CHAPTER I

GORDON AT KHARTOUM

[Illustration: _Charles George Gordon 1882_]

GORDON AT

KHARTOUM

BEING A PERSONAL NARRATIVE OF

EVENTS

IN CONTINUATION OF “A SECRET HISTORY OF THE

ENGLISH OCCUPATION OF EGYPT”

BY

WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT

“_We are an honest nation, but our diplomatists

are conies, and not officially honest._”—GORDON.

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY

STEPHEN SWIFT AND COL., LTD.

MCMXI

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

PREFACE

IN the present volume, which is a continuation of my “Secret History of

the Occupation of Egypt,” I take up once more the task of chronicling

the events of my time. Lord Cromer’s recent book, “Modern Egypt,” makes

this a duty to the truth which I feel ought not to be postponed, while

there is also the hope that by insistence it may still be possible to

direct those in power with us to adopt an attitude towards the

Mohammedan World less antagonistic than in the past to its thoughts and

feelings.

The period treated here, between 1882 and 1886, is the darkest of the

whole Anglo-Egyptian record, a monument indeed of perverse unwisdom

recognized by all. But I doubt if it is yet fully understood how immense

a wrong was inflicted by our English mismanagement of affairs at Cairo,

not only on Egypt and the Upper Nile, but on all Mohammedan lands

hindered by it in their work of liberal enlightenment, and thrown back

for a whole generation on lines of fanatical reaction. This I hope to

make clear. Lord Cromer would have us believe that it was contrary to

our Government’s desire that we remained on in Egypt in spite of

repeated declarations of an intention to withdraw. It will here be shown

that there was never any such intention at the Foreign Office, and that

if it existed in Mr. Gladstone’s mind it was of that barren kind which

refuses to take the means which alone can lead to the desired result.

With regard to the Soudan and the series of barbarous campaigns which

signalized those three disastrous years, the explanation, too, has been

made that these were forced by circumstances upon our Government, as was

also the separation of the Upper from the Lower Nile, a separation

brought about under conditions of violent disruption, which made it a

permanent injury to Egypt and absolute ruin to the Soudan, with the

depopulation of whole provinces through famine and disease and chronic

warfare. It will be shown that European action alone was the initial

cause of the trouble, that the fanatical character of the Soudanese

revolt was due solely to the intervention of the Christian Powers at

Cairo and that its extent and violence were increased by each successive

step of English intervention, also that to the refusal to make peace

with the Mahdi, either before or after the fall of Khartoum, may fairly

be ascribed all that subsequently happened of misfortune to the tribes

of the Upper River. These were realities that needed placing in their

proper perspective, and I have endeavoured in this volume to present

them as they to my knowledge were.

My personal position while the chief tragedy of the time, Gordon’s fatal

mission to Khartoum, was being enacted was one singularly advantageous

for my present purpose of accurate narration. Occupying no official

post, I nevertheless found myself a deeply interested spectator behind

the official scenes in London, as well as behind those of the Oriental

world, and from time to time playing a small part myself in the drama,

close enough to the chief personages to observe the details of their

action, and in near view of the machinery used for their stage effects.

The diary, which with an instinct of its future importance I kept

carefully written at the time, remains with me as a sure guide on which

I can rely for each day’s happenings, and this, in spite of its many

crudities of thought and expression, and much in it that I am conscious

is to my own disadvantage, I have decided to print almost uncensored as

it stands. It is the strongest evidence I can offer of the accuracy of

my narrative, and the best refutation of the pseudo-history which has

grown up about the mission. On many points I am very conscious that my

diary needs apology. It was written with no thought of publication, and

contains harsh judgements of men and things with many of which I have

since come to disagree, violences of language of which I am now ashamed,

and expressions of feeling softened since by years and by that tolerance

of view taken in old age of human insanities. Much in it I would

willingly not have written, or written otherwise, and much recording my

own sayings and doings I would suppress in publishing if it were not for

the feeling that to do so would impair its entire sincerity. In telling

things disadvantageous to others I could not in fairness be sparing of

my own mistakes. Therefore I leave all unexplained to its own

justification and the indulgence of my readers.

On one point only have I thought it necessary to reconsider at any

length my attitude of the time. This is in respect of the blame laid by

me on Gordon for the failure of his mission on lines of peace. As will

be seen from my diary I was one of the few Englishmen who, with a strong

feeling of esteem and affection for Gordon, disapproved from the first

of his mission, suspecting what was indeed the fact, that there was in

it a political intrigue connected with the continued occupation of

Egypt, and I was one of the very few who rejoiced at the failure of the

relief expedition and the fall of Khartoum. My belief, however, at the

time, that Gordon was himself through his soldier’s obstinacy mainly

responsible for the failure, and that he did, as was being pretended by

Ministers, exceed his instructions, wantonly changing the character of

his mission from a peaceful one to one of war, was unjust, and I

recognize the necessity of correcting my misjudgement. The publication

of Lord Cromer’s book four years ago, with its exaggerated attack on

Gordon on these very heads, roused my suspicion and caused me to re-

examine the evidence connected with the whole matter, and I speedily

discovered that, though Gordon made without doubt many mistakes in its

discharge, the prime responsibility of the mission as one necessarily of

war was certainly not his, but that of those who sent him; also, on

further examination, that in spite of Lord Cromer’s denial the failure

of the mission was principally due to no other than Lord Cromer’s self.

I have consequently devoted several chapters of the present volume to

clearing up this much vexed matter, and I have added to them, for the

special benefit of Egyptian readers ignorant of Gordon’s superlative

moral merit and regarding him only as a too zealous agent of the British

Government, and so their enemy, a memoir of this great man’s life and

character, gathered in part from his published letters scattered through

many works now out of print and notably from those wonderful letters to

his sister collected by Dr. Hill, in part from my own recollection of

him, and that of others who knew him personally. In this, which has been

to me a labour of love as well as of reparation, I have been powerfully

assisted by Gordon’s nephew and literary heir, Colonel Louis Gordon, by

his sole surviving sister, Mrs. Moffitt, and by his niece, Miss Gordon,

who are the chief living authorities on all things concerning him. These

have not only put me on the track of all published knowledge, but have

been good enough to entrust to me many important documents not hitherto

printed, which will be found either in the text of this volume or the

Appendix. One of these is of deciding value to the case, a letter which

Lord Cromer in his _apologia_ seems to have forgotten, and which fixes

on himself the responsibility of the mission as one far wider in scope

than has hitherto been admitted.

If I have anything to add to these few words of preface it is this—I

have been reproached with lack of patriotism in that I have made it my

business of late years to denounce the errors and political misdeeds of

my fellow countrymen in Egypt. In answer to this I can only say that I

belong to a generation of Englishmen holding an idea of patriotism

entirely different from that now accepted, and one that I think saner.

According to the teaching of my youth the patriotic idea was essentially

connected with the love of the land of one’s birth, the passion of

courage which prompted Thermopylae and Bannockburn and the thousand and

one battles where men have stood up in defence of their homes against

invading strangers; also with that other moral courage which

strengthened a man to oppose in speech the folly of his fellow men whom

he saw doing dishonour to that land. It had nothing whatever to do with

the modern idea, now prevalent among Englishmen, of solidarity with the

enterprises, often criminal, of the cosmopolitan finance of London and

Liverpool and Manchester, which has usurped control over our lives and

honour in its dealings with our national affairs abroad, which controls

our press, manipulates our parliament, and uses our ancient and

honourable English name for its base un-English purposes. There is no

lack of patriotism in refusing to bow to this new leadership in evil, or

in denouncing its ungodly doings.

I am by instinct of birth a conservative to my inmost fibre, that is to

say a believer in tradition and the value of all that is ancient in our

national institutions and creeds and moralities. I remember the disgust

of my older Tory friends when, under Semitic influence thirty-five years

ago, the new-fangled style of Empress was proposed to be added to the

time-honoured title inherited by our Sovereign Lady Queen Victoria, and

when the British Empire first began to be talked about as an improvement

in nomenclature on our long sufficing Kingdom of England. What was good

enough for the “spacious days of great Elizabeth” was surely, we

protested, good enough for us. We wanted none of the imperial nonsense.

As to a transfer of our patriotic loyalty from our good island realm of

England to a colonial monarchy beyond the seas, it seemed not only a

vulgarity but a contradiction in physical terms. We did not spare our

mockery and contempt for the whole “Brummagem” innovation.

