although at the moment I am writing he 'reminds me of the glorious words of Æschylus, “ ποντίων τε κυμάτων ̓Ανηριθμόν γελασματ whilst his waves " interminably wreathe their crisped smiles "-yet I cannot think of immediately trusting myself to his hospitality, and shall accordingly tarry a little longer at Algiers.

LETTER XX.

I could easily transcribe for you long comparative statements of the expenses and the receipts of the French Colonial Government here, as well as tables of the shipping, and of the exports and imports of all the ports in the Regency; and if the colony were in a settled condition, such documents, though dry reading, would be well worth studying as means of solving the grand problem, namely, what profit will France make by her conquest of Algiers? Things, however, are not in a settled condition. I have still, to be sure, the same general impression that their national pride will induce the French to retain the country, and to penetrate from its littoral into its interior as far as they can; and I have still a further general belief, that by good management a perspective of splendid though remote advantages might be opened to France, and to the civilized world at large, from the French possession of the Regency. But you must take this opinion as a guess, not as a dogma; for I repeat that things are not in a settled condition. The public feeling of France itself, as to the advisableness of retaining Algiers, is divided between pride and frugality; and how the struggle is to end will depend upon many contingencies. Among these we may reckon the chief one to be the balance of accounts from year to year, as to the expenses and receipts of the colony. Let us hear then, perhaps you will say, how much on the one hand the colony costs France for soldiers and the civil administration; and on the other hand, how much it yields in the shape of customs, tolls, taxes on markets, and on the natives, &c. &c.

As to the expense of the French army in Algiers, that must depend upon its number. At the time I write, the officers whom I have consulted compute it, generally, at 23,000 †. Take that estimate, and compute the expense of every soldier at 35l. a-year, and the result will be 805,000l. sterling. But when I recollect the fact that a British War Minister once expressed to me his belief, that what with ordnance, hospitals, officering, accoutrements, ammunition, &c., our soldiers cost not less to the nation than 80%. annually per head, I cannot believe that France maintains her military, (in Algiers at least,) all things included, at less than one-half that sum. The expense, therefore, to France in the event of her being obliged to maintain 23,000 fighting men in the Regency, would exceed a million sterling a-year, besides the cost of her civil government.

Query, Would this force be sufficient to overrun the country, and to keep possession of it? I am no military man, but I would stake my life on the truth of the opinion, that, to sweep and keep the country, Napoleon himself, if alive, would demand double that number. It is wandering

May a thousand curses light on the German critic who first substituted καχλασμα for γελασμα in this inimitable passage of the Prometheus !

Mons. Genty de Bussy states the whole effective force of the army at 31,410 on the 1st of January, 1834.

from the question to talk of the British retaining Hindostan with twenty and some odd thousand British troops; for the Kabyles and Arabs are not Hindoos, and we have 200,000 native Indian troops of the most warlike caste in our service. No doubt the French might keep hold of Algiers, Oran, Bougia, and Bona, and a few miles round those cities, with 15,000 men. But who knows what their policy will be in this respect? and who therefore can settle the question of what the military expense of retaining this Regency will be to France?

It thus seems to me to be a matter if not of vague, at least of wide calculation, how much the possession of Algiers will cost France in the way of pecuniary outlay. The Colony may ere long cost her half a million sterling a-year, or it may cost her two millions. This contingency depends on other contingencies; and I should say the same thing of the profits that may result and partially meet that outlay. Suppose I tell you, for instance, on the authority of Genty de Bussy, that the French Colonial Government of Algiers derived from all its resources in the colony, namely, from the public domains, the custom-house dues, the post-office, the police fines, the monopoly of hides, the sale of coals, the impositions on the natives, and some other items, the sum of 1,144,664 francs and 78 centimes, within the first six months of the last year, 1834-and, by fair calculation, double that sum during the entire year: still, how far is this information from guiding us to a certain conclusion as to how much may be the future receipts of the colony? The importation customs depend considerably on the size of the army; the tolls and exportation duties depend on the friendliness or hostility of the natives. Every thing, in fact, depends on contingencies, about which conjecture must go to sea without a star or a compass.

The first profit which France derived from the conquest of Algiers was the confiscation of the Dey's treasury; and to this acquisition I can see no fair objection, conceiving, as I do, that her attack on the pirate chief was perfectly justifiable; yet, still it behoved her to use her victory on the principles of civilized nations, and sacredly to respect the faith of treaties. Have the French done this? Certainly not! They have seized on some profits which are forbidden fruits in fair warfare, and they show a mean hankering after other extortions, which they have neither the effrontery to execute, nor the conscientiousness to forego. I say this as a man, and not as an Englishman; for England, although her colonial policy has been generally wiser than that of France, has no right to call herself sinless in Africa-as the hapless Caffres can bear witness but I have a right to speak on this subject as a citizen of the world.

