DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.65890#0254
196
some future emergency. Calumny and detraction
are extremely common amongst them, nor is it at all
unusual to see two persons, apparently on the
most friendly terms, who, when separate, will mu-
tually accuse each other of every thing that is base
and dishonourable; but, as a just value is generally
fixed upon this friendship reciprocally, neither party
incurs much risk from yielding too much to the
weakness of self-love: a delusion which, with a
people of more simplicity, is always a dangerous
tool in the hands of the designing. The means of
directly prosecuting their revenge being removed
by the complete extirpation of the knife and
stiletto, that dreadful passion to which they are so
prone, must be gratified by other means; hence
the many criminal informations * and prosecutions,
* An example of these false informations fell within the author’s
own cognizance at Cephalonia: a peasant came before the magis-
tracy of health, and deposed that, a fellow villager had left the
island for the Ottoman territories, and that he had returned clandes-
tinely without performing quarantine; that he, recollecting the fatal
consequences resulting from a similar transaction in 1816 f, came
forward to prosecute the offender. It appeared that the accused had
left the island with a design of going to the continent, but that he
merely went to one of the other islands, and returned with a clean
bill of health; and, further, that these men and their families had
been long at variance. The informant, however, so far succeeded, as
to have had his enemy imprisoned upon this charge of violating the
health laws, and of which he had nearly had.him convicted. The
ruffian, by the plausibility of his story, thought to have evaded re-
taliation, but he was deceived, as the British sense of justice con-
i’ Viz. the introduction of the plague in Cephalonia.
some future emergency. Calumny and detraction
are extremely common amongst them, nor is it at all
unusual to see two persons, apparently on the
most friendly terms, who, when separate, will mu-
tually accuse each other of every thing that is base
and dishonourable; but, as a just value is generally
fixed upon this friendship reciprocally, neither party
incurs much risk from yielding too much to the
weakness of self-love: a delusion which, with a
people of more simplicity, is always a dangerous
tool in the hands of the designing. The means of
directly prosecuting their revenge being removed
by the complete extirpation of the knife and
stiletto, that dreadful passion to which they are so
prone, must be gratified by other means; hence
the many criminal informations * and prosecutions,
* An example of these false informations fell within the author’s
own cognizance at Cephalonia: a peasant came before the magis-
tracy of health, and deposed that, a fellow villager had left the
island for the Ottoman territories, and that he had returned clandes-
tinely without performing quarantine; that he, recollecting the fatal
consequences resulting from a similar transaction in 1816 f, came
forward to prosecute the offender. It appeared that the accused had
left the island with a design of going to the continent, but that he
merely went to one of the other islands, and returned with a clean
bill of health; and, further, that these men and their families had
been long at variance. The informant, however, so far succeeded, as
to have had his enemy imprisoned upon this charge of violating the
health laws, and of which he had nearly had.him convicted. The
ruffian, by the plausibility of his story, thought to have evaded re-
taliation, but he was deceived, as the British sense of justice con-
i’ Viz. the introduction of the plague in Cephalonia.