ASIATIC CAPRICE AS IT AFFECTS BONDHOLDERS.
THE popular theory in England just at this moment about the Khedive is that he is a cheat, who has robbed English Bondholders to buy a big estate for himself, and intends to rob them still further to found fortunes for his numerous kinsfolk. It may be so, for what we know, for the other aide has not yet been heard ; but it is at least as pro- bable that Ismail is not influenced by any conscious wish to cheat, but by an impulse which is still potent with Asiatics,—that desire to gratify an unreasoning and temporary volition which we call " caprice." It is quite curious to note hciw completely Europeans, as they pass more and more under the influence of opinion, and strengthen more and more the social forces which control individual will, begin to forget the potency of this impulse, which is still among Asiatics the strongest and most incalculable of motive-powers. They are so governed by intelligent self-interest, that they begin almost uncon- sciously to assume that everybody, Western or Eastern, honest or dishonest, will be guided by it also,—will, that is, regulate his action by some kind of a law. They half doubt the sanity of a man who does a motiveless act which costs money just because he wants to do it, think it positively immoral to throw a gold- watch at a sparrow, though there is no other missile handy, and have invented words describing such acts—" oddity," " eccentricity," " impulsiveness," and " wilfulness "—to which they attach every day a stronger flavour of contempt. Nobody assumes even in his own mind that any man he is thinking about will act from caprice, that is, from a will unguided either by reason or calculation. He would expect to make a mistake if he did, and would be a little ashamed of himself. He recognises that a child may be " capricious," that is, unaccountable and kittenish in its mental movements, and he says, chiefly in the literature of fiction, that a woman may be the same, though he never saw the woman, but he does not seriously expect true caprice of a man. He may calculate on his obstinacy, or his pigheadedness, or his foolhardiness, or his recklessness, but he does not calculate on what is none of these things, his liability to obey, even in serious matters, his own self-developed, momentary craves. He hardly believes that a man important enough to be worth watch- ing at all could do such a thing, and listens to the assertion that there are men, and especially Princes, in the East who are mainly guided by self-generated and temporary fancies, with the tolerant smile with which an old lady might hear her son's stories of sea-serpents. There are not any,—but what then ?—it is very interesting, and he is very nice. It is very difficult to convince ordinary English folk of what is undoubtedly true, that there are great persons in the world who have absolutely no notion of money, who will give one cheque as soon as another, and who cannot understand where the limitations on the greatest fortunes commence—that was, we believe, the fact about Victor Emanuel, and Alexander II. in the first years of his reign—and to convince them that there are men with no instinctive limitations at all, is hopeless. Yet they certainly exist, and granted certain circumstances, could dot help existing.
If a child never feels limitations, he never thinks they ought to be or are. The ordinary Asiatic Prince, Sultan, Khedive, Shah, Maharajah, or what not, is from earliest childhood self-moved, never impelled by anybody, never compelled by anybody, never subjected to any restraint from anything but physical laws. Ile is never punished as a lad, never whipped, never censured, never placed in circumstances in which he is under the coercion of opinion, and never without instruments who have no will but his. As a man he has no equals whose opinion reaches him, and no men round him who are not his creatures. The effect of that treatment of course varies with different natures, making a few ex- ceedingly gentle and a few unendurably ferocious, but it pro- duces on all two results. • They all find in making their will effective the pleasure which other men feel in exertion, and they all mistake momentary impulse for will,—that is, they all become, or rather remain, capricious as children. "I should like a new Palace just there," says the Sultan ; and forthwith the Palace has to be pro- duced, though he may never live in it, and never even care seriously to see it. " I will have an army," says the Shah, " on the European pattern ;" and there is the army, all dressed up for him, though he has not considered how to keep up that army for five minutes. " I will own Egypt," says the Khedive ; and buys, or seizes, or confiscates every visible estate, though he may not be able to say why he wants them, or what a huge quantity of private income can do for a Sovereign who has the State ex- chequer at his command. The desire has arisen, and there being no customary limitations present to his mind, it must be grati- fied, for its temporary character does not diminish its force. In fact, the first sign of this kind of disposition is the want of proportion between the wish and the cost of gratifying it, the sort of omnipotence that every wish obtains. The Sultan Abdul Aziz, when travelling in this country, felt one day a little sleepy in a railway train, so he ordered the train to be stopped, that he might sleep unshaken. That looked brutal, but the impulse was not brutal at all. The Sultan was sleepy, he had never been accustomed to consider limitations on his will, and so the idea that he must by stopping *her stop a great traffic or produce a general smash never entered his mind. Five-sixths of the cruelties of Orientals are caprices, mere transient thoughts, turned into acts because they have never been taught to refrain from so turning them. A true typical Oriental worried with Ireland, and possessed of power to do as he liked with Ireland, would not wish, like the English lady, that it were sunk in the sea for twenty-four hours, but would sink it,—that is, would issue an order for the removal of the population with just as little consideration as the lady made her little speech, and very often would consciously and while unopposed mean just as little mischief. It would be a " caprice," like the stopping of a train, not an atrocity. It is usually considered that this special wilfulness or capricious- ness is most frequently displayed in the choice of favourites, but this is not invariably the case. An Oriental Prince constantly
chooses agents from mere caprice, mere fancy, but he does not always dismiss them in a moment. The Minister does not fall out of favour until he has given some cause, by resisting the master's will, and this he is very careful not to do. He rather assists to carry.it out, and becomes one of the instruments for
removing, not for imposing limitations on the ruler's fancy. In that case he may continue for years, the only certainty being that
when he falls be will fall like the late Egyptian Finance Minister, —in a moment, to the bottom, and for ever.
