=Source.=--_Annual Register, 1875_; _English History_, pp. 123–125.
“You will expect,” said Sir William Harcourt at Oxford, on December
30, “that I should say something to you on the subject of the Suez
Canal shares. Well, that is a matter on which no prudent politician
in our present state of information will hazard a competent opinion.
At the same time, after all that has been said on the matter, to be
wholly silent would be an affectation of reserve. For my part, if the
matter had been allowed to remain in the regions of high policy, I
should have been content to abstain from criticising it altogether.
I am not unfavourable to a far-seeing and a bold policy in the
conduct of great affairs. We have had somewhat too little of that
spirit of late. But all reticence upon that score is at an end. The
most contradictory and, in some respects, the most absurd surmises
with respect to this transaction were afloat some weeks ago. Lord
Hartington, at the beginning of this month, invited a declaration from
the Government of the real meaning and object of their policy, and Lord
Derby accepted the challenge with perfect frankness. Since the speech
of the Foreign Secretary the whole aspect of the question has been
completely changed both at home and abroad. Up to that time a sort of
glamour had invested a very plain business with the unnatural haze that
distorts the true proportion of things. There was something Asiatic in
this mysterious melodrama. It was like ‘The Thousand and One Nights,’
when, in the midst of the fumes of incense, a shadowy Genie astonished
the bewildered spectators. The public mind was dazzled, fascinated,
mystified. We had done we did not know exactly what--we were not
told precisely why--_omne ignotum pro magnifico_. The Government
maintained an imposing and perplexing silence. But our daily and
weekly instructors gave free rein to their imagination. We were told
by those who assumed the patronage of the grand arcanum that a great
blow had been struck, that a new policy had been inaugurated, and that
England had at length resumed her lead among the nations. The Eastern
Question had been settled by a _coup d’état_ on the Stock Exchange,
and Turkey was abandoned to her fate. Egypt was annexed. The Bulls of
England had vanquished the Bears of Russia. Moab was to be our washpot
and over Edom we had cast our shoe. France and M. de Lesseps were
confounded. We were a very great people; we had done a very big thing,
and, to consummate the achievement, a Satrap from Shoreham, attended
by a plump of financial Janissaries, was despatched to administer the
subject provinces of the English protectorate on the Nile. All this,
if somewhat nebulous, was in the grand manner, and if any inquisitive
person, like the troublesome little boy on the field of Blenheim,
was disposed to ask ‘what good came of it at last,’ we could always
answer, like the judicious Kasper--
“‘Why, that I cannot tell,’ said he,
‘But ’twas a glorious victory.’
“We all of us felt some six inches taller than before. We spread our
tails like peacocks to the sun, and were as pleased as children at our
soap-bubble, iridescent with many hues. But, all of a sudden, this
beautiful vision melted away; the Egyptian mirage evaporated; the
great political phantasmagoria faded like a dissolving view. There
is nothing so delightful as magic, until, in an unhappy moment, the
conjuror consents to reveal the apparatus to us by which our senses
have been deluded, and shows us how it is done. Lord Derby is a great
master of prose, and he has translated the Eastern romance into
most pedestrian English. But the Foreign Secretary is a responsible
statesman. He has widely warned us against ‘cant’ and against ‘rant,’
and he cannot afford to indulge in the exaggerated visions in which
journalists may, with impunity, amuse themselves and their readers.
It was not his affair to mystify England, but to reassure Europe; and
therefore with that straightforwardness and common sense for which he
is eminent, he told us at Edinburgh that the affair which had created
so much sensation at home and abroad was not at all the sort of thing
it had been represented to be; that, if it had been capable of the
construction which had been put upon it, it would have been neither a
wise nor a honest transaction. He repudiated with scorn the idea that
England aspired to an Egyptian protectorate; they had not reversed
their Eastern policy; still less had they contemplated to appropriate
the territories of the Khedive as our share in a scramble for general
plunder. What had really been accomplished was a very ordinary affair.
The Khedive had certain shares in the Suez Canal. So far from being
ambitious to get hold of them, Lord Derby would have much preferred
that the ruler of Egypt should have kept them in his own hands; but,
as he found himself obliged to part with them, the English Government
thought it better to purchase them than to let them go elsewhere. They
have acquired them, not to give England any special or predominant
foreign influence, nor to secure any exclusive advantage, but to
keep open a communication for the benefit of all, which to England
is of supreme importance. And with these explanations, tendered on
the good faith of an English Minister, upon the credit of which Lord
Derby justly relies, he tells us that the European Powers are amply
satisfied. And so the nine days’ wonder is over, the enchantment is at
an end, the chariot of Cinderella relapses into its original pumpkins
and mice. Since Lord Derby has so pitilessly dowsed with cold water the
heated enthusiasm of visionary journalists, they have never ceased to
weep and to wail over the ruins of their pet toy, which has collapsed
like a pricked bladder or a broken drum. They beg us to believe that
the Foreign Minister does not understand the meaning of his own acts,
or the scope of his own policy; that, in spite of all his protestations
to the contrary, we are the veritable _perfide Albion_.
“For my own part I cannot refuse to respond to the appeal of Lord
Derby, when he says, ‘We have told Europe what we want, and why we
want it, and Europe is in the habit of believing what we say.’ I hope
the day will never come when an English Government will be justly
charged with saying one thing and meaning another. I therefore gladly
take Lord Derby at his word. But now that this grand affair is reduced
to the moderate dimensions of a sort of post-office subsidy, we may
criticise it in a manner and upon grounds which might in another
aspect of the question have been inappropriate. Of course, if this
transaction had been really of the magnitude which was represented,
the Government would have been deeply responsible for not inviting at
once the judgment of Parliament upon a policy which vitally involved
the interests and the future of the country, but being what it is, we
may well wait a few weeks for fuller explanations of some points which
still remain very obscure. There will be no disposition, I imagine,
in any quarter to approach the discussion in a spirit of carping or
of captious criticism. Upon the main ground by which this purchase is
justified--namely, the determination to secure a free passage between
the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, there will be no conflict of
opinion. That is a policy in which England is profoundly interested;
and for that, statesmen of all parties will be prepared to make common
efforts, and, if necessary, great sacrifices. No one, I think, will
contend that even 4,000,000 pounds of money is too large a sum for the
accomplishment of such an end. But that which has not hitherto been
explained, and what remains to be shown, is in what manner and to what
extent this investment really does conduce to that desirable object.”