PROGRESS IN EGYPT.
-IFORD CROMER'S Report for 1902 is of more than J usual interest. It opens with a retrospect of the financial policy which has been pursued in Egypt for the last twenty years. The moment is opportune, he thinks, for undertaking this review—he might have gone further, and said that the moment earnestly calls for it—because the very success that has attended this policy has led to its being attacked on many sides. Not, indeed, that it has been attacked directly. No one now denies that the results of the financial administration have been excellent. But it has been attacked quite as seriously under cover of praise. You have done so well, Lord Cromer is told every day, that you can afford to let Egypt benefit by your success. Not at all, is Lord Cromer's reply, "the posi- tion of the Egyptian Treasury" is undoubtedly "one of prosperity, but it would very soon cease to be prosperous were one tithe of the very numerous proposals involving fresh expenditure simultaneously entertained." Many of these proposals, "considered on their merits, are perfectly reasonable and legitimate." In Egypt, as in all other countries, there are many things which it would be well to do if the money wanted for doing them were forthcoming. But in Egypt money can only be provided by taxation, and twenty years ago taxation was the curse of the country. Lord Cromer quotes from Lady Duff Gordon's "Letters from Egypt" to show what the word meant in 1867, and adds that "matters got worse subsequently." After the Arabi revolt, therefore, three things were clear,—that the people were over- taxed, that a large capital expenditure in the direction of drainage and irrigation was very necessary, and that costly re- forms were wanted in every Department of the State. It was impossible to pursue all these ends at once ; for the time being "they were mutually destructive." It was matter for argument, however, which should be preferred, and Lord Cromer does not deny that there was something to be said in favour of the policy rejected by the Egyptian Government. It would have been possible to keep the taxes as they were, and out of the revenue thus provided to pay for large administrative reforms. But the opposite policy—the policy of beginning with fiscal reform and leaving administrative reform on one side uVil the taxes had been put on a proper footing—had overwhelming arguments in its favour. It was immeasurably more popular, it increased the wealth of the people, and it made administrative reform easier when the time for introducing it came. The Government determined, therefore, to begin by relieving the taxpayers. So far as this process left them with any money in hand, it was to be spent on remunerative under- takings, notably on irrigation. This was an outlay which the Egyptian people could understand and appreciate, and it tended to make the indispensable taxation more tolerable. But administrative reform had to bide its time. Lord Cromer's list of fiscal improvements is an imposing 0118. The corvie has been abolished. The Land-tax has been reduced. A number of petty, but nevertheless vexatious, taxes have been suppressed. "Twenty years ago," writes Lord Cromer, "the ordinary revenue was about £9,000,000. It was collected with difficulty. Forced sales of land, on account of non-payment of taxes, were numerous. Large arrears of Land-tax always remained due at the end of the year." Now, after all these remissions, "the ordinary revenue may be taken at from .211,000,000 to £11,500,000. Sales of land by reason of non-payment of taxes are, relatively speaking, matters of rare occurrence." In 1901 only 592 acres were sold up by the Government out of a total taxpaying area of five and a half million acres, while out of a total assessment of £4,698,000 only £18,278 remained unpaid at the end of the year. This is the best possible testimony to the wisdom of the policy pursued. Lowered taxation leading to larger revenue is the perpetual dream of Finance Ministers. This larger revenue has indirectly contributed to the prosperity of those who have to provide it. The Government have been able to spend large sums on irrigation, with the result that there has been a very large rise in the acreage and value of cultivable land. Imports and exports have increased ; the cotton crop has doubled ; the growth of sugar has more than doubled.