This is my sentimental view of British imperialism still, nor is it a

matter of sentiment alone with me. My reading of history has taught, and

practical experience has confirmed to me the fact that the task

undertaken by a nation of ruling other nations against their will is the

most certain step for it upon the road to national ruin. It is

impossible to exercise tyrannical authority abroad and retain a proper

respect for the dignity of liberty at home. The two things are not

permanently compatible. The virus of lawlessness in foreign lands

infects the body politic at home by a gradual process of contempt for

human brotherhood and equal right, which are the basis of all law and

the only guarantee of freedom in free nations. Nor, on the other hand,

can a community afford to distribute its energies in a hundred different

directions without injury to its mental balance and danger of

intellectual decay. The British Empire of the present day is being run

on lines of speculation which is often sheer gambling. It has lost the

sense of all economy in its finances, and all moderation in its

spendthrift ways. How can it be moderate with a thousand speculative

ventures to uphold in all four quarters of the globe? Moreover—and this

is perhaps the most dangerous feature of it all—the vanity of

imperialism, of being members of an imperial caste, is rapidly teaching

Englishmen to rely, wherever possible, for their living upon the labour

of others rather than their own. The great Crown Colonies, the Indian

Empire, and the South African federation are all slave communities in

disguise, where white men do not work themselves but live by “native”

labour. The example of their sloth is gaining rapid ground at home, and

soon all will be too proud to do any manual service. The virile part of

the community is flocking already to lands where they can live in less

laborious ways; the feebler part remains to propagate and starve at

home. Who shall say that England is not on a perilous downward path?

What moves me most to anger is to note how, just as four hundred years

ago the Spanish race, urged by the speculative lust of gold and a belief

in their own supreme imperial and Christianizing mission, rushed out

upon the innocent New World and enslaved and slew its primitive peoples

happier far than they, so we English-speaking men enslave and slay in

the name of civilization—here, there, and everywhere—races less well

armed, but in other respects more fit for survival in the spaces they

have primitively occupied than ourselves. The work of subjugation goes

on under a score of false pretences; and these, officially recorded,

remain for the misleading of posterity in the pages of our printed Blue

Books. History thus comes to be written in a sense suited to the self-

satisfaction of those who would like to think themselves God’s

messengers to an unenlightened heathendom, while in reality they are

only gathering in its wealth, and their crimes of conquest are

concealed. In the days of Spain’s madness there was a single honest monk

who denounced his fellow countrymen for their misdeeds, and dared to

love the Indians more than his own people, because he saw these

suffering atrocities of injustice at their conquerors’ hands. He was not

popular in Castile for his plain speaking. Yet where—among the

nations—is imperial Spain to-day? And which has the better title now to

be called a patriot, Las Casas or Pizarro?

There will be found at the end of the volume an Appendix containing a

selection of papers forming the _pièces justificatives_ of this portion

of my history. Some of these are of considerable intrinsic value, others

of less importance but needed for the refutation in detail of the

historic inaccuracies of Lord Cromer’s book, and in answer to certain

remarks found in it concerning myself. Such especially are the

additional evidence here brought forward of the Khedive Tewfik’s

connection with the riots at Alexandria and Tantah in 1882, which,

without reason given, Lord Cromer has pronounced to be unproved; and my

correspondence with 10, Downing Street, which he has in a few sentences

attempted to discredit. The correspondence makes my position towards Mr.

Gladstone absolutely clear, as does, in another direction, my more

generally interesting correspondence with my Oriental friends.

The pencil drawing of Gordon, reproduced as frontispiece to the volume,

is by Edward Clifford, and is now in the collection of the National

Portrait Gallery. Though inadequate as displaying Gordon’s more

popularly heroic attitude, it is the only one that at all reveals his

inner and more mystic mind, or which I recognize as a true presentment

of the man as I personally remember him.

W. S. B.

_13th September_ 1911.

Twenty-ninth anniversary

of Tel-el-Kebir.

CONTENTS

PAGE

GENERAL GORDON _Frontispiece_

PREFACE v

CHAPTERS

I. THE DUFFERIN SETTLEMENT 1

II. SIR EVELYN BARING ARRIVES AT CAIRO 38

III. GORDON’S WORK ON THE WHITE NILE 87

IV. GORDON IN PALESTINE 122

V. GORDON’S LAST MISSION 144

VI. WAS GORDON DISOBEDIENT? 181

VII. EXCITEMENT ABOUT GORDON IN LONDON 207

VIII. MY EXCLUSION FROM EGYPT 245

IX. CONSTANTINOPLE IN 1884 284

X. GORDON’S DEATH. CHAOS 344

XI. RANDOLPH CHURCHILL AND THE FOURTH PARTY 412

XII. THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1885—RANDOLPH AT THE 471

INDIA OFFICE—DRUMMOND WOLFF’S MISSION

NOTE ABOUT THE MAHDI’S DEATH 505

APPENDICES

A. UNPUBLISHED GORDON PAPERS 509

B. MR. BLUNT’S ORIENTAL CORRESPONDENCE 539

C. CORRESPONDENCE WITH DOWNING STREET 568

D. CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL 608

E. ARABI’S PROGRAMME OF 1883, AND MOHAMMED ABDU’S 617

VIEWS

F. EXTRACTS FROM LADY ANNE BLUNT’S DIARY 627

G. LETTERS TO MR. BLUNT ALLUDED TO IN, AND 630

EXEMPLIFYING, THE TEXT

INDEX 645

GORDON AT KHARTOUM

CHAPTER I

THE DUFFERIN SETTLEMENT

I TAKE up my narrative of Egyptian events where I left them at the end

of 1882.

The restoration of the Khedive Tewfik at Cairo had been accomplished by

Lord Wolseley’s army, and Egypt, prostrate and dumb, lay like a woman

betrayed waiting the fate to be allotted to her at the hand of her

despoiler. Arabi’s trial over, it became a matter of supreme interest

for all of us who had interested ourselves in the National movement as

one of progress and reform to speculate on what was to be the ultimate

fortune or ill-fortune of the Egyptians meted out to them by Mr.

Gladstone’s Government—whether they would return to their ancient

slavery under the Circassians, or whether, as we hoped, Gladstone would

make good his promises of favouring the development of their political

institutions, and helping them on their road to self-government—or

whether, again, they would meet the fate of so many other nations of the

East, and become permanently incorporated in the British Empire.

For this last course all the Imperialists of England, headed by “The

Times,” were crying out, and it was generally believed that Bismarck,

then Lord Paramount of Europe, would consent to it, while France, though

sullen and vexed with herself for having missed an opportunity of

acquisition she had long marked out as her own, was not prepared for

effectual remonstrance. Her seizure of Tunis the year before, under

circumstances of even less legality, closed her mouth for any moral

preaching, as did the avowed selfishness of her attitude towards Egypt

which had been even more blatantly than ours that of advocate there of

financial and foreign commercial interests.

I do not think, however, that it was really within the power of our

Liberal Government all at once and so entirely to falsify their pledges.

A protocol of disinterestedness had been signed by Lord Dufferin at

Constantinople at the meeting of the Conference the previous summer,

which in the most public manner possible engaged England to make her

intervention one for the general European good, and not merely for

British advantage. Lord Granville, too, was bound over and over again by

his declarations to the theory that the English army had been sent to

Egypt solely to restore order and maintain the _status quo_, while both

the Khedive’s authority and the Sultan’s had been invoked to give the

intervention a colour of legality, and Sir Beauchamp Seymour in a solemn

document, published a fortnight after the bombardment of Alexandria and

before landing troops, had engaged the faith of England not to attempt

conquest or in any way injure either the religion or the liberties of

the Egyptians. To annex or proclaim a protectorate would consequently

have been a huge moral lapse Gladstone was not prepared for, though a

certain section of the Cabinet, headed by Hartington and Chamberlain,

were pushing hard in that direction, while the Foreign Office, refusing

to accept the evidence of the new facts revealed at the trial, clung to

its false theory of the causes of the war, which it needed as an excuse,

and hardened its heart against all repentance for its past mistakes.

