These concessions of credit, the loans of money and the granting of permits, and monopolies, are managed, not with a view to the pecuniary interests of the sovereign, but for political ends. By these means he paralyzes all resistance to his illegal taxes on trade in the cities whose business these imposts are considered to be. This ledger management of a nation is an effort of genius worthy of Mehemet Ali. The _fons malorum_, here as elsewhere, is the customs duties. They have everywhere been introduced by evasion and fraud; for, until a people is familiarised with them, they are too monstrous and wicked to be argued about. In Mussulman countries the task has been more difficult than with us, as there is no church property with which to bribe public assemblies, and taxes on commerce are expressly prohibited by the code at once of religion and government. A people so tenacious of old customs as the Moors, and so little disposed to imitate Europe, were not easily brought under on such a point, and their recent history affords two instances of revolts occasioned by illegal taxation. The first revolt was in 1774, when the principal citizens of Fez (an unprotected city) thus addressed the Sultan, Sidi Mahomet:-- “The city of Fez means not to disobey, nor ever could so mean; but the taxes laid on provisions, and the increase of duty on merchants, and which the Mussulmans” (the term is analogous to “the country” with us) “regard as contrary to custom and religion, were considerations that to so great and so religious a prince might excuse the general murmur and discontent.” No punishments followed the suppression of this rebellion, and the taxes were abandoned. “Snuff was farmed, and an _octroi_ placed on commodities per load, as they enter and go out of towns, or pass ferries; a stamp was put on woollen stuffs, and on all the trinkets made by goldsmiths. The governors of the towns farm these taxes at a fixed sum, by which they very seldom are gainers. These new imposts are considered among the Moors as innovations, contrary to the spirit of the Koran. These taxes produced a revolt at Mequinez in 1778, but it was put down by the black guard of the Emperor.” Chenier, whom I quote, distinguishes the revenues into ancient and modern, the ancient being the tenths, the capitation tax (tribute) of the Jews, the profits of coining, arbitrary impositions; the modern being the obnoxious duties and _octroi_. He highly commends the ancient system: the tithes he considers profitable to the Government, and not onerous to the people (of course, he is mentally instituting the comparison with Europe, because paid in kind.) “He who grows ten bushels of corn pays one, without any retrospect or inquiry concerning a more abundant harvest, which presents an example of justice among barbarous states well worthy the imitation of the more civilized.”