With the same certainty that Pyrrhus foretold the destruction of Carthage or Rome, by the bone of contention which Sicily afforded, may the destruction of England or France, or both, be prognosticated from the French occupation of Africa. France by her mismanagement has only retarded the explosion, and she has not the courage to withdraw. Her invasion of Africa was as little her own purpose or will, as the invasion of Spain in 1823. A foreign hand planned and prompted it in mystery at Versailles, and publicly hailed and encouraged it from beyond the English Channel,[60] whence alone was to be apprehended censure or dissatisfaction. Ceuta is the great Botany Bay of the Spaniards. There were here recently three thousand five hundred convicts; but two thousand have been sent off to Castille to work on some canal there; those left are the worst class, transported for not less than ten years and “retention,” which means that they may be kept as much longer as the governor thinks fit. After five years’ residence, they are hired out. The landlord of the _café_ where I stayed gave them, as a class, an excellent character. Inquiring the kind of crimes some of them had committed, he said, “the two young men who attend you are here for murder.” There is here a greater accumulation of malefactors than on any other spot of the earth, yet you might lay down gold in the streets with impunity. There are abundant facilities for escape; the sea is open, the town accessible at every point; there are boats all round, and the convicts outnumber the other population. They are not, as in Gibraltar, driven in gangs, ironed, and with “_Convict_” stamped on every article of their dress. Here they go about free; the watchmen in the street at night are themselves convicts. This humanity in the treatment of convicts extends equally to slaves: the Spaniards extend to them the protection of the laws, giving up to them the feast days; allow them progressively to re-purchase their liberty, and when they have done so, admit them to perfect equality of consideration with the white men.