From the moment that he was appointed Consul General in Morocco, his letters are animated by the one great aim on which his public career was concentrated—the increase and consolidation of British influence in Morocco. British interests, he believed, could best be furthered by the encouragement of commerce, by the amelioration of the condition of the Moors, and also by personally gaining the respect of the people. Extracts from his diary of 1846 tend to show how he set himself to attain these objects; and his endeavours bore good fruit. The account of the arrest of piracy in Rif, through his intervention, may be taken as an instance of his direct personal influence in dealing with the wild mountain tribes.
His power of talking familiarly in their own tongue with natives of every degree was of great advantage to him in gaining a personal hold on the people, and many illustrations might be quoted from the stories which he tells of his meetings with various governors of the provinces through which he travelled in the course of his frequent journeys to the Court at the cities of Marákesh, Fas, Meknes, or Rabát. In fact his purity of motive, tenacity of purpose, his ever ready and shrewd advice, won the respect and good opinion of the people of Morocco. Implicit confidence was placed in him by high and low alike.
On his influence with successive Sultans it is unnecessary to enlarge. The offer of Sultan Sid Mohammed to place in his hands the entire control of the foreign affairs of Morocco speaks for itself. The story of Benabu, again, relates how the latter entrusted untold gold to my father’s keeping, assured that his treasure would reach its destination, though no witness or written paper attested to the transaction. Lastly, to take an instance in humble life, we may point to the pitiful faith placed in him by a wretched Rifian criminal when on the point of surrendering himself to the authorities.
Nor were this reliance in his uprightness and this respect for his judgment confined to the Moors. During the war between Spain and Morocco, when he alone of all the Foreign Representatives remained at his post, he was appealed to by the Spanish friars to protect their church and its sacred contents from the insults of the angry Moslems. Their confidence was not misplaced: his protection secured the sacred building from the slightest injury.
The Spanish war at first seemed likely to check the development of trade in Morocco at the moment when it was on the point of revival. The promise of prosperity was due to the Commercial Convention negotiated by my father in 1856, a convention which an old resident in Morocco, one well qualified to appreciate its value, has termed the Magna Charta of that country. But when peace was declared, the result of the contest proved eventually to be rather a blessing than a curse. The necessity of raising a loan to pay the war indemnity impelled the Sultan to ask help from Great Britain, thus enabling my father the more forcibly to impress upon H.S.M. the necessity of introducing into the administration of the Customs reforms which immediately and substantially increased the revenues of Morocco.
Yet in spite of the good results which in this instance followed the acceptance of his advice, the apathetic and ignorant Moors could rarely be induced to take active steps in the path of reform. It was only under the pressure of necessity that any advance was made. This lethargy did not, however, proceed from any want of plain speaking on my father’s part. As is shown by the account of his private interview with Sultan Sid Mohammed at Marákesh in 1872, he indicated to that potentate, in the clearest and most emphatic language, the debased condition of his realm, and the iniquities of the system under which his subjects were governed.
But it was not with the recalcitrant Moorish Government alone that my father had to contend. His later letters recount his failure to put a check on the abuses caused by the protection of natives by foreigners, and the consequent downfall of his hope that the end of his career might be signalised by another and more extended commercial treaty. The Moorish Government was not inclined to promote foreign trade, contending that greater facilities for commerce would inevitably cause an influx of alien traders, each of whom would have his native agents and servants under the protection of a foreign flag, and that such protected subjects, not being immediately amenable to the native authorities, would only increase friction, lessen the Sultan’s authority, and diminish the exchequer.
Her Majesty’s Government recognised my father’s value by repeated promotion, and honours were bestowed on him under various administrations; but he was given to understand that his services could not be spared from the country where, it may be said, he was an acknowledged power. Indeed, the principal aim of my father’s life during his long career in Morocco—the preponderance of British influence over that of all other nations—may be said to have been attained and maintained during his tenure of office. In 1885, the last year of his official life, he writes with reference to his unceasing anxiety that neither France nor any other country should by any means obtain a footing in Morocco, ‘As a sentinel of the Straits, I fire my gun, as a warning, when I know of a move to obtain that object.’
Sir Francis de Winton, in his kindly and graceful introduction, touches on the expedition to the lower slopes of the Atlas made by the Mission, of which he was a member, in 1872, when the heights to the eternal snow were climbed by Capt. Sawle and Mr. Drummond Hay, and when the cordial reception offered by the wild natives left a pleasant impression on my father and his party. He also refers to my father in the light of a sportsman. The latter’s recollections of many of the happiest days of his life spent in pursuit of wild boar and other game were noted by himself, and some of them have been embodied in this work. A keen and hard rider, an unerring shot in his earlier days, before his eyesight was impaired, and of almost reckless courage, he was well fitted to become the elected leader and head of the native hunters. Under his rule sport flourished in the environs of Tangier, the ground allotted for the purpose by the Sultan was properly guarded, and the close season strictly observed: it was then that pigsticking in Morocco reached its highest perfection, and gave pleasure to many of every rank and condition, whether Europeans or natives.
It is doubtful whether sport could again flourish in the environs of Tangier as it did in my father’s day. An increasing armed European population, the introduction of weapons of precision, and the denudation of the woods, render such a prospect unlikely. His stories therefore of narrow escapes and exciting days may prove of interest to the lover of the chase; and to some, who in those bygone years shared his sport, may perhaps recall the memory of pleasant times spent with him in the field.