Moreover—and for this I think I may claim to have helped to avert from

Egypt the supreme disaster of annexation—the non-conformist conscience

of the old-fashioned Liberals of England was now awake to the iniquity

of the war, and was indignant at the betrayal by Gladstone of his

Midlothian principles, and was insisting with him that liberty should

not be altogether suppressed on the Nile. This was a consideration which

could not but affect a politician of Gladstone’s temperament; and there

was yet another reason perhaps stronger than all the rest with him,

though I as yet only half suspected it, his economic prudence as ex-

Chancellor of the Exchequer, which made him shrink from incurring full

responsibility for England for the liabilities of a country then

believed to be on the point of bankruptcy. Egypt from that point of view

might be a burden involving money expenditure for many years as well as

international trouble, and this consideration in all probability decided

him. It is certain that, in subsequent years, his scruples about

retaining Egypt became less and less imperative in almost exact

correspondence with the revival of the financial credit.

Be this as it may, the opportunity of English annexation was,

fortunately for the Egyptians, let slip in 1882, and did not again recur

in Mr. Gladstone’s lifetime; nor, let us hope, will another be found in

the still less scrupulous future reserved for the British Empire. Egypt,

though wounded almost to death, did not die as a nation with the

destruction of her national army at Tel-el-Kebir, and still preserves

her historic identity as a legally self-governing State, technically

dependent on no European Power. The settlement of her future as such was

the outcome of the divergent ideas and motives and pledges and interests

just enumerated, and, as all the world knows, was entrusted to Lord

Dufferin, already in Egypt, in the opening months of the year 1883.

Dufferin’s task, it may be admitted, was a difficult one. It was to

effect a compromise which should at the same time satisfy Europe, keep

nominal faith with the Khedive, and have at least an appearance of

giving back to the Egyptians the political liberties they had for a

moment won and were now once more deprived of. At the time of his

appointment I had considerable confidence in Dufferin. I had known him

personally for more than twenty years, from the time indeed when, as an

attaché to the Legation at Athens, I had made his acquaintance on his

return from his Nile tour in the winter of 1859-60, and I knew that his

sympathy with the fellahin had then been great. He was in those days an

interesting and very charming young man of not much more than thirty,

and he had spent most of his time at Athens with us at the Legation,

joining our rides and excursions, and taking part in our mounted paper-

chases which took place twice a week, as well as in such social

amusements as the Corps Diplomatique at Athens afforded. His mother,

herself the most charming of women, was travelling with him, and both

had been especially kind to me in a way I did not forget, and I am glad

to think that during the whole of Lord Dufferin’s long life the pleasant

relations thus begun between us were maintained as often as we met.

In the year following he had received his first public appointment, that

of Commissioner to Syria at the time of the Maronite massacres, and he

had returned to Athens after them, and I remembered the details of the

settlement he had so successfully arranged for the Lebanon. By this he

had pledged himself to the principle of provincial autonomy under

Ottoman sovereignty, while a little later the weight of his opinion had

been given to our Government when it insisted with the French that they

should withdraw their army of occupation from Syria. It is curious how

closely parallel were, in fact, the two cases of intervention—the French

intervention in Syria in 1860 and the English intervention in Egypt in

1882. It seemed to me, therefore, that he might be trusted to oppose

anything like a renewal of the old Turco-Circassian tyranny, and also to

respect the independent administrative rights of the Egyptian people.

His task, however, as I have said was a difficult one, indeed almost

impossible. In order to give back their liberty to the fellahin, or

indeed to introduce any of the reforms advocated by Arabi and his

friends, it would have been necessary to reinstate, if not Arabi

himself, at least a Nationalist Ministry, for the Turco-Circassian

clique, which Wolseley had put back into power, were the enemies of all

reform, while the Khedive himself, who had betrayed his constitutional

pledges, could no longer be trusted to work honestly with a

constitutional Government. He would need to be replaced by some other

prince who had not forfeited the confidence of his people.

Such a course, though difficult from the Foreign Office point of view,

would have met with little obstacle in Egypt itself. Indeed, it would

have been a quite simple affair. Tewfik, at that time, had absolutely no

friend in the country outside the circle of his own small palace clique,

and hardly a voice would have been raised for him if his retirement had

been insisted on as a political necessity, not even in all probability

his own. Pensioned, he would not unwillingly have returned to private

life, for his experience of the Khedivial dignity had not been such as

to cause him to be enamoured of it. Two courses would then have been

open in regard to his successor. Either the recognized order of

succession might have been followed, which would have placed the present

Khedive Abbas, still a child, upon the throne, under a Regency; or the

older order of succession might have been reverted to, which would have

given it to Prince Halim. In neither case would there have been

difficulty in restoring a constitutional regime. Probably the best

arrangement, if our Foreign Office could have been got to consent to it,

would have been the first, with Arabi for Regent. Arabi was still, in

spite of his defeat and the poor fight of it he had made at Tel-el-

Kebir, most widely popular, and could have been trusted to work honestly

with those plans of material and moral reform which England professed to

have at heart, not indeed as Minister, for he lacked the administrative

ability, but as exercising by delegation the duties of a constitutional

head of the State. For that no Egyptian could have been better fitted,

he being a large-minded man as well as a good Moslem. Nor would

England’s legitimate influence have been a loser by it. Arabi, in spite

of the quarrel forced upon him by the Foreign Office, had always refused

to see an enemy in the English people. He had nursed himself to the last

in the belief that, if only the British public could be got to know the

truth, it could not fail to sympathize. England, it must be remembered,

was traditionally believed in Egypt, prior to 1882, to be the universal

patron of liberal and national movements throughout the world, and in an

especial manner the friend of Islam. Arabi had been bred in that

tradition, and had to the last moment, in common with most Egyptians,

imagined that the quarrel was due to a mistake as to facts. The

rectification of it would therefore have seemed natural to him and to

all, and would have restored the general Egyptian goodwill.

For a moment we thought that Dufferin, whom the disclosures connected

with the trial had made acquainted with the true history of the war,

would have recommended this enlightened course, and it would have saved

him and his employers at the Foreign Office much subsequent trouble had

he had the courage to insist on it. He was perfectly aware of Tewfik’s

real character, and he was aware also of Arabi’s merits. Indeed, so far

had his confidence gone in the honesty and patriotism of the defeated

National leader that he had got him at the moment of his leaving for

Ceylon to draw up a Memorandum of Reform for Egypt, the text of which,

though doubtless existing at the Foreign Office, has never been

published. It will be found at the end of this chapter, a copy of it

having been furnished to me by Arabi from Ceylon the following summer.

Also I had learned from General Charles Gordon, in a conversation I had

had with him, while Arabi was still in prison, in December 1882, that

the idea of Arabi’s rehabilitation and recall to Egypt was at the time

contemplated in Downing Street; while, as will be seen further on, I

received additional confirmation of it as being in Gladstone’s mind in a

message received from him as late as the summer of 1883. We were

therefore not without justification in the hope we reposed in Dufferin,

though it is improbable that the Foreign Office, obstinate and deeply

compromised, was ever converted from its hostility to the National

leader. Indeed it is pretty certain that, whatever representations of

the truth Dufferin may have made or whatever new suggestions offered,

the policy he was instructed by Lord Granville to pursue remained

unyielding; and the publication a few months later of Dufferin’s famous

despatch of 7th February did but register a foregone conclusion.[1]

Nevertheless, it is worth while to put on record what evidence we

possess of a wiser and more liberal policy having been contemplated at

least for a moment by some of those in power. Not to lay too much stress

on the hopes held out to us by Dufferin at the time of the compromise of

Arabi’s trial, which may have been dictated by an unauthorized desire to

persuade us, it is certain that Arabi’s early return to Egypt was

believed in not only at Cairo at the end of the year 1882, but also in

London. Gordon’s evidence on this head is decisive, and shows that it

was entertained in official quarters. Though looked upon in Downing

Street as “not clothed in the rightest of minds,”[2] Gordon’s opinion on

Egyptian affairs was considered worth taking. He was in occasional

correspondence with Lord Northbrook, and he was intimate[3] with

Reginald Brett (the present Lord Esher), just then transferred with Lord

Hartington, whose private secretary he was, to the War Office, while

Wolseley also was his friend. There was talk, too, already at the time,

as we shall presently see, of Gordon’s possible return as Governor-

General to the Soudan, and he was in an excellent position to hear and

know. What therefore he told me in the conversation referred to cannot

but be convincing of the fact. The circumstances under which it took

place were these.

