Sir William Harcourt protested against this vote as .44 unsound
finance" in form—which we rather think it is, sound finance requiring you to get in your debt, and then, if -expedient, lend the money again—and as involving indefinite expense in the future. He doubted if we could hold Khartoum without Europeans, or if we should refrain, as Sir Michael Hicks-Beach believed, from conquering provinces to the South. Mr. Courtney did not enter into that question, but suggested that these loans might be recurrent; while Mr. Labottchere considered the English a gang of hypocrites, who, in the name of civilisation, were always grabbing and robbing. Sir Charles Dilke, who declared that September 16th or 17th had been fixed for the capture of Khartoum, maintained that the real object of the invasion was to hold the Nile up to Uganda, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer rather encouraged that idea by declining to discuss it until Khartoum had fallen. In the end the remission was voted by 155 to 81. We need hardly point out that the vote greatly increases our hold upon Egypt, it being now an accepted maxim of international practice that a country may be held, so to speak, in pawn. The practice is not a good one, as it gives financiers too much influence, but there is no doubt that it is admitted, and is the first cause of the bitter jealousies about loans to States like China.
Previous page
