These extracts will show that Morocco is not now without some rule for the present, and some respectable vestiges of the past. There are other functionaries of the city, whose origin ascends to an earlier period than the Mussulman times. They are public notaries, called Edules; no doubt the Roman edile. Before them sales are effected, and deeds executed. The present practice I shall give as I have been able to collect it. The initiatory steps are by documents drawn up by _Edules_--these have the conjoint characters of petition, affidavit, and verdict (in the old sense). The Plaintiff’s case is stated--he signs it. His witnesses then sign, if they agree with his statement of facts, or state in what they differ. Then follow signatures as vouching for the Plaintiff or Defendant, as the case may be, the witnesses, or the other signees. This act is then verified by the Edules, as to the genuineness of the signatures. Furnished with this document, the petitioner proceeds to the judge, the governor, or the Sultan. He is met by a counter document. The Judge, after perusing these, proceeds to try the case by oral testimony, and without intervention of legal practitioners. The document is called _El Bra_, which is very near, _Brief_.[230] This is evidently the origin of the Spanish mode of procedure by _Escribanos_. Among the Spaniards the oral proceedings are suppressed, and those which are the preliminary steps only in the Moorish courts, constitute the whole proceeding. The Edules have become agents to the parties, as well as public notaries; so that the case of each party is placed in the hands of the agents of the other. Thus, notwithstanding excellent laws, the Spanish Courts have been converted into labyrinths of intrigue. The Moorish system, which exhibits the origin of the Spanish aberrations, still retains the celerity of oral proceedings, with the advantage of record, and combines the responsibility of a Judge with the uses of a Jury. In fact, it differs little from the ancient institution of the Jury in Britain, which gave their verdict on the common repute of the parties, and not on the facts of the case; though it does not leave to them the faculty either of condemnation or expurgation. I look, of course, to the system, as what it would be if duly executed; and it was, no doubt, the foundation of that prompt justice which characterised the Mussulman government in Spain, and made Algiers a model for quick, _gratuitous_, and impartial adjudication, until its capture by the French.