It will be remembered by readers of my first volume, “A Secret History

of the English Occupation of Egypt,” that while the campaign of Tel-el-

Kebir was still in progress I received a letter from General Gordon

dated Cape Town, 3rd August 1882, the text of which is there given,

expressing to me the strongest sympathy with my view of the iniquitous

causes of the war, and ending with the words, “As for Arabi, whatever

may become of him individually, he will live for centuries in the

people; they will never be ‘your obedient servants’ again.” A copy of

this letter I had forwarded to Gladstone, and it had not been without

effect on him in what had happened subsequently in Egypt. To Gordon I

had sent in reply a printed copy of my private correspondence with

Downing Street, and the article on the Egyptian Revolution, published in

the September number of the “Nineteenth Century Review,” and had

received a second letter from him which I here print.

“En route to England 21 _Oct._ 1882.

“MY DEAR MR. BLUNT,

“THANK you for your kind letter Sept. 7, received as I was leaving

Cape Town. Sorry you have been abused, but you are not the worse because

the world does so, neither are you better when it praises you. You are

as you are. Thanks for XIX century and pamphlet, which I read with

interest. I have a conviction that things will turn out well for the

Egyptian people in the long run, and though our people may suffer, it

will be for welfare of the human race. I cannot now write on the

subject, for I have an idea that things are ruled for the best, by an

overruling Power, and that to put any say in what He does seems

presumptuous on my part; in fact if one took up the cudgels for the

oppressed every-where, one would have too much to do. I may meet you

some day, and perhaps can enlighten you on some subjects, such as why

the Joint Note 9 Janry was written, from _my_ point of view. As for

Dilke I think he is an impostor in a great measure. With kind regards.

Believe me, Yrs. sincerely,

“C. G. GORDON.

“_P.S._—I have seen papers up to 26 Oct. and it seems H. M. G. have just

fought to reinstate the Parasite ring of Pachas. As for Raouf and Ismail

[Eyoub] Pachas’ being on Arabi’s trial, it means simply the condemnation

of Arabi. I know both these two men well, they would shrink at nothing,

and are the representative men of the Pacha clique.”

It was therefore natural that, on his return to England in November I

should be one of the first persons upon whom the General called. My

diary, which at the time I had unfortunately interrupted, fails me in

regard to the exact details of the visit paid me; and I have no more

than a memorandum to the effect that Gordon called at my house in James

Street, Buckingham Gate, on 5th December, and that not finding me at

home he left his name with my servant at the door characteristically

thus: “General Gordon or Gordon Pasha. I daresay you have heard of him

before”; and with it a note written on a sheet of my own paper. But this

I have preserved and it fixes the date. It says: “I will call at

Buckingham Gate 9 a.m. Friday, if you could be in. I sincerely hope you

can recover the £4,000 you spent on Arabi [alluding to the costs of the

trial]. I will give £5 a year till you are repaid. It would be a

pleasure to do it and no risk, for Arabi will be back in Egypt within

two years, and he will repay it. I hope that the inferior prisoners will

not be forgotten, for Riaz and Co. will do their best to crush them, for

Riaz’ fate depends on their extinction. My address, 68, Elm Park Road,

Chelsea.”

It must have been therefore on Friday the 8th December that Gordon

called again, and, as I remember well, breakfasted with us and spent the

whole forenoon in talk, mainly on Egypt and the Soudan, but also on

India and the relations generally between Europe and the East. With

regard to Egypt my recollection is distinct that we were in entire

agreement in our sympathy with the “rebellion,” and our condemnation of

Tewfik. In my “Nineteenth Century” article I had engaged myself to write

a sequel to it, but I remember that he advised me to leave this promise

for the present unfulfilled. “You do not require it,” he said, “for your

own justification, and, as for the Government, they are resolved now to

do justice. You may have perfect faith in Mr. Gladstone, and I know that

he intends to restore Arabi as soon as public opinion shall have cooled

down, and he can do it without too sudden a reversal of his policy.

Arabi will be back in Egypt in a couple of years, and you can then write

your history far more effectively than now.”

This is my recollection of the visit, and it is confirmed to me on the

point in question by a second note received from him at the close of the

year bidding me farewell just before his leaving England for Jerusalem,

which letter I have also preserved.

“5 Rockstone Place, Southampton 2, 26, 12, 82.

“MY DEAR MR. BLUNT,

“THANK you for your kind note. I am sorry not to have seen you and

Lady Blunt before I left. I go tomorrow and will do my best about the

Sheiks.[4] Above is my safe address. I will write you from Palestine.

“I have to a small degree tried to use the verse: ‘If thou seest the

violent oppression of the poor, or the subversion of justice, marvel not

at it, for the Higher than the Highest regardeth it.’ Ecc. v, 8.

“Not that I am inclined to be silent on these matters if I think I can

do any good, but it comforts me to feel that one can get access to a

Higher than they.

“Arabi will be back in a couple of years, say in 18 months.

“I think things are very critical in Cairo, and the day I called on you,

I went to Brett and begged him to urge Government to assemble the

Notables at once. Napoleon I suffered far more from the revolts of Cairo

than from the troops. Colvin is to be recalled.

“Believe me with kindest regards to Lady Blunt and yourself, and with

hopes for the future thro’ your efforts, Yours sincerely,

“C. G. GORDON.”

This taken with the rest is, I think, decisive. As to the Soudan, my

recollection of Gordon’s talk is that he expressed himself at the time

in entire sympathy with the Mahdi as the popular leader of a revolt

against an iniquitous Government, but that, whereas I, sharing the views

of many Egyptian Nationalists in 1882, was for giving the Soudanese

complete independence, Gordon insisted on the retention of Khartoum as a

necessity for Egypt in connection with the Nile water-supply, and as an

outpost to be held politically. On this point alone we disagreed.

Arabi’s memorandum, drawn up for Lord Dufferin, is another important bit

of evidence. It shows that at least the question of a change of Khedive

had been presented to, and must have been considered by, him; nor is it

to be supposed that the intention of a complete pardon for the writer

can have been absent from the diplomatist to whom it was addressed. It

is certain, at any rate, that Dufferin was influenced by it in his

scheme of reforms, and was then favourably impressed, and to this I can

testify of my own knowledge, for I more than once had opportunities in

after years of learning the high opinion Dufferin entertained of the ex-

National leader. The passage in the memorandum of immediate importance

to the point we are considering is this:

“The question,” says the memorandum, “of appointing a new ruler (Waly)

is an important one, and I will lay before you my own views and those of

my comrades. I say: that the family of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mohammed

Ali, is absolutely worthless for the sovereignty; no matter how they

might be controlled by a Constitution, for they are of notoriously

corrupt principles. In my opinion there is a choice of two courses. 1.

To appoint Halim Pasha, son of Mohammed Ali Pasha, Waly of Egypt, under

the conditions before laid down [_i.e._, those of a Constitution]. He is

a man who has been tried by misfortune, and has tasted the bitterness of

injustice, and has reached the age of about fifty-five years, and I

believe that such a man might try to win the sympathy of the people by

justice and kindness. 2. The other course is to appoint as Waly for

Egypt one of her own men of the National Party whose deeds have borne

witness to their goodness of disposition and peaceful character. But, as

to any idea of appointing a foreign ruler, I say that, as the mass of

the Egyptians are Moslems, with the exception of the Coptic section (and

these are the same as the Egyptians in their dealings and ways of life),

I believe that the appointment of a foreign Waly would not suit the

temper of the Egyptians, but would perhaps lead to trouble among them.”

This, though not conforming to strict official phraseology, goes to the

root of the matter, and is full of common sense. Let us consider how it

would have been if Dufferin had made the idea of such a change of ruler

his own, as he made other recommendations of the memorandum his own, and

had pressed it as a necessity of the Egyptian case upon the Foreign

Office if an honest settlement was to be made and the British troops

withdrawn from Egypt. As regards Egypt proper, the appointment of Halim

would have solved the whole difficulty of popular disaffection. Halim,

who was a really estimable man, bore a good repute in Egypt. His

domestic life was a blameless one. His wife, a woman of high distinction

with a good European education, would have helped him in his relations

with the resident foreign element, and he himself was sufficiently

Europeanized to play the part needed of a modern Egyptian ruler. He had

none of the vices of the elder branch of the family of Mohammed Ali. He

was neither a spendthrift nor a voluptuary, nor a coveter of his

neighbour’s goods, nor on any point a law breaker. Moreover there would

have been no difficulty in obtaining the Sultan’s consent to the

appointment. Halim was in some sort the Sultan’s own candidate, as also

the candidate of most of the European Powers. He could have worked

easily with the National Party and the Constitution, and thus the

British garrison could have been at once withdrawn. If to this had been

added, what was talked of at the time, the appointment of Sir Charles

Wilson as Malet’s successor at the British Agency, even a preponderance

of English influence in Egypt could have been secured. Wilson was a

strong sympathizer with the Nationalists, and his advice would have been

followed. The suggestion of Halim was an entirely wise one, suited to

every necessity of the case, as would have been the other of Abbas with

Arabi for Regent.

