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In each province and considerable town are inferior courts. The Cait, or farmer of the revenue, a kind of deputy governor, forms a species of court of common pleas for hearing and determining all matters of dispute between private subjects, where the demand does not exceed a certain sum, or where the subject matter of controversy is not of a criminal nature. And the Caia, a governor of the province, who is also commandant of the forces, forms a court in the nature of sessions of the peace for the trial of all criminal offences not capital. In causes of this nature these courts may have original jurisdiction, but appeal lies in all cases from their decision to the Bey, or supreme court.

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The Bey sits in the hall of justice from eight till twelve o'clock in the winter, and from seven till eleven in the summer, every day in the year, Fridays and the days of Biram and Ramadan, public feasts, only excepted. In all the courts the plaintiff enters and argues his own cause, in propria persona, and the defendant in like manner pleads and defends. So also in criminal prosecutions. The whole management consists in simple statements, substantiating and refuting allegations, generally by evidence deduced from the testimony of witnesses. Their rules and maxims, in trials of criminal and capital offences, are very similar to those of our common law; especially the crime of murder; and may be and probably are, derived from the same source, the law of Moses.

The Bey also transacts all his national concerns in his own person, and superintends the police of his navy and army, even the payment of his troops. These duties render his life extremely laborious. He lives abstemiously, exercises much and sleeps little, (and alone though connected by marriage with the finest and most accomplished woman in the kingdom, who is about ten years younger than himself, and devoted to him by the most affectionate attachment.) But with all these excellent qualities of the

prince, he is not without a blemish the name of which would excite a blush in the countenance of the most depraved of nature's children. And however sin gularly unnatural, his favorite minister (the Sapatapa) a lusty Turk of about thirty three, is the first ob ject of his passion!

He also is unboundedly avaricious. And though he said to me he was not enamored with toys, his palace is crowded with rich jewels of all sorts and arms or namented with gold and diamonds; and his wife is said to be loaded with gold and diamonds, which, like the jewels of Paulina, may be literally said to be locked from usefulness and from the world.

The military force of Tunis is rather imaginary than real. Every Turk, and descendant of a Turk, is a soldier and under pay, they amounting to 6,800 These, though they are never embodied, are what they call their regular troops. Detachments of them appear in the field once or twice a year, for the purpose of swaggering into the interior provinces, to collect the revenues of the poor, oppressed Moors. They cannot be said to have an uniform and they have less discipline than the rudest troops I have ever seen in America; and I have seen our militia from Boston in Massachusetts to Lexington in Kentucky, and from the north boundaries of Vermont to the south boundaries of Georgia. They are armed with a sabre, brace of pistols, and a rusty mus ket without a bayonet. Their camp, as they call their army, or rather their mob, when assembled, are composed partly of cavalry, who are armed in the same manner as the infantry. Their horses, taken collectively, are really worse than the mill horses of my own native country, New England, which every body knows are wretched enough, brought into the field as nature formed them, or only altered by the galling of pack saddles or hampers, and totally undisciplined. They have no manual exercise nor field manoeuvres. On their march they drive on helter skelter, as void of tactics as the tigers

of their desert and their encampments are as ir regular as their exercise. Such are all the soldiery whom I have seen, and I have reason to believe such are all whom the kingdom can produce. These, as I have said before, are regulars: their militia is still worse. Every Moor has arms. Their natives form the militia but they assemble neither in bodies nor detachments, except in case of imminent danger : and they then rush down from the mountains like so many wolves of the forest. In their complexion and habits they have a striking resemblance to the American savages; and in their manners resemble them much but they want that wild magnanimity, that air of independence, which animate those free born sons of our forests. I am inclined to believe the Moors are timid. The Turks are said to be brave. This is not impossible. Bunker's hill affords a proof that undisciplined men will fight but the campaign of 76 also proves that undisciplined men form bad armies. I cannot ascertain the number of the unorganised militia.

