The Home and Foreign Review Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863 edition. Excerpt: ... equal plot of land for his own private property, they would be benefiting all the members of the tribe. The Arabs do not see it in this light, since they would enjoy a much smaller portion of land for tillage and pasturage, and would not benefit by the difference in the title. The present tenure constitutes an entail for the benefit of the tribe; and if each member of the tribe possessed a separate plot of land with (as is proposed) the power to sell it, the Arabs, impoverished as they are by heavy taxation, would soon be obliged to sell their patrimony. This has been the case in the civil territory round the towns, where the Arabs are not divided into tribes; here most of them have sold their gardens, and the number of mendicants has increased enormously. Another cause makes it impossible for the Aiubs to live side by side with the French; the colonists are continually bringing the Arabs into court for trespass and damage. Many colonists, indeed, may be said to live upon the fines imposed for trespass; and these they frequently impose themselves, without the intervention of any magistrate, and for trifling pretexts, as in the case of a horse which had been impounded for trespass in a thicket or jungle forming part of a property. The colonists and their organs at last made such an outcry that the Emperor examined into the question himself; and after the visit of the Arab chiefs to Compiegne, it became known that he set his face against these projects. A little later it was announced that the Cantonnement des Arabes was shelved. The Moniteur of the 7th of February contained a letter from the Emperor to the Governor-General of Algeria, calculated to reassure the Arabs as to the intention of the government to protect their rights and property. The...