Above all it would have saved Egypt and England from those terrible

disasters which beset both countries with a pursuing curse in regard to

the Soudan during the next three years. That the intervention in Egypt

was the direct cause of the revolt in the Soudan is certain. One of the

most fatal acts of the Dual Control had been to give to the Soudan in

1880, as Gordon’s successor, a reactionary and wholly corrupt Circassian

Governor-General, Raouf Pasha, and it had been through his tyranny and

incapacity that the country had fallen into disorder and the Mahdi had

gained his first adherents. Two years later Arabi’s first administrative

act when he became War Minister at Cairo had been to recall Raouf,[5]

and send a really competent man, Abd-el-Kader Pasha, to replace him.

Under Abd-el-Kader the rebellion had been localized, Khartoum

scientifically fortified, and order restored everywhere but in the

western provinces. Moreover Arabi had put himself into epistolary

communication with the Mahdi, and had established a _modus vivendi_

between him and the National Government in view of the common menace of

European and Christian aggression in Lower Egypt. It was the landing of

English troops at Alexandria that gave its fanatical character to the

Mahdist rebellion, while it also denuded the Soudan of its best troops

recalled to Egypt to repel the menace of invasion. But for Tel-el-Kebir,

the utmost misfortune that could have befallen Egypt in that direction

would have been the loss of the Bahr el Ghazal province and Kordofan.

Even now, after the defeat of Tel-el-Kebir, all could have been repaired

had the change of Khedive been resolved on according to Arabi’s

suggestion, with a recall of the Nationalist leaders, and an end put to

the tyrannical Circassian regime at Cairo. Terms could easily have been

come to with the Mahdi which would have secured Khartoum and the Eastern

Soudan from attack. The Christian army withdrawn from Cairo, the Mahdi’s

rebellion would have lost its fanatical _raison d’être_. It will be seen

later that Arabi, even before the defeat of Hicks, was quite ready to

abandon Kordofan and the Equatorial provinces, while there would have

been no difficulty in retaining Khartoum, where the chief weakness of

the garrison in 1883 lay in the fact that the troops composing it were

Arabi’s ex-soldiers devoted to him and wholly disaffected to Tewfik. For

the issue of bloodshed and destruction witnessed for a generation in the

Soudan, the obstinacy of our Foreign Office in retaining Tewfik was

directly responsible. It was one of those fatal mistakes which statesmen

make and persist in because they are too proud to own their error.

Was there ever a greater tragedy of errors? And all for what? It is

probable that the real reason why Tewfik was maintained in his place as

Khedive, instead of being pensioned and sent to join his father in an

exile more or less honourable, was neither a consideration of Egypt’s

interests nor that of England’s interests, nor yet of the interests of

Europe, nor so much as those of the bondholders. None of the upholders

of these interests had any belief or trust in Tewfik as a prince capable

of maintaining order at Cairo, or of restoring Egyptian credit, or even

of efficiently serving British interests. He was known to have none of

the qualities of a strong ruler, and he was popular with no one, native

or European. As a puppet prince he might have his uses, but the

situation demanded something more than a puppet prince, and he was good

for no other purpose, political or financial. No. The probability is

that the real reason with Gladstone’s Cabinet was that Tewfik’s

retirement would have entailed the retirement also of Lord Granville,

and Lord Granville was too popular a member of the Cabinet to be forced

into such a step against his will; also that Lord Granville, a needy

man, much in debt, and dependent on his official salary to eke out an

insufficient income, was not prepared for the personal sacrifice. The

fiction of Tewfik’s loyalty and of Arabi’s rebellion had therefore to be

persisted in and upheld. It could not be contemplated that a Minister

should admit an error which had been accompanied by the slaughter of

thousands of peasants, and the expenditure of millions, and a war which

had been boasted of as one undertaken as a “duty of honour.” Granville

must have resigned if his Cabinet had belied him. There was no

“political” way out of it, except for the Foreign Office to harden its

heart and persevere in its accomplished wrong. This, I say, was the

tragedy of the situation, and for this Egypt was sacrificed. As for

Dufferin, he doubtless argued, being an old diplomatist with a career to

maintain, that he had been sent to Egypt by the Foreign Office to get

them out of an all but impossible scrape, but that his instructions did

not include the duty of proving them fools. He therefore made his

settlement on the lines prescribed. It may be said of him with truth

that he missed, unwillingly, an heroic opportunity, and I think also

with truth that it left him with occasional qualms of conscience which

troubled him through the rest of his long and eminently successful life.

For these reasons nothing in the way of an efficient new policy was

insisted on by Dufferin, or adopted by the Government, and all the rest

of the programme so elaborately drawn up by him of councils and

assemblies, and dignified with the name of a Constitution, was rendered

impotent from the outset by being entrusted to hands the least desirous

of its success and the least competent to deal with it.

We, who were watching, were not long in being undeceived in our hopes.

The new year 1883 began badly. Although its actual first act at Cairo

was the issuing of the decree promised us by Dufferin of a general

amnesty for all connected with the “Rebellion,” and though I had

received from him a private letter announcing to me the good news of the

release of 450 political prisoners, for which I had duly thanked him, it

soon appeared that the operation of the decree was being evaded in

practice where the Khedive needed to be indulged in acts of unsatisfied

vengeance on those who had specially offended him. But for this, I had

intended that with the issue of the amnesty my political intervention in

Egypt should end. I felt that I had done my whole duty by salvaging, as

far as I could, the wreck of the National Party; I had so far succeeded

in saving the lives, if not the liberty, of all concerned, and it was my

thought to rely, as Gordon had advised me, on Gladstone for the rest,

and to turn my energies into other channels. A very few days, however,

passed before it became evident that things were going less fairly in

Egypt than they seemed. About the 15th of January Napier,[6] having

finished his work at Cairo, returned to London, and from him I learned

that, notwithstanding the amnesty and the clearing of the prisons

announced by Dufferin, a certain number of the political prisoners had

been detained while others were being arrested and put on trial before

special courts on charges connected with the past year. The charges

brought were so-called “criminal charges” against persons implicated in

the riots at Alexandria, Tantah, and other places, before or during the

war, and on this pretence vengeance was being taken on political enemies

by the Khedive and the Court Party. What made these prosecutions the

more infamous was the fact that innocent men were being indicted for the

very crimes their accusers had been themselves guilty of, and, to make

the injustice of it the more glaring, some of them were being tried

before military courts appointed by the very man, Omar Pasha Lutfi, now

Minister of War, who with the Khedive’s connivance and suggestion had

prepared the Alexandria riot not a year before. It was a “judicial

atrocity” of the most shameless kind.

I therefore wrote to Dufferin a letter, the full text of which will be

found in the Appendix at the end of this volume, complaining of the

exceptions that had been made to the amnesty. “It would seem,” I said,

“most unfair that the leaders of the ‘rebellion’ having foregone their

right of being publicly defended, any of their followers or associates

should be punished for rebellion. . . . I cannot understand how it can

be the wish of our Government to make scapegoats of the rank and file of

those charged with the criminal acts of June and July, while the chief

offenders enjoy immunity. If one thing has been proved to the

satisfaction of the Government more than another, it is that Omar Lutfi

was responsible for the murderous character of the riots of the 11th of

June, yet we read still of executions at Alexandria for crimes committed

on that day by others, the chief culprit himself being the while at

large, in honour, and even holding high office under the Khedive. I say

nothing of the Khedive himself, though you doubtless know how little his

conduct on that day would have borne investigation.”

Dufferin’s answer to this, while personally amiable, was the reverse of

satisfactory. It referred me to a report drawn up by Sir Charles Wilson

about the discharge of political prisoners, but ignored the real point

of my remonstrance, the breach of the amnesty of which I had complained.

The monstrosity of the prosecutions’ being carried on in the Khedive’s

name for acts due to the Khedive’s own instigation was too delicate

ground to be ventured on, and Dufferin was diplomatically silent. In the

meanwhile men were being hanged, and among them, on the 5th of February,

a young officer charged with being responsible for the riot at Tantah in

July 1882.

