We have no Slave Treaty with Morocco.
The British Government has at times called upon me for reports upon slavery. It is of the mildest description. There is no slave trade by sea; five or six hundred slaves are brought yearly by land, I believe. The men are bought for servants in the houses of wealthy Moors, and the women as handmaids or servants. They are very kindly treated, and when their masters die are given their liberty and a portion of the estate.
With one exception, the only cases where I have been appealed to, to intervene in behalf of slaves, have been to beg that the masters should not give their slaves liberty! They preferred, they said, a comfortable home! Of course it is desirable that slavery should be abolished even in Morocco; but it would be a hopeless task to urge upon the Moorish Government the abolition of a domestic institution, admitted by the laws of the Prophet, unless England had an opportunity of rendering Morocco some great service, such as preventing her being attacked by a stronger Power. Hitherto we have given her no aid but much advice in the hour of need, and then deserted her.
When England has done as much for Morocco as she has done for Turkey and Egypt, by preventing unjust aggressions, &c., &c., then she may hope to persuade the Sultan to abolish slavery. Do you remember the long correspondence between our dear father and the Sultan on the subject, which finished by His Sherifian Majesty quoting Scripture in favour of slavery? I also have had a fling on the subject. But slavery in Morocco exists in the mildest form. Slaves are not used for agricultural purposes—not transported, like pigs, in vessels—and are generally the spoilt children of the house.
I am not going to tell all this to the world, and thus appear to be defending slavery.
However, I hammer away at the Moors on the subject, and in my last note hinted that if they do not seek to satisfy public opinion by abolishing the objectionable institution, they may be finally abolished—or something to that effect. . . .
The Anti-Slavery Commissioners came to me to say good-bye, thanked me for courtesy to them, and volunteered to say, ‘You are much belied, Sir John, but we have taken care to sift for truth and shall make it known.’
The story about the Jewess who was flogged last year by the Governor of Dar-el-Baida, in the presence of the native employed as British Interpreter, is most exaggerated. I dismissed the Interpreter as soon as I heard he had been present at the flogging of a woman.
Esther is a pretty girl of a dissolute character. The sons of the Interpreter had been wasting their father’s patrimony on her, and when the old father remonstrated with his sons, caught with Esther, one of them fired a pistol at him, so the Interpreter rushed off to the Governor to demand the arrest and punishment of the woman and of his sons. The Governor arrested and flogged all three, in accordance with the law of this country, but there was no brutal punishment of the girl. What nonsense to talk about the Interpreter having left without giving compensation! Who was to give it, and who receive it? The Governor did his duty according to their tyrannical law. The Interpreter did not punish the woman or his sons; it was the Governor; and the Interpreter got dismissed by me from his employment, a very severe mode of showing my disapproval of his being present at the flogging of a woman. Subsequently I got the Sultan to abolish the flogging of women by Governors for immorality, and to ordain that it shall be inflicted by a Kadi only. Now a Kadi cannot order a woman to be flogged for adultery unless six honourable men of spotless character declare they witnessed her misdeed! So no woman will henceforward be flogged in Morocco. This I obtained in black and white, and Esther got a warming with a beneficial result to all females of her class.
Féraud is to join the German Minister and me in negotiation. He is one of the best Frenchmen I ever had to deal with. I expect the Sultan will kick hard against the reduction of the Tariff.