It will not be out of place here, to give a brief account of the commerce of Morocco.  In doing so, we must take into consideration the prodigious quantity of imports and exports, of which there are no statistics in the Imperial custom-houses, and no consular returns.  Let us estimate the population of Morocco at its general compensation of eight millions, and suppose that each spends a dollar per annum in the purchase of European manufactures.  This will raise the value of imports at once to eight millions of dollars per annum.  It is notorious that the contraband trade of Tangier, and Tetuan, and the northern coast generally doubles or trebles the commerce that passes through the customhouse; but the legal trade is not well ascertained.

Mr. Hay once sent, I believe, to the Agent of Mogador, a list of questions to be answered by the consular department.  The gentleman, who was an unsalaried vice-consul, appalled at the number of interrogatories, immediately replied, “That he had his own business to attend to; he could not sit down to compose consular returns, which would require weeks of labour; and if it were considered part of his duties to answer such questions, he begged to resign at once his vice-consulship.”

As to the Barbary Jews, who have charge of some of the vice-consulates, they are necessarily incapacitated, by reason of their want of education, for such an employment.  It is, therefore, hopeless to attempt to give any accurate account of the commerce of Morocco, I can only annex a few details of those things of which we are actually cognizant.

Whatever may be said of the indolent habits of the Moors, they were once, and still are, a commercial people.  Spain, the neighbour of Morocco, still feels the loss of the Moors.  They were the really industrious classes settled in Spain.  The merchants, the artists, the operatives, and agriculturists unfortunately have left behind them few inheriting their habits of perseverance.  Little, indeed, can be expected in Spain, where the maxim is adopted, that “nobility may lie dormant in a servant, but becomes extinct in a merchant.”  Spain lost upwards of three millions of intelligent and industrious Moors, a shock she will never recover.

The bombardment of a commercial city of this country would not do the injury which is commonly imagined.  The ports are numerous though not very good.  A single house or shed on the beach of Mogador, or Tangier, is a sufficient custom-house for the Moors.  There are no great deposits of goods on the coast, for as soon as the camels bring their loads of exports, these are shipped, and the camels immediately return to the interior, laden with imported goods or manufactures.