B y w ay o f shewing the extreme disadvantages under which our négociations are carried on with the Barbary powers, I w ill relate a circumstance which happened during the last embassy to Marocco; I do not mean to say any thing prejudicial to. Mr. Matra, who conducted that embassy ; he was a man o f capacity, and understood the nature o f the court, as well as a long residence in the country, without a knowledge o f the language, could enable h im : he was attended b y a Jewish interpreter, a subject o f Marocco, who was required by the Emperor to. wear ¿he dress o f his tribe,* but being in the suite o f the Ambassador, tion being paid to its contents, a mark of disrespect which gave great offence to ■the Etnperor. It appears to me extraordinary, that a language which is spoken over a much greater extent of country than any other on earth—a language combining all the powers and energy of the Greek and Latin, should be so little understood, that an Arabic letter written by the present Emperor of Marocco, to the King of Great Britain, actually lay in the Secretary of State’s office some months without being translated. The circumstance coming to the knowledge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the Right Hon. Spencer Percival), that gentleman expressed a wish to a friend of mine, to have a translation, and the letter was transmitted to me for that purpose. Doctor Buffé, who delivered it, assured me, it had been sent to one, if not both Universities, and to the post-office, but that, either from a difference in the punctuation of the characters, or in the language itself, no one could .be found capable of rendering it into English. This statement, however unaccountable it may appear to many, was afterwards farther confirmed, by passports a n d other papers «A frican Arabic being sent to me for translations, the want of which had detained vessels in our ports, and caused merchants in London to suffer from a loss of markets. * The Emperor being on horseback in the place of audience one day at Marocco, he perceived a man at a distance dressed in an European dress of scarlet and gold ; he enquired if he was an Ambassador, and sent some of the people in 'waiting to know his business; he was found to be a Jew, which being reported to the Sultan, he was highly displeased, and ordered him to be stripped, and Jewish clothes put on ; this was instantly performed, and orders were issued to every port In his dominions, that Jews should be allowed to appear only in their own dress, in .order that they might not, in future, be mistaken for ambassadors, alleging, that and his interpreter, Mr. Matra repeated his injunction to the Emperor, alleging, that as he was in his immediate service, he was, and ought to be considered as, a British subject, and therefore entitled to wear the dress which the Jews o f Great Britain w o r e : this argument was admitted b y the Emperor, and the Jew was accordingly permitted to appear before him m the English dress. T his was ce rtain ly a point gained b y the Am bassador, and might ha ve been the prelude to more considerable concessions, had it been judiciously followed u p ; >»deed- the Emperor was desirous to temporise with the English, and treated the Ambassador and his suite in a better s tyle than he had done any former one, and, as I was c red ib ly informed, even permitted Mr. Matra to sit down by him, an honour never before conferred on any but a prince. Much affability and politeness o f this kind was terminated by a long treaty o f peace and amity, written in Arabic, but which unluckily nobody m the Ambassador’s suite could properly understand, except b y circuitous and inaccurate explanation b y a Moor to the Jew interpreter, and then from him to the con su l; the latter, however, being dissatisfied with it, was persuaded to entrust it to a Spanish student, who, instead o f g iv ing an accurate translation to the Ambassador, sent one, as it was reported, to Madrid, kept the paper a month, and then returned it to Mr. Matra, so that the whole treaty was known at Madrid before it was known at London, or even by the Ambassador himself at T a n g ie r ! and in this manner, I am sorry to say, are our affairs conducted at nothing was more proper and agreeable to reason, than that a Mooselmin should dress in his costume, a Christian in his, and a Jew also in his, that it might be known, and not concealed, which was which 1
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