TOPICS OF THE DAY.
LORD CROMER'S RESIGNATION AND HIS LAST REPORT.
IT is with deep regret that we record the resignation of Lord Cromer. No man has ever served his country and the Empire with more devotion and more wisdom, and none has achieved a greater success as the result of his work and his self-sacrifice. It was finely said of the Duke of Wellington by Lord Brougham : "That man would serve his country with a pickaxe and a shovel if he could serve her in no other way." The words apply with equal force to Lord Cromer. Though, with the proud reticence of the Englishman, he has consistently avoided the rhetoric of patriotism in his writings and speeches, and has felt too deeply and too keenly to do lip-service to his country, his devotion to his native land has been shown at every stage of his career. The most loyal as well as the most devoted of public servants, he has never hesitated to speak the truth as he has seen it to those above him. It has never been part of his con- ception of public duty to make things seem smooth or pleasant for the Home Government when the facts were neither smooth nor pleasant and demanded to be faced. But though a great and patriotic British statesman, he has not permitted his care for Britain to overshadow his duty to the land over which he ruled in fact, if not in name. His first, his inspiring thought has always been to govern in the interests of the governed. "Will it tend to the good of Egypt and of the Egyptians ?" has been the touchstone by which he has tried every question of administration and statesmanship that has come before him. He controlled his conduct from the beginning by the sense that he was a trustee, and was answerable for the due discharge of his trust.
We shall deal on a future occasion with Lord Cromer's work in Egypt as a whole. To-day we must speak of his last Report,—a State paper to which his resignation has added a note of pathos. Apart, however, from its pathetic interest, Lord Cromer's Report on the condition of Egypt and the Soudan during 1906 is perhaps the most remarkable State paper that even he ever issued. Let our readers recall for a moment the conditions under which it was written and the state of affairs with which it deals. The early part of 1906 saw the frontier dispute with Turkey, and the violent outbreak of Mohammedan fanaticism and anti-British feeling which the Tabah inci- dent occasioned. Every opponent, open and secret, of the British occupation, every man who believed himself to have suffered by the substitution of our just and well-ordered rule for that of the camarilla which exercised power during the Ismail regime, every corrupt concession-hunter and moneylender—creatures who find in an effete Oriental despotism their easiest prey—every parasite of misrule, every man whose palm itched for baksheesh or who longed for the good old days of the kaurbash and the corvde, saw in the quarrel with the Sultan an opportunity to foment hatred of Lord Cromer and to denounce him and the rule of which he is the representative. The full torrent of vituperation and misrepresentation was let loose, and the work of the British in Egypt for the last twenty years was held up to hatred, ridicule, and con- tempt. The frontier dispute had hardly been composed when there followed the Denshawi outrage. Here the most brutish and ignorant section of the Egyptian population showed their worst qualities by a peculiarly cowardly attack on certain British officers,—an attack, be it remem- bered, which, even if some faint excuse could be found for its initial stages, ended in pure murder and brigandage. Defenceless men were savagely pursued, beaten as they lay on the ground, and their money stolen from their bodies. The stern, but not too stern, punishment which followed was made another occasion for an attack on Lord Cromer's administration. Unfortunately, this attack was supported not only by the native Press of Egypt, but by a number of ignorant and misguided persons in England. These would not stop to listen to facts or arguments, but assumed that sympathy with the Egyptian people was a monopoly of their own, and that the men who had been toiling for the good of Egypt for the last quarter of a century were prejudiced and headstrong oppressors of a population rightly struggling
to be free. Ever since the Denshawi outrage, the well- meant but harmful sentimentality of a small group of Englishmen has been exploited for all it is worth by Egyptian intriguers, who, though they have the words " liberty " and " justice " always in their menthe, are in reality inspired by very different motives.