The riots of Tantah, which took place a few days after the bombardment

of Alexandria, were the work of the Alexandrian mob which had fled from

that city. They were permitted and encouraged by the then governor of

the province, Ibrahim Pasha Adhem, an adherent of the Khedive, who

sought to emulate the conduct of Omar Pasha Lutfi in the Alexandrian

case. The Tantah massacre would have attained very large proportions but

for the intervention of Ahmed Bey Minshawi, a neighbouring fellah

proprietor of great local authority, aided by Yusuf Abu Diab, one of

Abd-el-Aal Pasha’s aides-de-camp, who had been sent by Arabi to protect

the Christians. The governor, Ibrahim Adhem, had then been arrested by

Arabi’s order, and sent a prisoner to the citadel, but on the return of

the Khedive to Cairo had been reinstated in his office at Tantah and had

inverted the _rôle_ of guilt in the affair. Early in the year 1883 Abu

Diab had been singled out and tried for the other’s crime, and now while

I was still in correspondence with Dufferin hanged at Tantah. His

execution, where the truth of the affair was known to every one and

where Abu Diab was highly esteemed, struck terror through the whole

province. I did not hear of the case until too late to intervene; but

when, a few days later, Dufferin’s unsatisfactory answer came, I

resolved not to allow such another injustice to go by without public

remonstrance. It is impossible that Dufferin who, though he had refused

to examine into the history of the Alexandrian riot, knew in a general

way how the case really lay as between the Khedive and the Nationalists,

should not have suspected that this and other trials on similar charges

were a perversion of justice. Also it is certain that there was a strong

political interest to serve, if the Khedive was to be rehabilitated and

supported, in providing him with a scapegoat for his own and his agents

crimes. Nor can it be left out of view that the theory of the

Nationalists’ responsibility for the riot had been made the pretext and

excuse throughout by our diplomacy, and by Dufferin himself at the

Constantinople Conference, for its intervention. Dufferin was no

sentimentalist in politics, and could at times be hard. In this case, as

in others which preceded and followed it, he contented himself with

directing the formal presence of an Englishman at the trial, one

unacquainted with the language, to watch it, and thus allowed the

Khedive to have practically his own way.

The next case that occurred was that of the vengeance taken on a number

of unfortunate Bedouins charged with the murder of Professor Palmer

during the war. Palmer (see “Secret History”) had been sent by our

Government, and especially by Lord Northbrook, to bribe the Bedouin

tribes east of the Suez Canal, and with him Gill and Charrington, two

English officers, had met their deaths in its performance. They had all

three, travelling disguised, been taken prisoners and shot in the desert

by order of the Egyptian governor of Nakhl, an act not of common murder

but clearly of warfare, and one which should certainly have been covered

by the amnesty, the business the disguised officers were on giving them

the character of spies. But our Government had special reasons for

resenting their death; and after the war was over an English officer,

Colonel Warren, was despatched to the Sinai peninsula to “do justice” on

the tribes. This duty he performed by driving in to Suez some scores of

Bedouins, men, women, and children, and selecting out of them five for

hanging, while the rest were retained for many months in prison as

hostages for more important persons still at large. This was the same

Warren who afterwards figured so lugubriously at Spion Kop in the Boer

war. The true facts of the case had been brought to my knowledge by

Palmer’s widow, who came to me incensed against the Government, and

holding them, and especially Lord Northbrook who had sent him,

responsible for her husband’s death. She now laid the whole particulars

before me; and we had questions put about it in Parliament, and

eventually a debate raised on the Address, and another in the House of

Lords, in which Her Majesty’s Ministers rose, one after the other, and,

like Ananias and Sapphira, lied valiantly in the public cause. It is a

curious feature of our parliamentary conventions that so worthy and

straightforward a man as the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman should

have consented on this occasion to deny absolutely facts of which there

was the clearest possible written proof, and of which he could not have

been ignorant, in Palmer’s own handwriting, while also it concerned a

sum of public money no smaller than £20,000. Lord Northbrook was the

Minister really responsible and Bannerman was his Under-Secretary at the

Admiralty, and to him the work of denial was given by his chief. We

failed to save the Bedouins but obtained for the lady a handsome

pension, and for Palmer sepulture in St. Paul’s. The whole story is

instructive but has been told in my “Secret History,” and its sequel

does not sufficiently concern Egyptian history to detain me here.

A third still more important case among the political hangings of the

year was that of Suliman Bey Sami, the Nationalist Colonel of the

Alexandria garrison, who, at the time of the riots, had come down with

his regiment and put an end to the massacre in spite of the conniving

civil Governor, Omar Pasha Lutfi. Omar Lutfi was a strong partisan of

the Khedive, and the resentment of the Court party was, for this reason,

especially keen against Sami. It was a case precisely on the same lines

as that of Abu Diab, except that the charge brought against Sami was not

in regard to his conduct at the time of the riot, but for having set

fire to Alexandria during the bombardment a month later. It is

especially disgraceful to our Government that this man should have been

hanged with their connivance, and by a court-martial appointed by this

very Omar Lutfi, because the charge brought against him concerned one of

their own political fictions, namely, that Alexandria was set fire to

not at all by the guns of the British fleet, but solely by the

Egyptians, a fiction in which they had not only a political but also a

pecuniary interest, involving responsibility for the three millions

sterling indemnity claimed by the victims of the bombardment. The

hanging, moreover, was the clearest possible breach of the amnesty, for

Suliman’s act had the perfectly legitimate excuse of warfare, as one

designed to cover the retreat of the Egyptian army. Here the case was so

strong a one against the Government that I was able to secure the help

of that really efficient fighter in the House of Commons, Lord Randolph

Churchill, an occasion memorable to me as the beginning of a valuable

political friendship long preserved.

Randolph Churchill was an extraordinarily interesting young man, the

most attractive at that time in English public life, the head of the

little group of four Tories in the House of Commons which went by the

name of the Fourth Party. Until the spring of 1883 I had not come across

him personally. He had been kept away from the House during the whole

earlier session of 1882 by illness, and I had not had the good fortune

of securing his help. I have often thought that but for the accident of

his illness that spring, when the Egyptian crisis occurred, the whole

trouble and discredit of the bombardment and the war might have been

prevented, for it needed nothing but a powerful and persistent voice on

the Opposition side in Parliament to deter Mr. Gladstone from an

enterprise so strangely at variance with his life-long teaching.

Unfortunately, such a voice had not been available. The members of Mr.

Gladstone’s own party did not dare, with the single exception of Sir

Wilfrid Lawson, to reproach him with the necessary courage, and as for

the Tory Opposition, not one of them had the wisdom to take with him a

humanitarian line, the only one which could have convinced him of his

folly.

In the short autumn session, Churchill had reappeared and had given

courage to his followers, and they had helped us in getting a fair trial

for the vanquished “rebels,” Churchill himself generously subscribing to

the Arabi defence fund. But so far we had not personally met. Now,

however, in my anger at the barbarities which were being committed in

Egypt, and by the advice of my friends, especially Lady Gregory and my

cousin, Algernon Bourke, who was still on the staff of the “Times” (see

“Secret History”) I turned to Churchill as the one man capable of

dealing in Parliament effectively with the case. Dufferin, his mission

ended, had turned his back on Egypt, and the small local protection

given by his presence was no more to be had. It was an urgent necessity,

if these black doings were to be stopped, that the home Government

should be at once subjected to vigorous and even violent remonstrance,

and that Gladstone should be attacked individually as the responsible

author of the atrocities due to his intervention. In his younger days

Gladstone had denounced the State crimes of Bourbon rule in Naples with

its arrests, imprisonments, and sanguinary political punishments, and it

was urgent now that some one should stand up in the House and remind him

of his more reputable past, and shame him from the countenance his

agents were giving to the same State crimes in Egypt. Churchill in his

place below the gangway was the man for this. He was “spoiling,” I was

told, “for a fight,” and to him in my new need I turned as the one

knight errant on whom I could quite rely.

