DURING EARTHQUAKES. 
503 
many other places, means the governor of the town, but here 
implies only the governor of the police. He has the care of the 
bazars, and the civil tranquillity of the city; he hears all com¬ 
plaints of the day; and to him every offender is first brought 
prisoner, of whose crime, after examination, he gives report to 
the derra-khanah, the chief court of judgment: but all matters 
of common import are usually settled, without so great an appeal, 
between him and the cazi. “ Gifts blind the eyes !” or, what is 
worse, make them see through crooked mediums; and from this 
cause, I am sorry to say, the decisions of these two personages 
are not always guided by the simple line of fact; a purse of 
tomauns in the lighter scale too often making the weightiest 
truths kick the beam. But it is not in governments of pure 
arbitrary despotism we must look for equity; that principle can 
only be inculcated by mutual rights, and maintained by just 
laws so firmly established that neither prince nor people can 
transgress them with impunity. Money, as I have before men¬ 
tioned, is the root of all action in the East; and every part of 
the tree, in this kingdom, from its stem to the farthest spray, 
demands the potent sap. But while making this apparent charge 
against the Asiatic half of the world, I am constrained to confess 
that the same complaint may lie against Europe ; though an es¬ 
sential difference may be shewn in the exercise of its power. The 
constitutions of European governments, and the law of opinion 
built upon them, hold the means of acquiring money, and the 
modes of using it, in some check ; while in arbitrary states, almost 
every object, whether reputation, power, or enjoyment, being at the 
command of power, gold is generally found able to purchase all; 
and one just prince on such a throne can only be considered a 
solitary palm for transitory repose, in so wide a desert of radical 
