_Responsibility of the Governors - Empire beautiful and
productive - Humane Efforts of the Emperor - Blind Submission to his
Will - Great Number of Negroes naturalized - The Moors might be truly
formidable.
- Emperor's Brother - Fez divided into two
Parts - Magnificent Mosques - Commercial Privileges - Indignities which
Christians undergo - Singular Supply of Water - The Imperial
Gardens - Propensity to
defraud - Factories - Exports - Costume - Character - Manner of
living - Domestic Vermin._
Fez.
Having extended my last letter to an unusual length, I broke off
rather abruptly; I shall therefore resume the subject in this.
The Governors commanding large districts or provinces in Barbary, are
answerable for the crimes and misdemeanors committed in their
governments, if they fail to bring the offenders to public justice;
consequently they impose very heavy fines on the community, to impel
them to seize, and deliver to them, the murderer or robber. The sudden
and frequent changes in the public offices keep the most powerful
Governors in the empire in continual awe and depression; and the fear
of being, in an instant, hurled from the height of prosperity to the
lowest abyss of adversity, usually prevents them from amassing great
wealth, as it is sure to pass into the Emperor's treasury on their
disgrace; and the same cause prevents the forming of dangerous
cabals. Yet some of them contrive, during their short-lived
administration, to squeeze from their wretched vassals as much money
as they can, by every fraudful artifice and despotic violence. The
sufferers murmur, and complain; but the government appears to wink at
the oppression for a time, and reserves its dreadful vengeance till
the annual review, on the plains of Fez, where the collected spoils of
the cruel peculator are seized, and himself deposed, imprisoned, and
the whole fruit of his rapine transferred to the royal treasury.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 79 of 146
Words from 20965 to 21262
of 39195
