On Tuesday an interesting discussion as to the financial position
of Cyprus arose over the motion to vote £29,000 as a grant in aid to the revenues of the island. The facts, though they look so complicated, are really simple enough. When we took over Cyprus we agreed to pay Turkey every year a sum of £93,000. This sum, however, is not really paid to Turkey, but is intercepted to meet the interest on the loan which Turkey borrowed under the joint guarantee of England and France in the year 1855. It was not stated exactly how much the interest on this loan amounts to, but apparently it is something like £84,000. But Turkey has made default, and no money can be got out of her. If, then, we had had nothing to do with Cyprus, we should have to pay half the interest on the loan of 1855, say £42,000, out of our own pockets. Now, and owing to the convention with Turkey, we pay this 242,000 out of the pockets of the Cypriots. But we also vote £29,000 a year to Cyprus. Therefore Cyprus may be said to be worth to us about £13,000 a year. In other words, Cyprus relieves France of the whole burden of the Turkish default on the loan of 1855 and England of about a third of her burden. France, then, does very well, and we pretty well, under the arrange- ment, but the wretched Cypriot comes off anything but pleasantly. But, of course, all this is financial juggling. The rock fact is that the tribute of Cyprus was fixed far too high. Sir William Harcourt's line on the matter strikes us as a miserably weak one. He hates the whole arrangement, and really wants to fling the island back on the hands of the lessor, yet he has not pluck enough to say so straight out, and instead, indulges in futile grumblinge about the wicked- ness of Lord Beaconsfield.
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