By the convention made at the surrender of Algiers to the French, the Dey was permitted to depart with all his private property. By the words "richesses personnelles," in the second article of the treaty, it was no doubt indicated that he was to leave behind him his state-treasures, which were public property; but it was announced distinctly, that all the inhabitants, civil and military, were to be protected in their property, trade, industry, and religion. Surely, by any honest interpretation of this treaty, the Turks remaining at Algiers came within its protection; but the French had scarcely fixed themselves in the city, when the Governor, General Bourmont, ordered a general arrestation of the Turks tore them from their wives and families--and, putting them on ship

board, caused them to be transported out of the country. It was rumoured that those Turks were conspiring against the French, but as Sidy Hamdan, in relating this affair, very justly remarks-" Here was a handful of men who a few days before had possessed arms, ammunition, artillery, the castle of the Cassaba, and other forts-they had an army and treasures to support them, and the Beys of the provinces on their side yet, with all these advantages, they had preferred surrendering to France to continuing a hopeless struggle. Now that the tables were turned-now that they were without arms, ammunition, or a single stronghold-how improbable it is that men with brains in their heads should think of regaining in their weakness what they had given up in their strength!" But there was a rumour of a conspiracy brought to General Bourmont by some of the lowest scum of the Jews and Mussulmans, who were paid for their espionnage—and we all know the skill of spies to forge treason where they cannot find it. In so grave a matter, however, as the banishment of those men, justice demanded proofs and not rumour-and of proof or public trial not a shadow was exhibited in their case. In 1832, the French, for the first time, declared, that they had documents of a native conspiracy, which the then Governor General, a most impartial judge to be sure, considered authentic; and by a charitably strained inference it was concluded, that all Turks whatsoever must have been concerned in it. Even granting that conclusion, however, it is clear that those Turks were condemned and punished two years before a tittle of proof was alleged against them.

. When the tri-color was substituted for the white flag at Algiers, the natives found no amendment in the colour of French domination. The first decree of General Clausel, dated the 8th of September, puts under sequestration the effects which had belonged to the late Dey-(by these effects is meant immoveable property, for the public treasury had already been secured)-the effects also of the Beys, or provincial governors, as well as those of the departed Turks, and the funds of a corporation, called that of Mecca and Medina. A second decree of the same Governor, dated December 7, 1830, sequestrates the houses, magazines, manors, and establishments of all descriptions whatsoever, the revenues of which are appropriated to the mosques, or which may have any other special appropriations.

The decree, it is obvious, lays its hands at once not only on the immoveable property of the Dey, which was a justifiable seizure, and on that of the Beys, which, for aught that I know, was also excusable, but on the property of the deported Turks, and on that of all corporations--civil or religious-including even charitable institutions-a proceeding of gross iniquity. In September, 1831, a new decree was issued by the then Governor for sequestrating the estates of all absent Turks, without hinting at the slightest discrimination between those who might be guilty or innocent. It is no wonder that the Baron Pichon, who appears a uniform advocate of the rights of the natives, should reprobate the above decrees; but I am agreeably surprised to find his opponent, Monsieur Genty de Bussy, making a liberal confession on the same subject, and blaming the decree for making no distinction between the

* I thus generally interpret the word "censives," which means manors entitled to quit-rents.

guiltless and the convicted refugees. Monsieur Genty de Bussy, according to all accounts that I have heard of him, is not particularly troubled with a dyspeptic conscience; but he is too shrewd a man to be an out-andout sophist in so glaring a case of injustice. He modifies, nevertheless, his censure of the decree by remarking that, in as far as it applied to Turks actually guilty of conspiring against France, it was perfectly lawful, since they were, in a fuil sense of the word, traitors. But I deny this position of M. Genty de Bussy, "Traitors" means persons who owe allegiance, and have renounced it. If, after the French had taken Algiers, they had treated the Turks with common justice, they would have owed them allegiance; but what allegiance had France a right to claim from men whom she dragged from their homes and gardens and drove into banishment, without a shadow of proof or the show of a trial? The French were the traitors, and not they. It is well known that, for several days after the capture of the city, the Turks were insulted, kicked, and spit upon by the Jews wherever they found them. The poor Turks met in a body in order to petition the French Governor for protection, and they sent him a deputation to prefer their prayer; but, by a sad fatality, they chose for deputies some men who were either the spies of Bourmont, or at least who speculated on being rewarded for discovering new symptoms of Turkish treason; and those wretches, instead of bearing the petition of the Turks, went and told him that the Turks had congregated in order to raise an insurrection. This fact has been repeatedly stated to me by Moors, who were no friends of the Turks, and by impartial foreign consuls. And this was bringing civilization into Africa, to try men by spies, and to condemn them without a hearing!

