Under a tribal system the tribe is the unit, not the individual—"one for all, and all for one": it follows that transgression and retribution are both upon a wholesale scale, and alike disastrous towards the consolidation of a united nation.
The government in a country cursed by the tribal system must in the very nature of things be despotic: lawless tribes need the tyrant's hand of iron. To the fact of his being a despot the Sultan owes his security, coupled with one other reason. Arabs and Berbers alike are fanatics: religion is the air they breathe, the salt of life. The Sultan is descended direct from the One Great Prophet; consequently the Sultan is acknowledged as lord. His policy is an Oriental one: tribe is played off against tribe, one European power against the other European power; the empire is isolated; innovations are prohibited, lest European civilization should oust Moorish eccentricities. So much for the Oriental policy of "the balance of jealousies."
Despotism breeds despotism. While every Moor below the Sultan ranks as equal, the fact remains that Government officials are all in their own sphere little despots, governing districts many days' journey from Court, with every chance of robbing and oppressing those under them, until the day of reckoning comes, when the Court, hearing how fat their fine bird has grown, summons him to the capital, and the process of plucking and imprisoning their wealthy servant follows.
Life exists upon life, from the sheikhs (farmers), who live upon what they can squeeze out of the peasants, to the bashas (governors), who exist on tithes, taxes, and extortion wrung from the sheikhs and townspeople, up to higher officials, who receive no salaries, and line their pockets by a process of bleeding the bashas and others . . . . . . thus ad lib. Even the gaolers—also unpaid—earn their living by extorting money from the prisoners. The whole system of government reacts upon itself; for the venality of the officials drives the tribes to redress their wrongs at intervals by raids and open rebellion, to punish whom there follows slaughter upon slaughter, and the country is laid waste.
Hence the principal reasons—wheels within wheels—which account for the Morocco of 1902: its prehistoric customs, its uncultivated acres.
No reformer, no missionary, will alter the condition of Morocco. The Moors themselves have made it what it is; but since for an Ethiopian to change his skin is no light matter, there is small probability of the Moors themselves unmaking it.
A gloomy prospect, yet one which, taking the case of the people and looking upon it from a "happiness" point of view, must not be altogether judged from a European standpoint. The likes and dislikes of Moors are not the likes and dislikes of Europeans, and most of them view their good times and bad times with equal calm, as merely the will of Allah. Besides which, anything in the shape of law and order and daily routine rasps their raw nature. Just as a Moor prefers to eat to repletion when there is food, and to go without when there is not, so he would choose a desultory and irresponsible life, alternating between perfect freedom and excessive tyranny, to any regular humdrum form of government which Europe could offer him.
The country people we met, if hard-worked, had at the same time cheerful enough faces: their enjoyment of life probably equals that of the English labourer.
On the whole, it is possible that, when the day comes—as it must come—that an effete and inadequate people goes to the wall, and civilized blood occupies their room, it may bring good, but that good will be tinged with regret—certainly in the eyes of those selfish mortals to whom one country, neither wire-fenced nor scored by railways, nor swept nor garnished, but coloured to-day by the smoke of many thousand years, still offers palmy days. Thus giving thanks to Allah for things as they are, after the manner of the country, we jogged along, looking out for a halting-ground: it was between twelve and one o'clock, and time to stretch our legs.
The river and some oleander-bushes, with green lawns between them, offered all we wanted. Cadour took off his brown jellab, and spread it for us to sit upon. There we lunched and waited for an hour. Some oxen were ploughing close to us, driven in a desultory way by a figure clad in a pair of once white drawers, and a once white tunic with a leather belt. All which this husbandman wanted being corn enough to supply himself, and no surplus to fall into the sheikh's hands, the field was naturally small. A well-to-do farmer might rise to growing a little maize or cummin or millet or fenugreek for exportation, perhaps some broad-beans, chick-peas, or canary-seed; but the duties are heavy. Wheat and barley have been forbidden export: the infidel shall not eat bread of the true believer's corn.