The Sultan of Zanzibar has been ill, and while ill
has apparently passed under religious influence. A Mussulman Prince, when repentant, usually wishes to kill somebody, either wine-drinkers, or smokers, or, in the Wahabee region, coffee-drinkers, or violators of Mussulman decorum. The Sultan of Zanzibar thinks murderers will do best, and has accordingly executed four Negroes accused, but not convicted, of murder, and intends to execute twenty-five more. He will in future, as a good Mussulman, always execute for murder; and he has restored the power of capital punishment on the mainland to his subordinate chiefs. The Europeans are horrified, for it appears that no capital sentence has been executed for twenty-one years, which is probably the reason why the island is so villainously bad. The Sultan is clearly within his powers, and is probably, in the main, in the right. The absence of trial is not absence of proof when, as in Africa, the criminal is usually arrested red-handed ; and the very use of a Sultan in those regions is that he is supreme Judge.
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