There are
few of the dramatic moments in which a man rushes up, seizes your stirrup
and puts himself "beneath the hem of your garment," but there are
numerous claims for protection of another sort. In Morocco all the Powers
that signed the Treaty of Madrid are empowered to grant the privilege.
France has protected subjects by the thousand. They pay no taxes, they are
not to be punished by the native authorities until their Vice-Consul has
been cited to appear in their defence, and, in short, they are put above
the law of their own country and enabled to amass considerable wealth. The
fact that the foreigner who protects them is often a knave and a thief is
a draw-back, but the popularity of protection is immense, for the
protector may possibly not combine cunning with his greed, while the
native Basha or his khalifa quite invariably does. British subjects may
not give protection,--happily the British ideals of justice and fair-play
have forbidden the much-abused practice,--and the most the Englishman can
do is to enter into a trading partnership with a Moor and secure for him a
certificate of limited protection called "mukhalat," from the name of the
person who holds it.
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