M. Genty de Bussy, in fact, assumes too much in partially apologizing for the above decree, by alleging that there were guilty as well as innocent Turks among the absentees, whose estates were sequestrated. None of the absent Turks-whether they had been dragged on shipboard to be deported, or had fled from Algiers in a panic, as I believe many of them did-could be guilty of treason towards a power which had broken all faith with them, and to which they owed no fealty. Allowing it even to be true, as the French publicly announced, that they had got indubitable documents, in 1832, of many Turks abroad being engaged in plots against the French, and call this treason, if you will-still it is a treason proved a year later than the infamous decree which sequestrated all Turkish estates indiscriminately. Nay, even go farther, and suppose that, in 1832, there was not one untreasonable Algerine Turk among the absentees, still what caused their absence, and what drove them into treason? It was French injustice; and the French, forsooth, are to punish the crime which they have themselves created! I am told, however, by Frenchmen who, without justifying, would palliate this treatment of the Turks, that the decrees of governors are not laws till confirmed by the Home-Government; and that the banished Turks might still, by a proper appeal, get these sequestrations removed--but that they are barbarians, and have no notion of legal appeals! But, verily, this argument is worse than a barefaced mockery of justice. Does any man believe that these Turkish gentlemen, robbed in defiance of laws and faith of their estates, will ever be restored to them?-I do not.

It seems like a retribution of Providence that these beautiful villas, thus wrenched from their owners, have yielded but little profit to the

wrenchers. They are principally occupied by the military, and the French soldiers, wherever they have taken up their habitation, have made the houses uninhabitable to all future tenants by cutting up the wood-work in order to make their fires. Some destruction in this way was unavoidable, but the troops amuse themselves with superfluous tricks of mischief. I was told so, at least, by one of themselves; a naïve laughing corporal, who said to me, After all, we are a sad set of fellows: I found my camarades, les singes diables, one day cutting down a tall, noble, palm-tree, and for what purpose do you think?-why, to get at a bird's nest but they got no living birds, for the nestlings were all killed by the fall."

The sequestrated immoveable property of the Deys, the Beys, and the banished Turks comes all under the title of the "National Domain, or public property ;" and it would seem that the French are disposed to give a sweeping extent of signification to that term: for the decrees of some of the governors of Algiers sequestrate the property of native corporations, civil as well as religious. The idea of sequestrating religious funds has struck the French themselves as so impolitic and faithless, that Genty de Bussy has, like a wise man, deprecated the fulfilment of those decrees. But, for my own part, I can see nothing more unjustifiable in the sequestration of funds belonging to civil corporations than of those belonging to corporations that are religious. Algiers capitulated on a promise that the property, the commerce, and the industry of its inhabitants should be protected; and what sort of protection is this, which sequestrates the property of even civil corporations? I grant, no doubt, that there is something more glaringly impolitic in alarming the natives about their religious corporations than about their lay ones; but the essential injustice is the same.

You will be surprised, perhaps, to hear of corporations' vested rights and funds, proceeding from legacies for religious and charitable purposes, having been respected from age to age among a people so despotically governed as the Algerines. But there were limits to the despotism even of a Dey of Algiers. It is true that when he took a fancy to a man's head, he generally succeeded in getting it removed from his shoulders; and afterwards he took the same care of the beheaded man's property that the conscientious bird takes of the silver spoon in the story of the "Maid and the Magpie." But the Dey could only be a civil and not a religious robber. The Moors and the Turks in all the Regencies of Barbary, like all true believers in Mahometan countries, had a number of public foundations, both for piety and practical charity, which were enriched, from time to time, both by gifts and legacies. Over these foundations Religion threw its guardian agis, and Deys and Pashas were compelled to hold them in

veneration.

The most important of these institutions is that of Mecca and Medina:-"It contributes to the expense of supporting mosques in those sacred cities; it distributes charity to the poor, and it makes advances to Mussulmans," says Genty de Bussy, "who wish to go as pilgrims to Mecca." But it is strange, considering the general clearness and accuracy of that gentleman, to find him, after he has made this statement, referring us to a document which contradicts it, on the subject of pilgrims going to Mecca being assisted by the aforesaid institution.

This document is a series of questions addressed to the Mufti of