THE INTERNATIONAL THEORY OF THE CANAL.
WHEN we see the selfish greediness with which class- interests assert themselves in politics, we do not wonder that there should be a craving after that international administration of the interests common to more than one nation, which seems to promise something like an equitable holding of the scales,—a balance, if not of power, at least of national greed. This, if we understand it aright, is the motive which induces one of our ablest contemporaries to advocate the acquisition of the Suez Canal by an International Commission like that which regulates the navigation of the Danube, in whose hands the Suez Canal might be administered without fear of selfish preponderance of an, single Power. There is something revolting enough in such displays as we bad in the meeting at Lloyd's last week, and in Alderman Cotton's speech at the Cannon Street Hotel on Wednesday. It is not till we see the ugly rush of a class inspired chiefly by commercial greed exclaiming, like Alderman Cotton at the meeting on Wednesday, with a brutal candour, that it considers Egypt "almost as England's property," and that for that reason the second Suez Canal ought to be made "in English interests, and English interests only," that we begin to cast about for means, —which are too often more or less in the region of dreamland, —for the defeat of this tyranny of the pocket, which so often endangers, and sometimes positively degrades, the very idea of empire. But we do not believe that there is any real solution of the difficulty in the direction of that international Commis- sion which a German contemporary has suggested, and the Pall Mall Gazette has so eagerly seized upon. Consider the situa- tion. In the first place, here is a great and very prosperous Company in possession, which has already spent a good many millions in a very adventurous and risky enterprise now at last yielding twenty per cent., and promising with something like certainty to yield thirty per cent. before many years are out. In other words, the property of this Company is already a rich spoil, and is eagerly bought by investors for five or six times as much as has been actually invested in it. Now, here is the first difficulty of an International Com- mission. How is the International Commission to find the means of buying out such a company as this, and who is to decide amongst the nations represented on it if disputes arise, as disputes certainly would arise, as to the proper mode of adminis- tering so profitable a concern? We may be sure of one thing, that the present Shareholders,—of whom Englishmen are a large element,—would never consent to hand over their valuable property to an International Commission to administer, but would insist on being bought out by that Commission at the full value of their shares as that value is affected by the commercial prospects of the immediate future. Well, how is the International Commission to get the means of buying them out ? Is each nation of Europe to contribute by its taxation to the cost of expropriating, and in what proportion ? If it is to be in the proportion of their actual use of the Canal, England, it is said, would have to contribute four-fifths ; and does any one suppose that Englishmen would consent to let the British Government contribute, say, eighty millions,—for
we do not believe that the Canal could be bought much under a hundred millions, at the present high price of its shares,— towards the cost of a scheme so untried and so critical as the transfer of an adventure in which they are profoundly inter- ested to a nondescript body like an International Commission?
But even if the United Kingdom were willing to acquiesce in such a chimerical enterprise,—and no enterprise could be imagined less likely to command English assent,—would the French Shareholders, who have had all the credit of originating the scheme, and who have the keenest national pride in their achievement, listen for a moment to any plan which would either diminish their influence over the conduct of the enter- prise, as it would do if the national contribution were proportionate to the use of the Canal, or else tax Frenchmen very heavily to maintain their national influence over it,—an influence which they now exert by and through the Company which originated it ? When people talk of an Inter- national Commission, they are thinking not of the manage- ment of a commercial enterprise, but of the political guardian- ship of the neutrality of the Canal in time of war. That is a totally different affair, and might, no doubt, be regulated by an International Commission, as the British Government have themselves more than once suggested. But it is one thing to keep neutrality on an arm of the sea by an International Commission, and a totally different thing to manage a very great commercial speculation by the help of such an agency ; and for our own parts, we cannot imagine a project more hopeless than that of either, on the one hand, persuading a prosperous Company of this sort to trust its commercial pro- spects to the hands of an International Commission which would gain nothing by its success and lose nothing by its failure, or, on the other hand, persuading the various nations which would, through their Governments, take part in such a Commission, to buy out at great expense the interests of a Company in which they have very little concern, and the administration of which they would in the end be compelled, probably, to trust more or less to the agents of the great sea- going peoples. Either alternative is equally out of the question. The present Company can do well enough all that will be necessary to make it a very great financial success, though it can- not improve the means of transit as it would be improved by the scheme which the British Government have proposed. But to transfer the commercial enterprise into the hands of an International Commission is absolutely impracticable by any machinery which we can conceive, either because it would be repudiated by the present Company as fatal to their interests, or because it would be repudiated by the Governments to which appeal would have to be made to indemnify the existing Company for its property.
If, on the other hand, it be proposed that England and France together, as the nations chiefly interested, should take over the concern and manage it as a joint political trust, we should have all the evils and irritations of the Dual Control in Egypt over again, without any of the neutral international elements which are assumed to be non-conductors of inter- national jealousy and rivalry. No plan less hopeful can be imagined than to take the commercial speculation out of the hands of the Company, which regards it solely as a commercial speculation, and to lodge it in the hands of the two Govern- ments principally interested in it as a political speculation. If, in such a case, France and England were not quarrelling over it every year of their lives, it would be a miracle of self- control on the part of both Governments. In short, the dilemma of the International solution of the problem is this,— either it must be confided to the hands of the nations chiefly concerned in it commercially and politically—and then there would be no end of quarrels • or it must be confided to the hands of a number of national trustees not greatly interested in it, either commercially or politically, and then it would be commercially mismanaged, while the nations chiefly interested in it would be constantly tempted to rescue it from the hands of the disinterested, and therefore incapable, trustees.
The conclusion seems to us inevitable that nothing less suitable can be imagined for such an undertaking as the Suez
Canal than the direction of an International Commission. It is essentially a commercial undertaking, and must be com- mercially managed, although it may and must be under sound political regulation. It is a practicable, though an immoral, proposal to force the band of the Egyptian Government, for the purpose of plundering a Company which has executed a wonderful international work in a manner worthy of all praise. We can understand, though we reject with indignation, the suggestions of Alderman Cotton, and of thm who talk as he does. But we cannot understand the proposal to hand over such a profitable commercial concern as this to an International Commission, because we cannot see how such a Commission could possibly be trusted by the Company as it exists, nor how it could acquire the means of buying that Company out, and subsequently administering a delicate commercial concern of this kind in the manner in which a mercantile company that understands its business can always be trusted to administer it.
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