I know something of the constitution and
composition of this very extraordinary republic. It has a constitution,
I admit, similar to the present tumultuous military tyranny of France,
by which an handful of obscure ruffians domineer over a fertile country
and a brave people. For the composition, too, I admit the Algerine
community resembles that of France,--being formed out of the very scum,
scandal, disgrace, and pest of the Turkish Asia. The Grand Seignior, to
disburden the country, suffers the Dey to recruit in his dominions the
corps of janizaries, or asaphs, which form the Directory and Council of
Elders of the African Republic one and indivisible. But notwithstanding
this resemblance, which I allow, I never shall so far injure the
Janizarian Republic of Algiers as to put it in comparison, for every
sort of crime, turpitude, and oppression, with the Jacobin Republic of
Paris. There is no question with me to which of the two I should choose
to be a neighbor or a subject. But. situated as I am, I am in no danger
of becoming to Algiers either the one or the other. It is not so in my
relation to the atheistical fanatics of France. I _am_ their neighbor; I
_may_ become their subject. Have the gentlemen who borrowed this happy
parallel no idea of the different conduct to be held with regard to the
very same evil at an immense distance and when it is at your door? when
its power is enormous, as when it is comparatively as feeble as its
distance is remote? when there is a barrier of language and usages,
which prevents corruption through certain old correspondences and
habitudes, from the contagion of the horrible novelties that are
introduced into everything else? I can contemplate without dread a royal
or a national tiger on the borders of Pegu.
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