject races of the heterogeneous Ottoman Empire in the art of self-government, cannot, we think, be denied by any impartial student of its provisions; but if history has any lessons to teach us, one of the most striking is the incongruity between Mohammedanism and Constitutional Government. Midhat Pacha's Constitution was therefore felt to be more than a Reform; it was perceived by many to be, from the old Turkish and orthodox Mohammedan point of view, a Revolution. In saying this, we do not for a moment doubt that the Statesman whose name is inseparably connected with that great, though hitherto, imperfect work, believed that this

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