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.
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