Lord Cromer was presented with the freedom of the City
of London at the Guildhall on Monday, and delivered a striking speech. After cordially recognising the services of King Edward and Lord Lansdowne in connexion with the Anglo-French Convention, Lord Cromer dealt at length with the "statesmanlike arrangement" recently concluded with the Russian Government under the auspices of Sir Edward Grey, under whom it had been his great privilege to serve recently, and "for whose loyal and persistent support in circumstances of no common difficulty" Lord Cromer now proffered his most grateful thanks. Turning to Egypt, he condemned the supporters of the extreme and irre- concilable Egyptian Nationalists in this country as the worst enemies of Egyptian progress. The one way of dealing with unrest in Egypt and India was "to continue steadily to do our duty towards the people as a whole, to come down with a heavy hand upon extremists when they overstepped the limits of the law, and not to be deterred by their proceedings from adopting such reforms as would satisfy the aspirations of all moderate and reasonable men." Lord Cromer also dealt with the question of the imports of gold into Egypt, some 22,000,000 of which was annually converted into jewellery. He illustrated the practice of hoardidg which prevails in Egypt by a curious anecdote of a substantial yeoman, who recently bought an estate for 225,000, and half-an-hour after signing the contract brought a train of donkeys bearing on their backs the entire sum in coin, which had been buried in his garden. Additional banking facilities would, be hoped, gradually wean the natives from this uneconomic habit, but it would be a slow process.
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