1822 Sept. 29

Tripoli. Securites against Misrule

Preliminary Explanations

So again as to judicial procedure. In so far as the forms already in use are adequate to the purpose of giving execution and effect to the several proposed arrangements, it is well. But if in any instance they are otherwise than adequate, new ones must be provided, or the security which it is desired should be possessed can not be afforded: whatsoever be the necessary means, he who determinately desires the attainment of the end, can not but desire the employment of those or other adequate means.

By these observations a sufficient apology, or rather a justification, will, it is hoped, be found afforded, not only for several definition and penal enactment, but even for some institution, which in the country in question may not improbably present a face of novelty. Among institutions for example, not only the celebrated one so uncharacteristically expressed in English by the two Latin words Habeas Corpus (have the body) but the one known in England by the name of the Coroner's Inquest. Of the Habeas Corpus the use is - to afford a remedy against clandestine or pertinacious imprisonment or confinement of the person: a remedy, terminative or preventive, as the case may be. Of the Coroners Inquest the use is to throw the light of notoriety upon every such death as shall afford grounds for suspecting that the hand of man has in the production of it borne an improper part. But of the three distinguishable causes by any of which the disappearance of a human being where it has had injury for its cause may alike have been produced death and confinement are but two. The other is banishment. For ascertaining, by which of them all such disappearance, where it has place has been produced, no course of procedure is (it is believed) to be found in any system of law as yet known. To this deficiency an attempt to furnish a supply will here be found under the head of Mysterious Disappearance.