The pay of the Turkish soldier is four aspers, 2-91 of a dollar per diem, without clothing, and without rations, except when in the field. This sum increases one asper every third year till it amounts to, but cannot exceed, twenty nine aspers per diem, let the rank be what it will. The Bey, being a Turk, is, of course, a soldier, and commander in chief of the army and navy. His pay for this service is twenty nine aspers per diem. His Major Generals receive the same and no more for their military services. How do they subsist? By perquisites. This establishment may have been founded in economy : it has destroyed discipline.

Among the other miscellany of this letter, the aggressions of these pirates which have lately happened, and some reflections on the affairs which intimately concern our nation, I hope may not be considered wholly impertinent.

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In the years '85 to '9, Tunis is said to have taken one hundred prizes from Venice. In the month of August of the year 1797, Prince Paterno of Sicily, as he was passing from Palermo to Naples, in a Greek vessel of the Morea, with subjects of the Grand Signior, and under Ottoman colors, was taken by a Tunissian corsaire and brought into port. The court of Naples protested to the Grand Signior against the capture, who sent an envoy to Tunis to examine the vessel's papers. Finding them not minutely regular, the vessel and cargo were adjudged as a good prize, and the crew and passengers condemned to slavery. The prince remained a prisoner till the middle of December of the same year, when he stipulated for his own ransom for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the Bey and fifty thousand to the Sapitapa.

On the eighth of September last, five Tunissian corsaires, carrying nine hundred and ninety men, landed, in the grey of the morning, upon the island of St. Peters in the dependence of Sardinia, captured and brought prisoners to Tunis seven hundred women and children and two hundred and twenty men. The description given me, by the British Consul, of the barbarous and brutal conduct practiced upon these unfortunate, defenceless wretches, would shock a sayage. The able bodied men of the island being at their vintages in the country, these people fell a feeble sacrifice to the merciless assailants. Decriped age, delicate youth and helpless infancy, were tumbled headlong from their beds, precipitated down flights of stairs, shoved out of street windows, driven naked in an undistinguished crowd, without respect to sex or circumstance, through the streets, and cramed promiscuously into the filthy hold of one of their cruisers; in this manner brought across the sea, and in this wretched plight goaded with thongs through the street of the city by their relentless captors, driven to the common auction square, and consigned to slavery. The king of Sardinia, distressed as he has

been on the other hand by the crimes of the republic, has not hitherto found the ability to redeem them, at the enormous sum of six hundred and forty thousand dollars, which the Bey demanded. He has lately. appointed an aged and respectable Count, Porcheela, who has been four times before an ambassador to this Court, and who is now here to negociate the terms of their redemption. He has at length prevailed on the Bey to accept the sum of two hundred and seventy thousand dollars; but the terms of payment are not yet agreed upon: there is however a prospect of their release. * * * * * * * * * * *

The old, the infirm, and the infants, who were unfit for slaves, have been obliged to shift for themselves. They could not find subsistence. Charity dealt her sparing morsel to them. They have suffered much : but the Consuls severally contributed something to their relief. I received a letter from the Sardinian Secretary of State, and another from the Consul General appointed to be charged with the affairs of all nations who have not a consul established in that kingdom, soliciting the good offices of the American Consul in this affair: the latter seemed to claim as an obligation, intimating that he had often rendered disinterested services to Americans in Sardinia. gave one hundred dollars.

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When war was declared against France, the Consul and all his countrymen were confined in close prison, and their property sequestered, notwithstanding a treaty stipulation that the Consul and others of his nation should be allowed one year, after declaration of war, to adjust their affairs and depart the kingdom.

On the 3d. of April last, the garrison of Corfu surrendered by capitulation to the combined forces of the Russians and Turks, on condition of being convoyed to France. On the 25th, one of the transports having on board two hundred and fifty of the garrison, being separated from its convoy, fell in with and was captured by an Algerine corsaire. On the sec

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