M. Rey gives us this flattering tableau as a social picture of Morocco.

Covetous governors are continually succeeding one another, they are ever eager of enjoying the advantages of their position; their thirst for plunder is so much the more intense, as they are not allowed time to satisfy it, so they prey on the people.  The inhabitants of towns and of the country live in rags in miserable hovels.  What raiment! what food! mortality is dreadful, the children are invalids, and the women, especially in the country, are condemned to do the work of beasts of burden; such is the picture of society.

I have quoted these few passages from the “Memoire” of M. Rey, because he was resident many years in Tangier, and his account of the country discovers talent and intelligence, but is, of course, coloured with a strong anti-English feeling.  Mr. Hay wrote on the back of his Memoire,—­“All that is said in reference to Great Britain is false and malicious.”  M. Rey’s opinions of the Moors and the present governors are still more bitter and unjust.

I had an interview with El-Martel-Warabah, government auctioneer of slaves, from whom I obtained details respecting the slave-trade in Tangier and Morocco generally.  There is no market for slaves in Tangier.  The poor creatures are led about the town as cattle, particularly in the main street, before the doors of the principal merchants, where they are usually disposed of.  No Jew or Christian is permitted to buy or hold a slave in this country.  Government possess many slaves, and people hire them out by the day from the authorities.  The ordinary price of a good slave is eighty dollars.  Boys, at the age of nine or ten years, sell the best; female slaves do hot fetch so much as male slaves, unless of extraordinary beauty.  Slaves are imported from all the south.

The Sultan levies no duty on the sale or import of slaves.  When one runs away from his master, and takes refuge with another, the new master usually writes to the former, offering to buy him; thus slaves are often enticed away.  They are sometimes allowed to abscond without their owners troubling themselves about them, their master’s being unable either to feed or sell them.

In cases of punishment for all serious offences, slaves are brought before the judicial authorities, and suffer the same punishment as free men.  In cases not deemed grave, they are flogged, or otherwise privately punished by their masters.  Slaves went to war with Abd-el-Kader, against the French.  The Arabs of Algeria had formerly many slaves.  The chief depot of slaves is Morocco, the southern capital.  Ten thousand have been imported during one year; but the average number brought into Morocco is, perhaps, not more than half that amount.  The Maroquine Moors, before departing for any country under the British flag, usually give liberty to their slaves.  On their return, however, they sell them again as slaves, or get rid of them some way or other.  A slave once having tasted of liberty, can never again be fully reconciled to thraldom.  Moors resident in Gibraltar, have frequently slaves with them.  A few days ago, a slave-boy, resident in Gibraltar, wished to turn Christian, and was immediately sent back to Tangier, and sold to another master.