But this indolence, when applied to resident aliens, had consequences still more serious, because external as well as internal. Following the same method of leaving the unbeliever to settle his affairs for himself, the European merchant, living and trading in the East, was put first by usage and finally by treaty under the jurisdiction and control of his own consul. Thus there grew up the extra-territorial law of the capitulations and conventions, by which the sanctity of the person and household of an ambassador is extended to every European. And this in turn, has reacted on the status of the non-Moslem subject races, and has come to be the indirect but chief support on which they lean. Through it, an element has developed which makes it practically impossible for a Moslem state to introduce legal changes even remotely affecting its non-Moslem population, alien or subject, without the consent of the European embassies. Any change may be upset by their refusal to accept it as incompatible with the capitulations and conventions. The embassies have thus, as interpreters of a part, at least, of the constitution, come to hold a position remarkably, if absurdly, like that of the Supreme Court of the United States (see Young, _Corps de droit Ottoman, passim_). There may be said, then, in short, to be three elements in the legal life of a Moslem state: the sacred and fixed canon law of Islam; the civil law, based on the usages of the different peoples, Moslem and non-Moslem, and on statutes going back to the will of rulers; the international law of the capitulations, with a contractual sanction of its own. The hope for the future in Islam, there can be little doubt, lies in the principle of the agreement of the Moslem people, with its conception of catholic unity, and its ability, through that unity, to make and abrogate laws. As the Moslem peoples advance, their law can, thus, advance with them, and the grasp of the dead hand of the canon law be gradually and legally released.