A large part of Lord Cromer's Report is devoted to the measures taken to deal with corruption, "the canker which eats away the heart of most Eastern Govern- ments." Thirty years ago corruption was universal in Egypt. The contractor bribed the high official who gave out the contract and the clerk of the works who superin- tended its execution. The landowner bribed the engineer in order to get more than his fair share of water. The Kadis were bribed alike by plaintiffs and defendants. Even the railway passenger "found it cheaper to give a present to the guard or the ticket collector than to pay for a ticket." As compared with this state of things, Lord Cromer says, "there has been a notable improvement." The difficulties in the way of this improvement have been immense. There was no public opinion to which to appeal. Corruption was a matter of course in all classes, consequently no one felt either fear or shame at the prospect of discovery. All that could be done in the first instance was to lessen the opportunities and to remove some of the causes which ministered to the evil. Something was done by a better system of accounts. "It was no longer possible for public money to disappear as if by enchantment." The salaries of Government officials were regularly paid, and in the case of the lowest classes were raised. The abolition of the corvie and the organisation of a proper recruiting service made it un- necessary to bribe the village Sheikhs in order to gain exemption. The employment of British officials introduced a higher standard of administrative morality ; and "there are now many native officials in high position whose standard of honour" in respect to taking bribes "leaves nothing to be desired." In spite of this, a great deal of petty corruption still exists, and the Government continue to meet with great difficulties in dealing with it. Great care has to be taken in listening to the charges made, for "false accusations of corruption are almost, if not quite, as com- mon as corruption itself." Then in Egypt there is at least as strong an objection as in England to help in bringing home corruption to an individual offender. Egyptians of all classes will use the strongest language against the cor- rupt practices of the provincial officials, but "I do not re- member a single case in which I have been able to get a name mentioned" or sufficiently precise information afforded. The complainants are afraid to speak, and it is difficult to be sure that they have not good reason for their fear. The high official is a long way off, the subordinate they would like to accuse is close at hand. Even the security of official tenure, which has on the whole done great good, has the drawback of making it difficult to get rid of a public servant against whom there is strong, and probably just, suspicion, but no actual proof.
Perhaps the most interesting part of a Report to the preparation of which Lord. Cromer has evidently given more than ordinary care is that which deals with the ad- ministration of justice. It has often been supposed that all we had to do when we occupied Egypt was to repeat what we have done in India. But the position of the British Government in Egypt is altogether unlike the position of the British Government in India. The British adminis- trators had not only native suspicion to conciliate, but Turkish suspicion and European suspicion. Every step they took was closely watched and the worst interpretation put on it. No doubt the Egyptian judicial officials, as, indeed, Egyptian officials in every Department, were very badly equipped for the work laid upon them, and Lord Cromer admits that it is "quite conceivable, though by no means certain, that if a large number of young English- men had been brought into the country, and if, after having been taught the language, they had been appointed Moudirs, Judges, heads of police, and so on," better results would have been achieved than those reached under the system actually adopted. But the considerations just mentioned were of paramount importance—though Lord Cromer does not dwell on them—and "it, was decided not to Anglicise the Administration more than was absolutely necessary." European supervision was indispensable if any improvement at all was to be effected, but "almost the whole of the subordinate, and the greater portion of the superior, appointments" were left in native hands. So well has this answered from the point of view of British policy that the numerous suggestions for a large increase in the British staff which Lord Cromer has received, "especially of late years," have come from the Egyptians themselves. 'Whenever a native feels or fancies that he has not had justice done him, he thinks at once that he would have fared better before a British Judge. It is inevitable that these occasions should arise, because Egypt is an Oriental country where justice is hard to come by and crime hard to suppress. The very ideas which a civilised system of criminal justice presupposes are hardly known there. They "are beyond the comprehension and in advance of the moral and intellectual status of the mass of the inhabitants. For one thing, a great amount of crime necessarily goes unpunished, though the authors of it are perfectly well known. But they are not known in the right way and to the right persons." "Village society is probably better informed in such questions than either the police or the members of the Parquet." Any one who knows an English village must be familiar with a similar state of things. Some offence is committed, and either no arrest is made, or the case is dismissed for want of evidence. Yet among the villagers the offender will be freely pointed at whenever there is no danger of anything following upon his identification. In England the distinction between this and legal evidence is pretty well understood. In Egypt it is not. The Judge is supposed to be able to convict and sentence at his pleasure, and if he fails to do so it is at once set down to reasons which would not influence him if he were an Englishman. But on this point Lord Cromer speaks with unusual fulness and pre- cision. The policy of "using native agency to the utmost extent possible without seriously impairing the efficiency of the service" will "remain unchanged." It has suc- ceeded, he thinks, quite as well as it could have been expected to succeed in twenty years. To abandon it would be to undo all the good which this period of training has done to those who have been subjected to it, and to commit the injustice of first educating the Egyptians and then closing a public career against them. "Such a policy," Lord Cromer says emphatically, "must inevitably in the end lead to regrettable consequences. There is no intention whatever of adopting it."
We lay down what, though in name only a Report, is really a State Paper of extraordinary interest and import- ance with a strong sense of the good work done in Egypt, and of the extent to which its success is due to Lord Cromer's wise and far-seeing statesmanship. " Ah ! gentlemen," as the Duke of Argyll once said of one of our statesmen, "what a comfort it is to have a man who knows what he means and means you to know what he means also."
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