The true sphere in which to watch the caprice of an Oriental Prince is finance, the way in which he will borrow and not pay, squander to-day and squeeze to-morrow, fill his treasury for a purpose, and employ it upon some object altogether irrelevant. Money being now-a-days a powerful instrument, of course he must hare it ; but he does not think about it as the Western European thinks be does, but in fact, scarcely thinks about it at all. He does not look forward long enough. The Treasurer says there is no money, but he can anticipate revenue,—" Very good, anticipate revenue ;" or there is no money, but he can borrow, —" Very good, borrow." The Prince does not mean to cheat the bondholder, any more than the peasant who is asked for an ad- vance, but who has to pay taxes all the same, but merely to obtain money to fulfil his thought, whatever it is, thoroughly and with- out delay. That he is eating up his capital does not occur to him, and would make no impression if it did. He is not willing anything about his capital, but only about his expenditure on the immediate object. " How cruel not to pay us !" cry English bondholders, half thinking that he is torturing them deliberately.
Not a bit of it. The Prince is not half so cruel to you as to his own servants, left for years without pay. We venture to say there is not a Prince in Asia who is not aware that a regularly paid army or civil service is a cheap and effective instrument, by the side of an unpaid one, and who does not wish to have it so paid. And we venture to say also there is not a Prince in Asia who does not now and then leave his soldiers and civil servants unpaid for months or even years at a time. A caprice has seized him, and the money has gone elsewhere. Pity the unfortunate Bond- holders ! Why, the guards at his gate, the servants in his ante- chamber, the men on whose fidelity his very life depends, are all unpaid. An Asiatic will choose a doorkeeper specially to pro- tect him from assassination, and leave him unpaid. A corre- spondent of the Times remarks that the Khedive is building three new Palaces in out-of-the-way places, and seems to think that the Egyptian bondholder ought to consider that an insult, and the bondholder will entirely agree with him. Yet he would not consider it an insult if a child of eight owing him a penny, and having a halfpenny,'spent the halfpenny in apples. The Khedive, in all human probability, gives the order for his palaces to an architect two years in arrears, employs a contractor to whom he owes half a million, and orders the furniture from a firm which has his dishonoured acceptances in its skop-window. He does not think about them, who are near, and why should he think
about the Bondholder, who is far ? He is not thinking, as a matter of fact, about either of them, but about his
palaces. He wants the palaces, not at that minute any- body's approval. If a servant could provide for the Bonds by waking him when he wanted to be asleep, he would flog the servant for waking him. Why not ? He was sleepy. We cannot help smiling sometimes when we see elaborate calculations as to what Egypt, or Turkey, or Tunis has resources to pay, unaccompanied
by calculations as to the mood of the master of those resources when dividends fall due. If he can be restrained, they are useful, but if not, they are of no more use than calculations as to the number of birds' eggs which will leave a child's hand, unbroken. Just as many as she does not happen to wish to crush or to keep. Most of our readers will say we exaggerate, and that Princes cannot be so childlike as all this, but their doubts will be merely the doubts of an ignorance for which they are going to pay, or have paid, some two hundred millions or so. This Asiatic Prince may differ from that Prince in intelligence, or political know- ledge, or excellence of character ; but as regards caprice they are all alike, and lending money to them is like lending birds' eggs to a little child. Any impulse from within will make her forget the eggs, and then they will all go smash. If anybody thinks Ismail is different, let him think so by all means, and only just inquire, out of intellectual curiosity, what sum has been spent on sugar- refining machines for the Khedive's estates, never put up, or to be put up. One can have a caprice for a machine, as easily as for a new " Light of the Harem."
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