It is impossible to write about the Jews and omit one certain point. Before the traveller has lived a week in Morocco he begins to hear of protection, and he carries with him vague words—"protected Jews" and "protected Moors"—which one sentence can explain. Protection means that a European living in Morocco, a Portuguese, a Frenchman, an Englishman—it matters not—has it in his power to make the Jew or the Moor desiring protection a nominal citizen of that country, Portugal or France or what not, and can allow him the rights of a citizen and the protection of the same; while it follows that the Sultan and the Moorish Government have no more power to touch him than they have to touch a French or an English subject, the protected Jew or Moor being outside their jurisdiction, and only answerable to the consul of that country which has given him protection, whether Germany, France, or any other. The advantage of protection is to guarantee thereby the safety of property. It was instituted a hundred years and more ago, to obviate the difficulties and dangers incurred by Europeans in trading with Jews and Moors in a country so badly governed as Morocco. Supposing that a European went into partnership and traded with a Jew or a Moor who was unprotected, in course of time, when the Jew or Moor became rich, the Moorish Government would hear of it, and set to work systematically to bleed him. Naturally the European partner would lose money in the general robbery. Therefore protection.
There is scarcely a Jew of property in Morocco who is not protected, and there are hundreds and hundreds of protected Moors; but though many Moors have enjoyed security for themselves and their belongings by this means, others less fortunate, more especially some years ago, have only escaped the talons of Moorish despotism to fall into the clutches of European swindlers, adventurers who have dared—themselves somewhat beyond the reach of their own home government—to fleece the unsuspecting Mohammedan, bribing some basha to imprison him for the rest of his days.
A European consul has before now "sold" his Moorish protected partner—that is, he tells him that, if he does not produce so much money within a certain time, protection will be withdrawn. The wiser course for the Moor is to pay the sum. If protection is withdrawn, the Moorish Government and the European blackleg will divide his worldly goods between them.
Such risks are minimized every year, and protection is greatly sought after by Moors and Jews. From the French they get it easily enough. The system is a bad one: that it prevails at all is a proof of the corruption of the Moorish Government.
CHAPTER V
Plans for Christmas at Gibraltar—A Rough Night—The Steamer which would not Wait—An Ignominious Return to Tetuan—A Rascally Jew—The Aborigines and the Present Occupants of Morocco—The Sultan, Court, Government, and Moorish Army.
