The arrangement with the Suez Canal Company must, of course,
be ratified by Parliament, and it is said that it will be strenuously resisted. The shipowners, who hoped for a com- peting British Canal, with very low rates, are furious, and it is calculated that with their help and the Irish vote the Conserva- tives might beat the Government. We do not share these apprehensions. We question if the Conservatives will venture to oppose what their old leader, Lord Beaconsfield, would have approved ; and we doubt if the shipowners, who have only to pay what all competitors have to pay, will throw away their seats on such an issue. Moreover, Mr. Gladstone's statement on Thursday, that, in his judgment and that of the Law Officers of the Crown, Ismail Khedive had conceded to M. de Lesseps the monopoly for Canal purposes of the Isthmus of Suez, is very nearly final. Half the utility of a new Canal would be lost, if it could not be worked in combination with the old one; while the expense of cutting through cultivated land within reach of the Nile flood would be enormous. It is, of course, open to the Khedive to expropriate M. de Lesseps' concession, on payment of adequate compensation ; but the amount to be awarded for a monopoly of that kind, yielding twenty-one per cent., with indefinite possibilities of increase, world stagger even the Treasury. The Tories will, we suspect, on reflection, confine themselves to praising the foresight of Lord Beaconsfield.
