CONSTITUTION AND LAWS. 
25T 
in their ardor for revenge, do not regard sacrificing their own hves 
to bring a palaver on their murderer, which their famihes are sure 
to do. 
To be convicted of cowardice is death. 
A subject may clear any part of the bush for building a croom, 
or making a plantation, without paying any thing to the King as 
lord of the soil ; but he must pay a small sum to the possessor of 
the nearest croom or plantation, through which his path runs. 
The government has no power to direct the traders to any par- 
ticular market, though it interdicts the commerce with any power 
which may have offended it. 
All the King's linguists take fetish to be true to each other, and 
to report faithfully. 
If any subject picks up gold dropped in the market place, it is 
death, being collected only by order of the government on emer- 
gencies ; see Revenue. 
Theft of the King's property, or intrigue with the female atten- 
dants of the royal family, or habitual incontinence, is punished by 
emasculation ; but crim. con. with the wife of a man who has been 
so punished, is death : being considered an aggravated contempt 
of law. 
Interest of money is 33|- per cent, for every forty days, which is 
accompanied after the first period by a dash of liquor. ^Vhen the 
patience of the creditor is exhausted, he seizes the debtor, or even 
any of his family, as slaves, and they can only be redeemed by the 
payment. This barbarous law was nearly the same in Athens.* 
In almost all charges of treason, the life of the accuser is at risk 
as well as that of the accused, and is forfeited on the acquittal of 
* In Ahanta, all old debts must be paid within six weeks from tlie commencement of 
the Contoom or Harvest Custom. The creditor can panyar or seize not only the family, 
but the townsmen of the debtor. 
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