are such acts, and there are none well
attested in the opposite scale. In particular, he spared the eyes of
his brother Mahmood, when, by all oriental policy, he had every
temptation to incapacitate an active competitor for the throne. Two
considerations heighten the merit of this merciful forbearance; Mahmood
was the elder, a fact which slightly improved his title; and Mahmood,
in a similar situation, had _not_ spared the eyes of an elder brother.

[1] But afterwards, at page 166, there is a dreadful insinuation that
such a necessity might have founded itself on the danger of taking
prisoners "in a camp already subsisting on half and quarter rations."
Now we, in a paper on Casuistry, (long since published by this journal,)
anticipated this shocking plea, contending that Napoleon's massacre of
4000 young Albanians at Jaffa, could draw no palliation from the alleged
shortness of provisions, whether true or false; and on the ground that a
civilized army, consciously under circumstances which will not allow it
to take prisoners, has no right to proceed. Napoleon's condition had not
changed from the time of leaving Cairo. We little expected to see a
Jaffa plea urged, even hypothetically, for a British army.

We may certainly, therefore, dismiss the charges of cruelty against the
Shah, unless hereafter they shall be better established. But in doing
this, it is right to make one remark, overlooked by all who have
discussed the subject. If these Ghazees were executed as murderers
elect, and as substantially condemned by the very name and character
which they assumed, the usages of war in all civilized countries would
sustain the sentence; though still there is a difficulty where, on one
side, the parties were _not_ civilized. But if they were executed as
traitors and rebels taken in arms, such an act, _pendente lite_, and
when as yet nobody could say _who_ was sovereign, must be thought little
short of a murder.

With the remaining charge we shall make short work. The reader would
laugh heartily if we should call the Dey of Tunis a _dissenter_, the
Pasha of Egypt an old _nonconformist_, or the Turkish sultan a
_heretic_. But this way of viewing Islamism in some inconceivable
relation to the Church of England, or to Protestantism, would not be
more extravagant than the attempt to fasten upon an oriental prince the
charge of debauchery and a dissolute life. The very viciousness of
Asiatic institutions protects him from such r