TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE CRISIS IN CAIRO.
CONSTITUTION-MAKING is pleasant work, or, at least, Sieyes and Bentham thought so ; but we do not envy the British Ministry their principal task of this week. In form they have only to prepare orders for their agent in Egypt ; but in truth, they have to devise a scheme which will create a working Government in Cairo. There is not one now. The generous experiment, defended, though not approved, by Lord Dufferin, has broken down utterly, partly under its own weight, partly under the weight of those unexpected events which, when the historic continuity of affairs has once been violently broken, are so apt to happen. No one even hopes anything from the new Constitution, or the representatives recently elected, or the Council of State, or any of the con- trivances which Orientals think so childish when energy is required, and the ancient system is paralysed in every important Department. The three essential divisions of a despotic or semi-despotic administration are the Army, Finance, and Internal Government, and all three have in Egypt come to a deadlock. The Army, it is admitted on all hands, cannot defend the country against a barbarian in- vasion, and if the English troops were withdrawn, could not protect the Executive Government from insurrection. General Baker reports from Suakim that the " army " there is useless; he cannot advance ten miles, and his European officers, in- sulted, as they think, by the Egyptian officers, are resigning in disgust. Colonel CoUlogon reports from Khartoum— we assume that he informs the Times' correspondent there— that the place is indefensible, and that unless a column marches to its relief, he ought to be ordered to retreat. In the new Army itself, " subalterns are paying bribes of ten times their salaries " to avoid being sent on active service. The Treasury is at its last ebb. Though most serious demands like the awarded indemnities are postponed, the Finance Minister cannot find money for General Baker's imme- diate expenses, the deficit has risen, it is said, to two millions, and really to more than one—equal to a deficit of £10,000,000 in England—and the Government has proposed a reduction of 10 per cent. in all the higher Civil salaries, beginning with the Khedive, a useless measure, intended merely as a public announcement of distress. In Civil affairs, the new Courts are at last opened, but Mr. Clifford Lloyd, the virtual Home Secretary, finds his situation intoler- able, and advises, as a necessary preliminary step, the dis- missal of all the Mudirs, or Prefects. The European Under-Secretaries, in fact, who are expected to keep the Egyptian Ministers straight, acknowledge that they can do nothing with them, an acknowledgment predicted beforehand by every man who knew Asia. The Ministers are not in- capable, or specially bad, or determinately hostile to Europeans, but their ideas and the English ideas are too widely apart for the two to be obeyed together, and the result of the collision is paralysis. Left to themselves, they would, in all pro- bability, find a rough road out of the situation, suspend dividends, buy the Bedouin Sheikhs, assassinate the Mandi, hire bold mercenaries sufficient to put down internal insurrection, and sponge out all peasant debts to usurers. Gradually resist- ance would cease, the plundered would turn labourers, and the peasantry, the only real people, being delighted, there would again be a bad and immoral order, such as has existed ever since Amrou secured the Delta for Islam. They can, however, do none of these things, and to do the strong, but just, things required by their English advisers, they are incompetent. Nothing, for example, would induce any Asiatic, except a King, to dismiss all his friends from their posts, appoint men everywhere who may be enemies, but are competent, and treat corruption or slackness as high treason. They fear vengeance, and the next change, and exposure too much ; and just at present, with nothing certain, and doubt in their own minds about the Mandi, and a thorough contempt for the legitimate Sovereign, who executes nobody, and bears all things with the ingrained patience of a Fellah, they are more than usually indisposed to dismiss unjust or incompetent stewards. In truth, unless everybody in Egypt is lying, they are intent on promoting them, partly to make friends if the other side wins ; partly from sheer incapacity—there is no idiot like an Asiatic when his head is gone—and partly to show to their followers that on personal questions these exacting, incom- prehensible, unbribable infidels do not bear rule. To devise a system which shall restore order in this chaos•,, yet not be formal annexation, is a most burdensome task.. With formal annexation, under a consent of Europe, all, of course, would be easy. We have only to ask Lord Northbrook to go to Cairo as Viceroy for two years, and give his written. order the force of an Act of Parliament, and in six months, there would be an Army, a Civil Service, summary but just• Courts, a compromise with the usurers, and an outburst of in-• dustrial enterprise. Resistance would cease as by magic, and the Delta would be as quiet, as uninteresting, and as full of- ploughing as Bengal. Asiatics do not wear themselves out in fighting the inevitable. Annexation, however, is for the pre- sent not to be considered, and the problem is to obtain some- of its results without accepting its form. It is a most difficult one, but there is one principle which may be safely laid down as essential. There must be for five or ten years an avowed Dictatorship. It would be much better that this should take the form of a Regency on behalf of some- descendant of Mehemet Ali, because this would be intelligible- to the people, and because in the East men never quite know how to resist orders from the nominal Prince, who has there- fore a firm foothold for dangerous intrigue. Such a Regent would be nearly as good as a Viceroy, and would, at all events, restore order, and punish corruption easily. But considering Tewfik's peculiar character, we would not deny the possibility of investing a Mayor of the Palace—call him Lieutenant- General, if you please—with the necessary authority. A strong Khedive would not bear such an arrangement ; but on some- fine morning would declare the whole business detestable to• God, order a massacre, and fly southwards, just as Cossim All did in Bengal, under precisely the same circumstances. Tewfik, however, might bear it, and the Lieutenant-General might rule successfully, either by employing Egyptian Agents, paying them properly, and making it quite clear that corruption. would involve death, or by placing Englishmen at the head of each Department of the State. The mixed system does not work, the ruler being invariably driven to trust Europeans. only, and the system of placing Europeans under Egyptians ends necessarily in paralysis ; the European losing his use- fulness from disgust at his position, and the Egyptian being absorbed in his desire to thwart his hidden master. The new organisation must, above all things, be frank, if it is to succeed ; and to secure frankness, it is indispensable that real authority and nominal position should be united in the same hand. It will be urged, of course, that if we go so far we shall never be able to retire ; but public affairs cannot be conducted in a spirit of prophecy. The scheme will secure order in Egypt with decent comfort for the people, without terminating their hope of independence, for ten years, and after that anything may happen. The Egyptians may be ready to beg us to remain, though that is. not probable, the disagreeableness of the Englishman out- weighing all his virtues, or we may have found an Egyptian who can rule, or, most probable of all, the " Eastern Question " may have been settled by cataclysm—say, the fall of Con- stantinople--and Europe may insist on our doing our part of the governing work. For the present, the one thing indis- pensable is a temporary, benevolent, but determined Dictator- ship.
We are quite aware that we are putting this counsel in its most brutally bare form, but can any one suggest any alter- native plan that will work ? Can we leave Egypt, and allow Ismail to be restored I Can we permit the Mandi to reach Cairo, and begin the grand fight between Arab and Turk ? Can we call a Parliament which would not, if left free, vote in the Mandi, and vote out European influence I Can we sit still, and let everything go to ruin, until at last Europe, alarmed for its "interests," or shocked by some san- guinary catastrophe, declares, quite justly, that it had erred, and that England did not possess, as it had fancied, the faculty of governing Asiatics. These alternatives—and we seem to ourselves to have exhausted them—need only to be stated, and what remains except the annexation, which is rejected, and the ad interim Dictatorship of a competent ruler, who, by the visible conditions of the situation, must be an Englishman No qualified Egyptian is discoverable ; and if there were one, his first act would be to shake himself free of European guidance. No Power will dissent except France, and, utterly opposed as we are to any quarrel with France, it is time to recognise that we shall do no good in Egypt, unless we are prepared, when the need arrives, to tell France frankly that she had her opportunity, and shall not now interfere.
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