February 1st.—He received a letter from his Excellency Musurus Pasha, conveying to him assurances of the favourable intentions of His Majesty the new Sultan, Abdul Hamid II., towards his Hebrew subjects.
"My Dear Sir Moses,"—(the Ambassador writes, under the date of 17th February 1877)—"According to the intention which I expressed to you in my letter of the 4th ultimo, I communicated to the Sublime Porte a copy of the letter which you did me the honour to address me on the 1st ultimo, and I have now received the instructions of the Imperial Government to return you its thanks for your generous donation to the fund for the relief of suffering among the Turkish soldiers, and for the good feeling expressed in your letter, and to assure you, at the same time, that the solicitude of His Imperial Majesty the Sultan will be always extended to the Israelites equally with the other communities of the empire.—Believe me, dear Sir Moses, yours most sincerely,
"Musurus."
The Sultan has kept his word up to this day, and there is every reason to hope he will continue to do so. Some of the Jews under his rule fill high offices of State, others are employed as professors in Government schools, and all enjoy the same privileges as other subjects of his empire.
April 14th.—Sir Moses received a letter from the Secretary of the Board, in which a desire was expressed to ascertain his views as to the best mode of dealing with certain matters referred to in a letter addressed to the Board, referring to the ill-treatment of the Jews in Fez.
"I have received," he replied, "a communication from Mr A. C., of Mogador, containing complaints similar to those to which you allude, and my reply to him was that the letter which the Jewish community of Mogador had received from the Prime Minister in the name of the Sultan, appeared to me a striking proof of the Sultan's intentions to afford justice to every one of his Jewish subjects.
"In the letter Mr A. C. has addressed to me, he states that they had appealed to the Sultan, who, in reply to their petition, promised to personally investigate the nature of their complaint, and moreover added that he would in no instance suffer any injustice to be done to any of his subjects.
"I forwarded," Sir Moses writes, "to Mr C. a copy of a letter which I had addressed to all the Jewish communities in the Barbary State on my return from Morocco in the year 1864, advising them to act on all occasions in strict accordance with the suggestions therein given. If you refer to other acts of ill-treatment at the hands of the Moslems of which the Jews have to complain in Morocco, then I say, if the Board of Deputies should deem it proper to entrust me with a Mission to the Sultan, I shall regard the confidence they would thus repose in me as a high compliment, and should be ready to start at a moment's notice."