TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CRISIS IN EGYPT.
ENGLAND and India together have paid twenty-three millions sterling for Lord Salisbury, and the account is open still. The clumsy, dangerous, and as we think immoral arrangement for the Government of Egypt into which the Marquis allowed himself to be drawn is breaking down, and this country may yet, as a consequence of it, be plunged into a war with France. The Joint Protectorate established in 1878 was almost avowedly a device intended to " work " Egypt as a great estate for the benefit of the bondholders who had lent money at exorbitant interest to Ismael Khedive, and for three years it was described as the perfection of administra- tive sagacity. The Bondholders were paid their dividends, Europeans made profits in the Nile Valley, and consequently Egypt was regenerated. The chorus of exultation was, how- ever, not only premature, but absurd. As it was quite certain that no Oriental people would see their Government controlled by European clerks, and their treasury emptied for the benefit of foreign Jews, and their own ambitions suppressed in order that interlopers might have large salaries, with entire content, resistance was ultimately certain ; and it has come in the usual manner of the East,—through a pronunciamiento of the most prominent class, the officers of the Army. They surrounded the Palace, and demanded a new Vizier, an assembly of the Notables, and an increase of the armed force to 18,000 men. The object of the movement is, of course, to liberate the country from the European Controllers, who, with a hostile Vizier, a native " Parliament " to be consulted before decrees were issued, and an Army made strong enough to defy a coup de main, would find their attributes very nearly limited to the receipt of 'their salaries. Whether the officers were in collusion with the new Khedive, or were instigated by intriguers at Con- stantinople, or acted as exponents of Egyptian opinion, is of comparatively little consequence. It is probable that the Sultan would like a commotion in Egypt, because he could lose nothing, and might ultimately gain much, especially in his prestige as Khalif, which is injured by Egyptian independence. It is certain that Egyptian notables would like a commotion, because the Europeans are stopping all their jobs, and reducing them rapidly to insignificance in their own land. And it is possible that Tewfik would like the commotion, because he is sick of the Europeans, whose dominance offends his religious feeling, makes his countrymen regard him
as a Giaour, and affronts his personal pride. It is very difficult to believe that after sixty years of implicit obedience, his officers are rebelling against the House of Mahommed Ali, or that if the Khedive had chosen, he could not have stamped out the revolt in an hour, by ordering the men to execute the mutinous Colonels, and then disperse to their homes. Arabs of Egypt are not so fond of a military life, but cut off their fingers and put out their eyes to avoid it. The abolition of the conscription would have been received by soldiers and peasantry as the greatest of boons, and the Army would have disbanded without a stroke.
The point is not, however, important. Whether Tewfik is an intriguer or only weak, a military movement directed against the Control succeeded, and a violent clamour instantly arose in London and Paris, capitalists being sensitive and far-sighted. Every bondholder was aroused, and every newspaper devoted to bondholders. The Army might demand the independence of Egypt, or the removal of the Controllers, or—horror of horrors 1—the expenditure of Egyptian taxation in Egypt itself, and then all the "complicated net-work of European interests," that is, all the nice plunder, would at once be gone. That insolent Egyptian Army must be disbanded at once, and southern Egypt, which yields no revenue, given back to barbar- ism. There must be a joint occupation. There mustbe a Turkish occupation. Anything would be better than to allow Egyptian officers to make and remake Ministries. It seemed for a moment possible that a gigantic iniquity would be perpetrated, and that a province freed from the Sultan for three generations would be deliberately handed back to his control, and that by men who, on the just plea of the insupportable nature of his govern- ment, are stripping him of province after province. In order that bondholders should have ten per cent., the sway which is now, this very moment, pronounced abominable in Armenia, was to be reimposed by the sword—for the Army, being Arab, would have fought the Turks—upon the Egyptian Fellaheen, and that with the consent of Mr. Gladstone's Government ! There came, however, a pause. France would not allow Eng- land to occupy Egypt. England would not allow France to occupy Egypt. A joint occupation would mean war ha the near future, for the soldiers would fight each other, and their nations would take sides. A Turkish occupation would mean for France an admission that the Sultan was head t of the Arab peoples, and would treble the force of the movement in North Africa, with which she even now finds such difficulty in con- tending ; while it would mean for England a cynical abandon- ment for a momentary advantage of the cardinal principle of her Eastern policy,—that the Turk is unworthy to rule. More- over, after the first burst of unreason, there came over states- men and bondholders alike a doubt whether Egypt could do without an army," idle" or otherwise. It was certain that, but for the Army, the Soudan would be lost, probable that the Bedouins would invade Egypt itself, and extremely. doubtful whether the revenue of the Delta could be collected. A gen- darmerie, that is, a worse disciplined and more disorganised army, without artillery, could mutiny as well as a soldiery, while it might not be equally dreaded by the villagers, .who do not love taxpaying quite so much as Europeans imagine. Suppose. too, that the body of Dervishes which Tewfik courts and controls took command of the situation, and objected, through an appeal to the mob, to European dominance! The. idea was abandoned, pressure was applied to the Khedive, pro- bably in the shape of a threat of dethronement ; Cherif Pasha, an old friend of Ismail, accepted office, the officers agreed to leave Cairo—a mere pretence, as they can march there when they please—and the whole imbroglio was huddled. up out of sight for a time,
- The confusion will begin again, of course, fromthenature of things. The Joint Protectorate of Egypt is a cynical fraud, perpetrated by two great Governments for money, and it cannot endure. It involves all the great evils of European conquest in Asia, the loss of independence, the depression of the upper class, the arrest of all spontaneous development, excessive taxation, and the liberation of the Executive from native opinion ; and it does not secure the grand compensations, personal freedom, the security of life and earnings for the poor, and impartial justice to all men. Such a double re'gime has always and justly appeared to its subjects the most intolerably leaden of all govern- ments, and it will end. Whether the end will come through a Turkish intrigue, or a military entente, or an Arab invasion—quite on the cards—or a rising of the fanatics, no one can forsee, but it will end, and when it ends, England and France, unless they have come to some permanent agreement as to the future of the country, an agreement which will work, and which therefore mast be an agreement to assign Egypt to England, with compensation to France, will be nearer to war than they have been since 1815. That is an unspeakable. mis- fortune, hardly to be compensated by any advantage, for war between England and France means the dominance of Prince
Bismarck on the Continent, and bloodshed and confusion in every corner of the globe ; and the prospect has been brought upon us by the fear of the French Republicans that if the finan- ciers of Paris did not get their Egyptian bonds, Paris would be dis- contented, and by Lord Salisbury's weakness in allowing himself to be dragged behind the French. Lord Granville's first duty is to provide a remedy for a contingency which, whatever Consuls may report, he will find inevitable ; and it will tax to the utmost not only his adroitness and inventiveness, but his nerve. The right method would be the administration of Egypt through a British Viceroy, with French consent ; bat failing that, the only course is for the Powers to appoint an Arab, like Khaireddin, who can govern an army as well as a people, reduce the Egyptian Dividend to an endurable limit, and leave the country on all subjects except that dividend and the Canal to take its own way, and make history for itself. It is no business of ours to be working a Khedive's sugar-mills, or arranging his private debts. If no arrangement can be made, the prosperity of England hangs by a thread, for at any moment it may be ended by a great and sanguinary war.
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