In countries civilised according to the
European plan the work of trying to persuade tribunals is almost
all performed
By a set of men, the great body of whom very seldom
do anything else; but in Turkey this division of labour has never
taken place, and every man is his own advocate. The importance of
the rhetorical art is immense, for a bad speech may endanger the
property of the speaker, as well as the soles of his feet and the
free enjoyment of his throat. So it results that most of the Turks
whom one sees have a lawyer-like habit of speaking connectedly, and
at length. Even the treaties continually going on at the bazaar
for the buying and selling of the merest trifles are carried on by
speechifying rather than by mere colloquies, and the eternal
uncertainty as to the market value of things in constant sale gives
room enough for discussion. The seller is for ever demanding a
price immensely beyond that for which he sells at last, and so
occasions unspeakable disgust in many Englishmen, who cannot see
why an honest dealer should ask more for his goods than he will
really take! The truth is, however, that an ordinary tradesman of
Constantinople has no other way of finding out the fair market
value of his property. The difficulty under which he labours is
easily shown by comparing the mechanism of the commercial system in
Turkey with that of our own country. In England, or in any other
great mercantile country, the bulk of the things bought and sold
goes through the hands of a wholesale dealer, and it is he who
higgles and bargains with an entire nation of purchasers by
entering into treaty with retail sellers. The labour of making a
few large contracts is sufficient to give a clue for finding the
fair market value of the goods sold throughout the country; but in
Turkey, from the primitive habits of the people, and partly from
the absence of great capital and great credit, the importing
merchant, the warehouseman, the wholesale dealer, the retail
dealer, and the shopman, are all one person. Old Moostapha, or
Abdallah, or Hadgi Mohamed waddles up from the water's edge with a
small packet of merchandise, which he has bought out of a Greek
brigantine, and when at last he has reached his nook in the bazaar
he puts his goods BEFORE the counter, and himself UPON it; then
laying fire to his tchibouque he "sits in permanence," and
patiently waits to obtain "the best price that can be got in an
open market." This is his fair right as a seller, but he has no
means of finding out what that best price is except by actual
experiment. He cannot know the intensity of the demand, or the
abundance of the supply, otherwise than by the offers which may be
made for his little bundle of goods; so he begins by asking a
perfectly hopeless price, and then descends the ladder until he
meets a purchaser, for ever
"Striving to attain
By shadowing out the unattainable."
This is the struggle which creates the continual occasion for
debate.
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