e proportion of Moorish officials end
their days in disgrace, if not in dungeons, and some meet their end
by being invited to corrosive sublimate tea, a favourite beverage in
Morocco--for others. Yet there is always a demand for office, and
large prices are paid for posts affording opportunities for plunder.

The Moorish financial system is of a piece with this method. When the
budget is made out, each tribe or district is assessed at the utmost
it is believed capable of yielding, and the candidate for its
governorship who undertakes to get most out of it probably has the
task allotted to him. His first duty is to repeat on a small scale
the operation of the Government, informing himself minutely as to the
resources under his jurisdiction, and assessing the sub-divisions
so as to bring in enough for himself, and to provide against
contingencies, in addition to the sum for which he is responsible. The
local sheikhs or head-men similarly apportion their demands among the
individuals entrusted to their tender mercy. A fool is said to have
once presented the Sultan with a bowl of skimmed and watered milk, and
on being remonstrated with, to have declared that His Majesty received
no more from any one, as his wazeers and governors ate half the
revenue cream each, and the sheikhs drank half the revenue milk. The
fool was right.

The richer a man is, the less proportion he will have to pay, for he
can make it so agreeable--or disagreeable--for those entrusted with a
little brief authority. It is the struggling poor who have to pay
or go to prison, even if to pay they have to sell their means of
subsistence. Three courses lie before this final victim--to obtain
the protection of some influential name, native or foreign, to buy a
"friend at court," or to enter Nazarene service. But native friends
are uncertain and hard to find, and, above all, they may be alienated
by a higher bid from a rival or from a rapacious official. Such
affairs are of common occurrence, and harrowing tales might be told of
homes broken up in this way, of tortures inflicted, and of lives
spent in dungeons because display has been indulged in, or because an
independent position has been assumed under cover of a protection that
has failed. But what can one expect with such a standard of honour?

Foreigners, on the other hand, seldom betray their
_proteges_--although, to their shame be it mentioned, some in high
places have done so,--wherefore their protec