DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.57079#0079
THE LEVANT COMPANY
63
These officers must be members of the com-
pany and were to live in the respective towns
to which they were sent. There they should
have authority over all English isierchants,
whether members of the company or not,
administering justice to them and acting as
arbitrators in case of need.51
Besides the annual meeting in February,
the company had the right to meet at any
other time for the consideration of any special
questions and for the making of laws and
regulations. The company had pretty ex-
tensive powers to punish any breaches of its
regulations, and if need arose, it might call
be carried on with the natives with any security to the
Westerns unless under certain regulations called Capitu-
lations. By the terms os these capitulations all causes
of dispute in which a Western is concerned must be
determined by interference of the ambassador or consul.
Now the English Levant Company paid these officials ;
therefore it was perhaps only reasonable that they
should have their appointments in their own hands.
51 “ In early times it would seem that the consul was
a magistrate elected by the merchants to watch over
their interests at a foreign port and to govern the little
colony resident in a foreign land rather than what he
afterwards became—an officer appointed by the state
to represent the commercial interests of its subjects at
the seat of a foreign government.” V. S. P. I. Intro-
duction, p. 56.
63
These officers must be members of the com-
pany and were to live in the respective towns
to which they were sent. There they should
have authority over all English isierchants,
whether members of the company or not,
administering justice to them and acting as
arbitrators in case of need.51
Besides the annual meeting in February,
the company had the right to meet at any
other time for the consideration of any special
questions and for the making of laws and
regulations. The company had pretty ex-
tensive powers to punish any breaches of its
regulations, and if need arose, it might call
be carried on with the natives with any security to the
Westerns unless under certain regulations called Capitu-
lations. By the terms os these capitulations all causes
of dispute in which a Western is concerned must be
determined by interference of the ambassador or consul.
Now the English Levant Company paid these officials ;
therefore it was perhaps only reasonable that they
should have their appointments in their own hands.
51 “ In early times it would seem that the consul was
a magistrate elected by the merchants to watch over
their interests at a foreign port and to govern the little
colony resident in a foreign land rather than what he
afterwards became—an officer appointed by the state
to represent the commercial interests of its subjects at
the seat of a foreign government.” V. S. P. I. Intro-
duction, p. 56.