I like to remember Lord Randolph as I then first saw him one afternoon

in May when, by appointment, I met him to discuss the situation at some

rooms in the Strand where a chess tournament was going on. Chess was one

of his few hobbies, and he had asked me to meet him there. At the time

of which I speak he was, with no very regular features, a distinctly

good-looking young man, smartly dressed and with a certain distinction

of manner which marked him from the common herd. He was of ordinary

height—by no means the dwarf his caricatures suggest—well built and well

set up, his face a pleasant one, eyes full of intelligence, though

rather _à fleur de tête_, while his mouth, overhung with a strong

moustache curling up above his cheeks, gave an aggressive tone to his

countenance it would not otherwise have had. In colour he was then, as

always, rather pale, with a look of ill-health which later increased

from year to year, a symptom of the constitutional weakness of which he

so prematurely died. There was no lack, however, as yet of virility in

his movements or gestures. On the contrary, it was just the vital force

in him which was the chief attraction and the frank irresponsibility in

all he did and said. Indeed, it was difficult when conversing with him,

even after he had become a Cabinet Minister, to regard him as a quite

serious statesman—a glorified schoolboy rather, ready still to rob an

orchard or tie a cracker to the head master’s coattail. This simplicity

of speech and pleasant humour, joined to a high-bred courtesy with

strangers, made him a favourite, especially with young men nor only of

his own class in England, while, as I afterwards found, it opened to him

no less the doors of confidence in the minds of the many Orientals whom

I brought to see him—minds usually suspicious of Englishmen, and slow to

reveal their thoughts. He had none of that arrogant coldness that so

much repels these, nor again of that abruptness of address which is apt

to frighten them, as birds are frightened at any too sudden movement.

Such visitors never failed after an interview with Churchill to speak to

me enthusiastically in his praise. To myself he was invariably charming.

My somewhat romantic view of politics, so little like his own, attracted

him, and my knowledge of the East, of which he was as yet ignorant; and,

being some ten years his senior in age, I was able to inspire him almost

from the beginning of our intercourse with new ideas, enlarging his

political horizon, and as I have always been glad to think, encouraging

him in the humaner paths of public virtue. To these he was already in a

vague way inclined, and on the occasion of our first meeting I had no

difficulty in persuading him to take up the Egyptian patriotic case, the

more so because it gave him an opportunity for immediate action in

Parliament most damaging to the Government. He found it a pleasant

fancy, when I suggested it to him, that he should array himself in the

Grand Old Man’s Midlothian garments, left as it were outside a tavern

door, and preach to him to his face of “righteousness and temperance and

a judgement to come.”

With Churchill’s assistance I was able to enlist other strong helpers,

Drummond Wolff, who was the member of the Fourth Party specially

affected to foreign affairs, and Gorst (Sir John) its legal adviser—both

men of great ability and political courage. Outside their radius, too, I

had for friends in the House of Commons Robert Bourke,[7] who

represented foreign affairs on the Opposition front bench; Sir Wilfrid

Lawson, the most honest man in Parliament; and Labouchere, whom I had

known in my old diplomatic days as a fellow attaché, and who was now

leader of the extreme Radical division below the gangway. All these were

good men and true in a parliamentary fight, and, working together, could

be counted on to force the official entrenchments of the Government, and

make the Grand Old Man the object of daily attacks which should convince

him of his shame. We had good help, too, from the Irish party, and it

had been O’Donnell who had opened the campaign for us with the Palmer

case.

Thanks especially to Churchill’s energy that summer, and to the great

publicity he was able to give to the Khedive’s connection with the

riots, I have the satisfaction of remembering that we succeeded at last

in putting a stop to the worst barbarities of the restored regime at

Cairo, nor was any further political hanging after that summer permitted

as long as Gladstone remained in office. The experience of the past

year, however, left me wholly sceptical of the good faith of either our

Cairo diplomacy or the London Foreign Office, and permanently estranged

me from that vast official machinery of the British Empire which, I now

came to see, maintained its power in the East only by a system of

mingled lying, force, and fraud repellent to common honesty and equally

demoralizing to the governors and those it governed. It was in this mood

that Dufferin’s famous “Charter” of Egypt’s liberty found me when at

last I read it in the pages of a new Blue Book.

I reproduce from among my papers the following interesting letter from

Lady Gregory[8] which admirably describes our common feeling about the

charter at the time we read it. It was written just when I was seeking

to bring forward the charges against the Khedive, and when Dufferin,

having returned to England, was using his influence with the press to

get the charge hushed up. It is too good and instructive a letter not to

be printed here in full.

(Undated but written at the beginning of May 1883.)

“I am curious to hear what you think of Lord Dufferin’s despatch. It

reminds me of what someone of the ancients said of human life, ‘a comedy

to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.’

“I am very sorry I did not know you had not seen Lord Dufferin’s

despatch. I read it, and sent it off yesterday to Sir William, but would

have sent it to you first if I had known. It would not, however, do much

to put you in good spirits. There are some good suggestions in it, taken

from Arabi’s programme, such as a National Bank to come between the

people and the usurers, and a reform in the working of the Cadastre. But

for all evils his remedy is: Put in more Europeans. Of course when the

country is well stocked with English surveyors and judges and engineers

it will be necessary to keep English troops there to protect them. I

would rather they annexed at once. There would be less hypocrisy about

it. He winds up with a panegyric on Nubar, Sherif and Riaz and alludes

in terms of admiration to Sultan Pasha and calls the Khedive amiable and

benevolent. So you may imagine the style of the document, in which there

are poetic allusions to Memnon and Pactolus and a great flourish about

putting the house-tax on Europeans, and this ridiculous Parliament which

is to have no hold on the purse strings and will be of course useless,

but sounds well. I don’t blame Lord Dufferin so much. Of course the

Government told him what was expected of him, but he might just as well

have drawn up this prose poem at Therapia without going to Egypt at all.

“I enclose copy of your statement which I am keeping for the present. I

have seen Chenery[9] to-day and talked the matter over with him, but

Lord Dufferin has been beforehand with me! having already interviewed

him and, as if he knew what was coming, persuaded him that any attack on

the Khedive would add immense difficulty to the action of the Government

just now—that, whatever his faults may be, he has promised to support

English policy, and that for the interests of the Empire it is much

better to let bygones be bygones—and that the ‘Times’ is such a very

important paper that anything that appeared in it against Tewfik would

at once be made use of by the French, and within two hours be

telegraphed to the Khedive, who would believe the Government and the

‘Times’ were the same thing—that this is a time of change in Egypt, a

new man being sent there and a new start made and the less stir made

about what had already occurred there the better. This is also Lord

Granville’s view!

“Poor Chenery had then to listen to my appeal as to whether Arabi’s

character was never to be cleared from the slurs cast upon it by

Gladstone and Dilke in the House, and never withdrawn, just to save the

Khedive whom no one has any opinion of, and he became agitated after

reading your statement and said that if it were true the Khedive ought

to be hanged—but that at the same time, for the reasons given before, he

is very doubtful whether he ought to publish it, even in a letter from

you. In the end he said that, if you would modify as far as possible the

_personal_ attack on the Khedive and add a paragraph laying the crime

more on the Palace party than on him and make it as much as possible a

defence of Arabi rather than an indictment of Tewfik, he would see if he

could publish it, though not binding himself by a promise, and if he

could not would return it to you in time to publish it elsewhere, as I

told him it must be out by the 11th. He was very kind and I think was

really anxious to be amiable, and spoke most affectionately of you, and

I really don’t blame him for not wishing to quarrel with the Government.

Indeed I was hopeless from the time I heard Lord Dufferin had taken him

in hand. What are we against him?

Don’t seek to hinder him

Or to bewilder him

Sure he’s a pilgrim

From the Blarney stone!

“I told Sir William all this and he is pretty sure Chenery will be

afraid to print it in any form, and I should be very unwilling to take

away any of the force of the accusation against Tewfik. I thought all

the more of its importance from Chenery being so afraid of the effect it

might have. Sir William and I both think that if you could get Lord

Randolph to make the statement in the House it would be your best

course, as it would thus gain publicity, and the Tories at all events

might take it up. Do you think this will be possible? I should not like

you to publish it in any paper but the ‘Times.’ Chenery talked

cheerfully of a ‘little pamphlet,’ but that was of course to prevent the

little foundling being laid on his own doorstep.”

My own impression of Dufferin’s charter, and his famous dispatch

expounding it, was little different from that here quoted. It was

obvious to all of us who knew anything of Egypt that in the present

condition of things there, under the restored regime of Tewfik and the

Turco-Circassian Pashas maintained in power by a British army and

allowed to imprison and hang whom they would, where there was neither

freedom of speech nor of the press, and where all political society was

honeycombed with spies, the talk of giving back liberty to the Egyptians

was in the nature of a sorry jest. The Queen’s speech which had ushered

it in on the opening of Parliament had been a mere repetition of all the

old Foreign Office platitudes of the previous years. Her Majesty had

been made by Gladstone’s Cabinet to say: “The reconstitution of Egypt

and the reorganization of its affairs under the authority of the Khedive

have in part been accomplished, and will continue to receive my earnest

attention. It will be my endeavour to secure that full provision shall

be made for the exigencies of order, for a just representation of the

wants and wishes of the population, and for the observance of

international obligations,” a programme more meagre than that of the

previous year, in which “the prudent development of Egyptian

institutions” had been promised, with the result of Egypt’s parliament

having been crushed and abolished six months later by a British army.

