We should not have suspected Mr. Rowsell—once Controller of Contracts
in the Admiralty, and now English Commissioner for the Daira—of being a sanguine man. His friends in England thought him keen, with an unusual experience of scoundrels. He has, however, recently done a very simple-minded thing. He has discovered that in Egypt three-fourths of the land is taxed at twenty-five shillings an acre, and the remaining one-fourth at from ten shillings to fifteen shillings. He has also discovered that the three-fourths belongs to peasants, and the one- fourth to Pashas, and has recommended that taxation should be equalised, and the general burden thereby reduced. And he seems, from the public reports, to believe that Nnbar Pasha will listen to his advice, and that it will
actually be carried out ! He should be sent home. He ought to know by this time that taxation in the " independ- ent " East exists for the benefit of the great ; that the destiny of peasants there, as in France under the old *into, is to pay for everybody ; and that to deprive Pashas of half their incomes is to upset the social hierarchy. Even Asiatics cannot make out Mr. Rowsell a ruffian, as they do Mr. Clifford Lloyd ; but they will assuredly prove that he is "carried away by utopian ideas," and by "that democratic sentiment which is so unsuited to the East," where true democracy was born. Mr. H. Villiers Stuart, who knows "land" in Egypt thoroughly, strongly endorses the proposal, and calls on Nubar Pasha to carry it out. But Nnbar knows better. The English are going, or may go; and with the English gone, if he attempted any such reform his life would not be worth twenty-four hours' purchase. If the Khedive did not quarrel with him mortally his coffee would.
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