for the superintendents to stimulate labourers to their work by the persuasive powers of the stick, whether engaged in the field or in handicraft employments; and boys were sometimes

beaten without the ceremony of prostration, the hands being tied behind their back, while the punishment was applied.

It does not, however, appear to have been from any respect to the person, that this less usual method was adopted; nor is it probable that any class of the community enjoyed a peculiar privilege on these occasions, as among the modern Moslems, who, extending their respect for the Prophet to his distant descendants of the thirty-sixth and ensuing generations, scruple to administer the stick to a Shereef until he has been politely furnished with a mat, on which to prostrate his guilty person. Among other amusing privileges in modern Egypt, is that conceded to the grandees, or officers of high rank. Ordinary culprits are punished by the hand of persons usually employed on such occasions; but a Bey, or the governor of a district, can only receive his chastisement from the hand of a Pasha, and the aristocratic daboss (mace) is substituted for the vulgar stick. This is no trifling privilege: it becomes fully impressed upon the sufferer, and renders him, long after, sensible of the peculiar honour he has enjoyed; nor can any one doubt that an iron mace, in form not very unlike a chocolate-mill, is a distingué mode of punishing men who are proud of their rank.

Having noticed the pertinacity of the modern Egyptians in

66

resisting the payment of their taxes, I shall introduce the following story as remarkably illustrative of this fact. In the year 1822, a Copt Christian, residing at Cairo, was arrested by the Turkish authorities for the non-payment of his taxes, and taken before the Kehia, or deputy of the Pasha. "Why," inquired the angry Turk, "have you not paid your taxes? Because," replied the Copt, with a pitiable expression, perfectly according with his tattered appearance, "I have not the means." He was instantly ordered to be thrown upon the floor, and bastinadoed. He prayed to be released, but in vain: the stick continued without intermission, and he was scarcely able to bear the increasing pain. Again and again he pleaded his inability to pay, and prayed for mercy: the Turk was inexorable; and the torments he felt at length overcame his resolution: they were no longer to be borne. "Release me," he cried," and I will pay directly."-"Ah, you Giower! go." He was released, and taken home, accompanied by a soldier, and the money being paid, he imparted to his wife the sad tidings. "You coward! you fool!" she exclaimed; "what, give them the money on the very first demand! I suppose after five or six blows, you cried, 'I will pay, only release me ;' next year our taxes will be doubled through your weakness; shame!"-" No, my dear," interrupted the suffering man, "I assure you I resisted as long as it was possible; look at the state I am in, before you upbraid me. I paid the money, but they had trouble enough for it; for I obliged them to give me at least a hundred blows before they could get it." She was pacified; and the pity and commendation of his wife, added to his own satisfaction in having shown so much obstinacy and courage, consoled him for the pain, and, perhaps, in some measure, for the money thus forced from him.

Hanging was the customary mode of punishment, in ancient Egypt, for many capital crimes; and the criminals were kept "bound" in prison till their fate was decided; whether it depended on the will of the sovereign, or the decision of the judges. These places of confinement were under the immediate superintendence, and within the house, of the chief of the police, or captain of the guard," an officer of Pharaoh," who was

66

66

probably the captain of the watch, like the Zábut of the modern Egyptian police.*

The character of some of the Egyptian laws was quite consonant with the notions of a primitive age. The punishment was directed more particularly against the offending member: and adulterators of money, falsifiers of weights and measures, forgers of seals or signatures, and scribes who altered any signed document by erasures or additions, without the authority of the parties, were condemned to lose both their hands.

But their laws do not seem to have sanctioned the gibbet, or the exposure of the body of an offender; for the conduct of Rhampsinitus, in the case of the robbery of his treasure, is mentioned by Herodotus as a singular mode of discovering an accomplice, and not as an ordinary punishment; if indeed the whole story is not the invention of a Greek cicerone.

Thefts, breach of trust, and petty frauds were punished with the bastinado; but robbery and housebreaking were sometimes considered capital crimes, and deserving of death; as is evident from the conduct of the thief, when caught by the trap in the treasury of Rhampsinitus, and from what Diodorus states respecting Actisanes. This monarch, instead of putting robbers to death, instituted a novel mode of punishing them, by cutting off their noses, and banishing them to the confines of the desert, where a town was built, called Rhinocolura, from the peculiar nature of their punishment; and thus, by removing the bad, and preventing their corrupting the good, he benefited society, without depriving the criminals of life; at the same time that he punished them severely for their crimes, by obliging them to live by their labours, and derive a precarious sustenance from quails, or whatever they could catch, in that barren region. Commutation of punishment was the foundation of this part of the convict system of Egypt, and Rhinocolura was their Norfolk Island, where a sea of sand separated the worst felons from those guilty of smaller crimes; who were transported to the mines in the desert, and condemned to work for various terms, according to their offence.

Gen. xxxix. 1, 20; xl. 3, 22.

Blindly following the old-fashioned notion of merely punishing for offences committed, the Egyptian Government had never thought of preventing crime by educating the youth of the poor, and checking the supply of future criminals by thwarting vice in embryo; they did, however, attempt it in some degree by preventing idleness, and requiring each to account for his mode of life; and they could scarcely be expected in those early days to have arrived at a system we have only just adopted; and which has been so ably carried out in Scotland. Our next problem, on the return of criminals to society, when transportation shall have ceased, has yet to be solved; and we shall be fortunate if we excel the Egyptians as far in this, as in the case of juvenile offenders.

The Egyptians had a singular custom respecting theft and burglary. Those who followed the profession of thief gave in their names to the chief of the robbers; and agreed that he should be informed of every thing they might thenceforward steal, the moment it was in their possession. In consequence of this the owner of the lost goods always applied by letter to the chief for their recovery: and having stated their quality and quantity, the day and hour when they were stolen, and other requisite particulars, the goods were identified, and, on payment of one quarter of their value, they were restored to the applicant, in the same state as when taken from his house.

For being fully persuaded of the impracticability of putting an entire check to robbery, either by the dread of punishment, or by any method that could be adopted by the most vigilant police, they considered it more for the advantage of the community, that a certain sacrifice should be made in order to secure the restitution of the remainder, than that the law, by taking on itself to protect the citizen, and discover the offender, should be the indirect cause of greater loss. And that the Egyptians, like the Indians, and I may say the modern inhabitants of the Nile, were very expert in the art of stealing, we have abundant testimony from ancient authors.

It may be asked, what redress could be obtained, if goods were stolen by thieves who failed to enter their names on the books of the chief; but, it is evident that there could be few of those private speculators, since by their interfering with the interests of all the profession, the detection of such egotistical persons would have been certain; and thus all others were effectually prevented from robbing, save those of the privileged class. The salary of the chief was not merely derived from his own demands upon the goods stolen, or from any voluntary contribution of the robbers themselves, but was probably a fixed remuneration granted by the government, as one of the chiefs of the police; nor is it to be supposed that he was any other than a respectable citizen, and a man of integrity and honour. The same may be said of the modern" shekh of the thieves" at Cairo, where this very ancient office is still retained.