The merchants having all returned from Morocco, I shall give some account of their visit to the Emperor.  The ancient rule of imperial residence was, that the Sultan should sojourn six months in Fez, and six months in Morocco, the former the northern, and the latter the southern capital.  This is not adhered to strictly, the Emperor taking up his abode at one capital or the other, and sometimes at Micknos, according to his caprice.  He never fails, however, to visit Morocco once a year, on account of its neighbourhood to Mogador, his much loved, and beautiful commercial city.  The Emperor himself, before his accession to the throne, was the administrator of the customhouse of this city, where he has acquired his commercial tastes and habits of business, which he has cultivated from the very commencement of his reign.  When the Emperor resides in the South, he receives visits from the merchants of Mogador.  These visits are imperative on the merchants, if they are his imperial debtors, or even if they wish to maintain a friendly feeling with his government.  Upon an average, the visits or deputations of merchants, take place every three or four years; more frequently they cannot well be, because they cost the merchants immense sums in presents, each often giving to the value of three or four thousand dollars.  In return, they receive additional and prolonged credits.

The number of Imperial merchants is about twenty, three of whom are Englishmen, Messrs. Willshire, Elton, and Robertson.  Most of the rest are Barbary Jews. [21]

There is a Belgian merchant who did not go with these.  This gentleman, owing nothing to the Emperor, preferred to pay duty on shipping his merchandize, on which by payment of ready money, he gets 25 per cent discount.  This plan, however, does not enable him to compete with the Imperial merchants, whose duties accumulate till they are years and years in arrear.  And when these arrears have gone on increasing till there is no chance of payment, the Emperor, in order to keep up his firms of enslaved merchants, will rather remit half or more of the debt, in consideration of a handsome present, than encourage merchants to make ready money payments.  The largest debt owing by a single firm, is that of a native Jew, viz., 250,000 dollars.  The amount of the debt of the united Mogador merchants is more than one million and a half of dollars.  The usual course of the merchants is to pay the debt off by monthly instalments.

As an instance of the Emperor’s straining a point to keep solvent one of his mercantile firms, on the occasion of the visit of the merchants to Morocco, his Imperial Highness lent the house of Hasan Joseph (Jews) 10,000 dollars in hard cash, which, to my knowledge, were paid to them out of the coffers of the Mogador custom-house.  This was certainly an instance of magnanimous generosity on the part of Muley Abd Errahman.  But the Emperor’s genius is mercantile, and he is determined to support his Imperial traders; and his conduct, after all, is only the calculation of a raiser.