What was it possible to hope from the liberalism of a government which

had restored the absolute power of a Prince so detested by his subjects

that it needed British bayonets to keep him on his throne? Dufferin’s

charter, to be made a reality, called for a change of Khedive as a first

condition of its success, and of this no sign whatever had been given.

To talk of granting a Constitution, as a novelty, to a people who had

just been robbed of their Constitution, and whose constitutional leaders

had been ruined and driven into exile, could be only a mockery; and as

such it appeared to us. Dufferin had indeed been a “pilgrim from the

Blarney stone.”

MEMORANDUM OF REFORMS FOR EGYPT DRAWN UP AT LORD DUFFERIN’S REQUEST BY

AHMED ARABI PASHA, DECEMBER 1882 (EXACT DATE NOT GIVEN)

1. The Constitution granted to the Egyptian Nation of 7th February 1882

should be confirmed.

2. Rules should be laid down as to the limiting of the power of whoever

may be appointed Ruler of Egypt, so that he shall no longer be an

absolute Ruler.

3. Rules should also be laid down as to the Ministers and Heads of

Departments, so that each should have conditions imposed on him which he

could not transgress.

4. A Mejlis or Council of Elders should be formed as a Body of Appeal on

important questions where differences shall have occurred between the

Government and the Chamber of Representatives.

5. New regulations should be issued for the reorganization of the

various administrative departments, so that each Department or Province

or Office should have so many officials of assigned rank belonging to

it, at fixed salaries liable neither to increase nor to decrease, with

regulations as to promotion according as vacancies occur through

resignation or death or for any other natural reason.

_Remark._—Public offices in Egypt have hitherto been conducted on no

fixed rule, but every Minister or Governor or Chief of Police has done

with his administration as he pleased, dismissing or promoting all under

him without inquiry, and removing officials from post to post according

to his fancy, so that the budget has always exceeded what was right, and

increased from year to year without sufficient reason; this it is which

has caused yearly deficits in the budget.

6. Rules should be made to control the action of the police so that they

should cease to interfere with the judicial inquiry into cases, as now

is done, but each police station should have a small Council to deal

with cases in its own district and refer them to the tribunals of First

Instance for decision. The police should appear in the character of

prosecutors only.

7. Municipalities should be formed in Cairo, Alexandria, and other

considerable Egyptian towns, as may be suited to each town, and the

funds raised by dues in each town should be kept in the treasury of each

Administration to be spent on improvements for that town only, such as

mending roads, repairing public buildings, lighting the town with gas,

supplying water, erecting slaughter-houses, hospitals, and public

markets for the sale of whatever produce is brought in from the country,

and on whatever else may be of advantage to the town or prevent its

injury.

8. Rules shall be laid down to control the transactions of the small and

the large banks, and to fix the maximum rate of interest all over Egypt.

_Remark._—The banks themselves are at present the cause of the ruin and

destruction and misery which have fallen upon the indigent fellah.

9. Tribunals shall be instituted all over Egypt with the formation of

the High Courts, one of them at Cairo, the other at Alexandria, the

members of both of which shall be chosen from among the Native and

Foreign Notables; and it shall be their function to pronounce final

decisions. Rules shall be laid down for the guidance of these Courts

suitable to the country.

10. The Consular jurisdictions shall be abolished, and all suits

concerning foreigners inhabiting Egypt shall be tried before the

abovementioned tribunals.

11. All foreigners inhabiting Egypt shall be on an equal footing with

the natives in paying taxes and customs duties, and all such imposts as

are incumbent on the natives.

12. The Mixed Tribunals shall be abolished, the Courts abovementioned

being sufficient.

13. The official language in all parts of the country shall be Arabic.

14. Egypt shall remain dependent on the Ottoman Porte as she is now,

inasmuch as we know that the hearts of the Egyptians are in sympathy

with the Porte. But inasmuch as the shoulders of Egypt are burdened with

debts, and as the situation demands such a diminution of the debt, as

will be mentioned below, so also it becomes necessary to diminish and

limit the yearly tribute paid to the Porte to the amount imposed upon

Egypt in the time of Mohammed Ali Pasha, considering, too, that at that

time Egypt had no debt.

15. The Suez Canal shall be under the protection of the European powers

generally and jointly.

16. Slavery shall be abolished absolutely and permanently.

17. The Sudan ought to remain a dependency of Egypt, and that because it

has a fertile climate; and, if a railway were made to Khartoum, it would

become the great centre of commerce for the Sudan and the East, and it

would begin to be gradually civilized.

18. A rule should be made determining the conditions according to which

everyone, whether native or foreign, is employed in the Egyptian public

administration, and the term of his service and retirement and promotion

and dismissal shall be fixed.

19. The assessment of taxes in general must be reformed, and the customs

duties, because they are based at present on inequitable principles.

20. All these administrations, of which the revenues are mortgaged for

the Egyptian debt, such as railways, ports, Governorships, the

Municipality in Cairo, and the Administrations of the Domains and the

Daira Sanieh, shall revert to the Government, in order that they (the

Government) may administer these revenues as they think best, and may

refund the surplus to the Treasury of the Malieh, inasmuch as the

continuance of those administrations under present conditions is a

yearly loss to the Egyptian Treasury.

21. The Caisse de la Dette shall be abolished, the Treasury of the

Malieh being sufficient.

22. The Egyptian Debt must be unified and diminished to 50 millions

sterling, at an interest of 3 per cent. yearly, so that the Egyptian

Government shall be itself a guarantee for the payment of the

instalments when due, and those instalments shall be paid at the dates

fixed, and those dates shall be fixed at the end of the harvest, winter

and summer.

23. A commission shall be formed of eminent engineers and men of science

and art to repair ancient Arab buildings which have begun to decay, and

to restore them to their original condition, taking care to preserve the

hieroglyphics and temples and monuments of ancient Egypt, and to examine

them and put them in order, and to build a large museum to receive the

Egyptian and Arab antiquities.

24. The native schools in the towns and villages shall be put in order

and made accessible for the education of children of both sexes and the

spread of knowledge and civilization.

25. A real Budget shall be drawn up each year with great accuracy, so

that the Government may know its exact revenue, as also its expenses.

These should be reckoned each year, after the necessary reforms shall

have been decided on. Three months before the end of each financial year

there shall be an inspection of the surplus cash in the Treasury of the

Malieh remaining after payment of all expenses; and this sum shall be

divided into two portions, according to circumstances—one of them to be

applied to paying off a part of the original capital of the Debt, and

the other to reclaiming lands suitable for cultivation.

26. The question of appointing a new Ruler (Waly) is an important one,

and I will lay before you my own views and those of my comrades. I say:

That the family of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mohammed Ali, is absolutely

worthless for the sovereignty, no matter how they might be controlled by

a constitution, for they are people of notoriously corrupt principles.

In my opinion there is a choice of two courses:

1. To appoint Halim Pasha, son of Mohammed Ali Pasha, as Waly for Egypt

under the conditions above laid down. He is a man who has been tried by

misfortunes, and has tasted the bitterness of injustice, and has reached

the age of about 55 years, and I believe that such a man may try to win

the sympathy of the people by justice and kindness.

2. The other to appoint as Waly for Egypt one of her own men of the

national party, whose deeds have borne witness to their goodness of

disposition and peaceful character. But as to any idea of appointing a

foreign Ruler, I say that, as the mass of the Egyptians are Moslems,

with the exception of the small section of Copts, and these also are the

same as the Egyptians in their dealings and ways of life, I believe that

the appointment of a foreign Waly would not suit the character of the

Egyptians, but that it would perhaps cause trouble among them. As to the

regard to be had for the interests of foreigners, I say that when

equitable tribunals shall have been formed, with the High Courts

previously mentioned, those Courts will themselves guarantee the

interests of natives and foreigners together, for it has hitherto been

unheard of that any Egyptian should wrong a foreigner.