In these circumstances, one might expect Lord Cromer's Report to show signs of bitterness and disillusionment, and of a sense of the ingratitude displayed by a largo section of the Egyptian population. Yet the Report for 1906 contains not a trace of soreness, or even of dis- appointment. It is as just, as equable, as full not only of statesmanship, but of sympathy and of the most genuine desire for the welfare of Egypt and the Egyptian people, as any of its predecessors,—Reports written when everything in Egypt seemed bathed in the rosiest of rosy light. Instead of vexation, or even pessimism, there is the old genial sanity and optimism. The gravity of the situation is, of course, faced with all Lord Cromer's habitual candour and clear-sightedness ; but it is made the occa- sion, not for misgiving, but for pointing out how that situation can be best used for furthering the interests of Egypt in the future. The past is thus used, not as a foundation for rebuke, or even for regret, but for far-seeing projects of reform. The English statesman fixes his calm, untroubled gaze, not on the evils of 1906, but on the needs of the coming generations, and, like Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, "turns his necessity to glorious gain." He admits, none more openly or emphatically, that there are many things that require amendment and reform in Egypt; but instead of indulging in the game of recrimina- tion and counter-recrimination in regard to them, he asks with straightforwardness and simplicity how they can best be reformed, and what are the obstacles to such reform. Having once taken up this attitude, Lord Cromer finds no difficulty in showing that the chief existing obstacles to further progress in the good government of Egypt are the Capitulations. The peculiar, we might almost say the governing, feature of the administration in Egypt, or in that part of Egypt which needs an elaborate modern system of government, is the fact that a very considerable portion of the resident popula- tion is not amenable to the law of the land. Egypt, or rather all the chief towns and centres of Egyptian population, contain persons of European birth or origin who are under the protection of some one or other of tho fifteen European Powers, and who owe their civic allegiance, not to the Egyptian Government, but to the States of which they are by law subjects. These Europeans are not, in most cases, liable to the taxes imposed by the Egyptian Government. They cannot be tried for offences against the criminal law except by their own Consuls. In civil cases they are not answerable to the ordinary Courts of the country, but only to the special Courts of the Mixed Tribunals.
At present, in order to make modifications in the law which will affect this most important section of the population, it is necessary to obtain, one by one, the consent of the fifteen Powers. The result may easily be imagined. As Lord Cromer points out, it is often difficult, in the case of proposed legislation, to get the assent of two Houses of Parliament. Imagine it necessary to obtain the assent of fifteen Powers, especially when many of these Powers are perforce very little conversant with the conditions that prevail in Egypt, and, therefore, naturally inclined to leave things as they are ! Lord Cromer incidentally illustrates the burden which the Capitulations impose upon sound administration and good government in his remarks on the regulation of the drink traffic in Egypt. He points out what a disgrace it would be to Western civilisation if it were to bring in its train the destruction of the eminently Moslem moral quality of sobriety. Yet there is considerable risk of this happening, and of our seeing the Egyptians change from asober into a drinking people, owing to the impossibility of proper regulation caused by the Capitu- lations. Most of those who distil and sell intoxicants in Egypt are subjects of European Powers, and so are not in any effective sense liable to the laws of Egypt. That Government has, therefore, practically to stand by with hands folded while it sees the evils consequent on a growing abuse of alcohol by the natives go unchecked. In other words, the British and
Egyptian Governments cannot limit the evil in question, and a hundred other evils of varying importance and intensity, until some change is made in the method of enforcing the Capitulations. The change that Lord Cromer proposes is in no sense a drastic one. He does not ask for the abolition of the Capitulations, nor does he desire to place the subjects of the European Powers on the same footing as the native Egyptians. What he asks for is a local International Legislative Council in which the 'subjects of the European Powers shall be proportionately represented. This local Legislature is to have authority to pass laws applicable to all Europeans resident in Egypt. When such a Legislative Council is established its first care, he asserts, should be to create Criminal Courts empowered to punish those who violate any laws which it may pass. "Than, and not till then, can the various subjects which require attention be treated with some hope that good results will ensue."
