d--Albert is Indisposed--The Writer Sums up on Morocco.

THE Government in Morocco would satisfy the most ardent admirer of
force. It is an unbridled despotism. The Sultan is head of the Church as
of the State, and master of the lives and property of his subjects. He
dispenses with ministers, and deliberates only with favourites. When
favourites displease him, he can order their heads to be taken off.
Favourites are careful not to displease him. The land is a _terra
incognita_ to Europeans, and is rich in beans, maize, and wool, which
are exported, and in wheat and barley, which are not always permitted to
be exported. Altogether the form of administration is very primitive and
simple. It is a rare privilege for a European to be admitted into the
Imperial presence, and indeed the only occasions, one might say, when
Europeans have the privilege are those furnished by the visits of
foreign Missions to submit credentials and presents. It is advisable for
a private traveller not to go to the chief city unless attached to one
of these official caravans; but by those who have money a journey to Fez
may be compassed with an escort. This escort consists of the Sultan's
very irregular soldiers, who are armed with very long and very rusty
matchlocks, of a pattern common nowadays in museums and curiosity shops.
Ostensibly the escort is intended to protect the traveller from the
regularly organized bands of robbers which infest the interior; but the
experience of the traveller is that when the robbers swoop down he has
to protect the escort. Christians are looked upon as dogs by all the
self-satisfied natives, and treated so by some of them when they can be
saucy with impunity. It was my lot to be called a dog by a small
fanatic, who hissed at me with the asperity and industry of a disturbed
gander, and pelted me with stones. But two can play at that game, and
that boy will think twice before he lapidates a full-grown Christian
again. But he will hate him for evermore, and when he has reached man's
estate will teach his son to repeat the doggerel: "The Christian to the
hook, the Jew to the spit, and the Moslem to see the sight."

The Sultan collects his revenue (estimated at half a million pounds
sterling a year, great part of which is derived from the Government
monopoly of the sale of opium) by the aid of his army; but as he never
nears the greater portion of his dominions, there must be some nice
pickings off that revenue by m