"Protectorate" is so elastic a term that it may be
worth while to say a word or two upon the subject. There are Pro- tectorates which are tantamount to annexation, and only differ from annexation on grounds of convenience, like the French Protectorate in Tunis. There are other Protectorates in which the protecting Power does hardly more, to borrow a phrase from the " diggings," than " peg out " a prospective claim. Our Egyptian Protectorate will, of course, be of the former and not the latter order, and will follow the Tunisian model. It will be permanent, and the suzerainty which, as it were, we inherit from the Turks, plus all the practical rights of government which we already possess in virtue of our occupation, will constitute a sovereignty quite as complete and quite as real as sovereignty in the technical sense. The possibility of the evacuation of Egypt in some distant future, though we confess it has been nothing but the shadow of a shade of a possibility of recent years, has now become an impossibility.
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