The most important part of Lord Cromer's Report is taken up with a sketch of what he considers should be the composition of the European Legislative Council. The Council, he suggests, should be composed partly of elected members, and partly of members nominated by the Egyptian Government. It should have thirty- six members, and of these four should be Government officials,—viz., the advisers in the Departments of Finance, Justice, Interior, and Public Works. In the next place, he proposes that seven Judges should be ex-officio members of the Council,—viz., the Vice-President of the Native Court of Appeal, provided he is a European, and six Judges of the Mixed Courts. Next, he proposes that there should be twenty elected members. The manner in which he suggests that they should be chosen is the following. The representatives of the various Powers would prepare lists of notables or leading members of their respective communities. From these would be formed an amalgamated electoral body. Lord Cromer would give to each voter the right to vote for twenty members. He would lay down, however, that, exclusive of the four Ministerial advisers, no single nationality should be repre- sented by more than four members, whether as Judges, elected members, or unofficial members nominated by the Government. Each individual voter would, no doubt, cast four of his votes for candidates who were his own countrymen. He would then dispose of sixteen more votes, votes which would have to be given to candidates of other nationalities. Next, Lord Cromer proposes that Austria- Hungary, France, Germany, Greece, Great Britain, and Italy, which Powers collectively supply more than ninety- six per cent, of the whole European population, should nominate a larger proportion of the voters than the Powers which are less greatly interested. In addition, there would be five unofficial members nominated by the Egyptian Government. To sum up, the Council would consist of four Government officials, five unofficial members nominated by the Egyptian Government, seven Judges, and twenty elected members. Here is a great and practical reform placed before the world by a states- man of tried experience, and one which if carried out will do far more good to the people of Egypt than all the vapourings of their self-constituted champions in England.
We have dealt chiefly with the proposal for the elective European Council because that, in our opinion, is the essential part of Lord Cromer's Report. We trust, how- ever, that those of our readers who desire to study the Egyptian problem in detail will read carefully the admirable paragraphs on Egyptian Nationalism and on the Egyptian Press. We venture to say that those who read with an open mind, whatever their political pre- dilections, will realise how liberal in the best sense is the spirit in which Lord Cromer approaches the questions before him, and how absolutely foreign to his nature is the spirit of the oppressive bureaucrat,—a spirit which, in violation of all the facts, is now frequently attributed to him. Indeed, our only quarrel with the paragraphs on Egyptian Nationalism is that they go somewhat too far in the direction of self-government. For ourselves, we do not believe that the genius of any Oriental, or perhaps we should say of any Mohammedan, people fits it for democratic self-government, or that such a system of government is ever at heart desired by the Mohammedan.
We wish we had space to deal at length with this problem, and with many others to be found in the Report, for there is subject-matter there not merely for one but for twenty leading articles. We must, however, before we conclude find room for one word of warning. It is to be hoped that when the International Legislative Council is formed, it will be made quite clear that such a Council is not in any sense a Parliament,—that is, that it has not the right to arrogate to itself the power of controlling the Egyptian Administration or of appointing or dismissing Ministers. Any misapprehension as to its status in this respect would be fatal to its usefulness. It will be purely a legislative body, empowered also to give its assent to certain forma of taxation, but in no sense whatever will it be a sovereign Parliament comparable to those which sit at Westminster, Paris, and Washington. Its claim to power cannot extend beyond the subjects of the European Powers resident in Egypt,—a most important class, but not in any sense a class competent to control the policy of Egypt as a whole.
Of Lord Cromer's Report we can truly say that, though it was penned with no knowledge that it would be his final word on Egypt, it is in every way worthy to be the valediction of a great maker of Empire. From it the Imperial statesman of the future will be able to draw inspiration and strength when he is attacked and mis- represented as Lord Cromer has been. Here is the model of how a public servant should meet his assailants,—not with anger or with complaint, but with the knowledge that it is his duty to lay the facts before the nation, confident that his countrymen, when they know the facts, will judge rightly on the issue before them. Lord Cromer has always relied on the support of the British people, and that reliance has never been misplaced.
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