The mountain Breber tribes recognise the authority, but do not admit the interference, of the Sultans of Morocco. His power over the tribes of the plain, whether Breber or Arab, apparently severe and sometimes terrible, is unequal and precarious: when he punishes, it is by abandoning the tribe to the vengeance of some neighbouring and rival clan. Such a state of things seems to be as befitting for the exercise of his talents, as his talents for adjusting them to his own satisfaction.
Morocco is isolated from the world: on the west an unapproachable coast; on the east and south an impassable desert. It has no neighbours except the Regency of Algiers. Its standing policy was to be at war with Europe. Muley Ismael, visiting Tetuan, addressed the body of council who had come to compliment him, in these words, “It is my pleasure to be at war with all Christendom, except England and Raguza.” Yet they made treaties with the merchants of the states with which they were not figuratively, but really at war. M. Chenier, who was French consul fifty years ago at Tangier, has written the best work upon Morocco. He confined its foreign relations to Algiers; it is with reference to that Regency, that he calculated its military force. He esteems Morocco the weaker of the two, and in danger from Algiers. The Turks had invaded Morocco from Algiers, and they once placed a sovereign on the throne of Fez, but that was long ago. Foreign relations had been to them a novelty, which they ought not to be, seeing that the princes of this land formerly assumed the lofty title of Emir al Moslemin; that they have never ceased to claim the chieftainship of the Arab race, and have never condescended to sign a treaty with the Sultans of Constantinople. Holding the Turks as usurpers of the Caliphat, and intruders in Africa,[226] they stand in an anomalous position: they are Sunis who opposed the claims of Ali, and their royal house derives, or pretends to derive, its origin from Ali. Muley Abderachman has, however, shown no sign, in dealing with the foreign difficulties that have befallen him, of that dexterity which he has evinced in domestic matters. In listening to the details of his weakness and pusillanimity, as shown on recent occasions, I have been reminded of Louis Philippe.[227]
The feature in the administration of this country, or rather reign, is the private dealing of the Emperor with the merchants. He remits to them duties, and makes loans of money without interest. He allows them to export and import without paying the duties in ready money,[228] and they go on in the face of an accumulating debt, speculating on credit. The goods are bought and sold at what would be a loss, if the taxes were accounted for; and when any one of them is unable to meet his engagements, he has only to go to the Emperor and borrow, and thus again heap up the mass of engagements, he never can meet. He is encouraged by the knowledge, that the Emperor never calls a creditor to account;—the settlement comes only on his dying day. It is not trifling sums that are at stake. The debt of the English agent at Mogadore, is between forty and fifty thousand pounds.
These concessions of credit, the loans of money and the granting of permits, and monopolies, are managed, not with a view to the pecuniary interests of the sovereign, but for political ends. By these means he paralyzes all resistance to his illegal taxes on trade in the cities whose business these imposts are considered to be. This ledger management of a nation is an effort of genius worthy of Mehemet Ali.
The fons malorum, here as elsewhere, is the customs duties. They have everywhere been introduced by evasion and fraud; for, until a people is familiarised with them, they are too monstrous and wicked to be argued about. In Mussulman countries the task has been more difficult than with us, as there is no church property with which to bribe public assemblies, and taxes on commerce are expressly prohibited by the code at once of religion and government. A people so tenacious of old customs as the Moors, and so little disposed to imitate Europe, were not easily brought under on such a point, and their recent history affords two instances of revolts occasioned by illegal taxation. The first revolt was in 1774, when the principal citizens of Fez (an unprotected city) thus addressed the Sultan, Sidi Mahomet:—
“The city of Fez means not to disobey, nor ever could so mean; but the taxes laid on provisions, and the increase of duty on merchants, and which the Mussulmans” (the term is analogous to “the country” with us) “regard as contrary to custom and religion, were considerations that to so great and so religious a prince might excuse the general murmur and discontent.”
No punishments followed the suppression of this rebellion, and the taxes were abandoned. “Snuff was farmed, and an octroi placed on commodities per load, as they enter and go out of towns, or pass ferries; a stamp was put on woollen stuffs, and on all the trinkets made by goldsmiths. The governors of the towns farm these taxes at a fixed sum, by which they very seldom are gainers. These new imposts are considered among the Moors as innovations, contrary to the spirit of the Koran. These taxes produced a revolt at Mequinez in 1778, but it was put down by the black guard of the Emperor.”
Chenier, whom I quote, distinguishes the revenues into ancient and modern, the ancient being the tenths, the capitation tax (tribute) of the Jews, the profits of coining, arbitrary impositions; the modern being the obnoxious duties and octroi. He highly commends the ancient system: the tithes he considers profitable to the Government, and not onerous to the people (of course, he is mentally instituting the comparison with Europe, because paid in kind.) “He who grows ten bushels of corn pays one, without any retrospect or inquiry concerning a more abundant harvest, which presents an example of justice among barbarous states well worthy the imitation of the more civilized.”
The collection was easy, because, being united in bodies, they watched each other, and prevented fraud. Being paid in kind, the Sultan had magazines in the great provincial towns to store these revenues, and sent to market the residue, after maintaining his palaces, soldiers, and dependants; consequently, there were no currency troubles. The present Sultan, by making the merchants his debtors, has converted the guardians of common rights into his satellites; and finding his account in remitting the payment of the customs, and allowing himself to be defrauded of what we should esteem a legitimate revenue, he has so far succeeded. Customs are looked upon as the affairs of the merchants, and the merchants are all foreigners and infidels. Taxes are then arbitrarily imposed on trade—monopolies are granted, and the whole production of the country is paralysed and subjected to a foreign influence, which they cannot indeed unravel, but against which there is a deep and universal sense of reprobation. It is not from Europe that they will learn the secret of the ancient well-being of so many states and empires, which were great without parliamentary votes and political economists.