John Bull is assuredly a very inearnation of contradictions. Efe
grumbles at war-expenses, yet rather likes to ran the risk of being drawn into wars. He denounces intervention in foreign affairs, and will yet be meddling in the domestic concerns of all nations. In 1841 he narrowly escaped provoking an European war by his armed interference in the quarrels of the Sultan and Mehemet Ali ; and no sooner do the Porte and Egypt show symptoms of being again at loggerheads than he would again be meddling in their affairs. The City meeting about the transit through P.w, pt, occa- sioned by the squabble between the Sultan and Abbas—Puha re- specting the projected Egyptian railway, has, it is true, ihe excuse that England has a deep stake in keeping open the direct line of communication with her Eastern possessions; but do the par- ties who have been most forward to promote that meeting come into court with clean hands? The ostensible immediate cause of the present dissensions batween the Sultan and his vassal is tbn railway from Alexandria to Sear. The English promoters or the railiray have gained the ear of the Egyptian Government, while the Austrian projectors of a canal are understood to enjoy the &Tour of tile- Ministers at Conatantinople. The great Anglo- Indian steam companies promote the railway ; the Austrian Lloyd's would prefer a canal. Their mutual counteraction is a continuance of' the struggle on the part of the Oriental and Peninsular Company to exclude their Austrian rivals from a share in the steam earrying-trade to India and the far East, and of the latter to participate in it, which last session complicated the question of overland steam-eommunieatiert. The seem of their contest has been removed from a Parliamentary Committee- room to the Divans of Cairo and Constantinople. The Sultan and the Pacha are the stalking-horses from behind which the rivals shoot at each other. The principal performers at the City meeting are either leading managers of the Peninsular and Orient-. al and Indian Archipelago Steam Navigation Company, or parties intimately connected with them. The prime movers in the City attempt to induce the British Government to interfere in the domestic squabbles of the Turkish empire, are the same parties who, though foreigners in that state, have been mainly instru- mental in setting the quarrel afoot There always will be men who like to fish in troubled waters, or who won/id set their neigh- bour's house on fire to roust their own chestnuts ; but to endanger the integrity, of the Ottoman empire, and to hazard the implication of England from being involved in a general war, are risks too great to be run simply to gratify such propensities.
Previous page
