UNHEALTHY INFLUENCES
I should have been well contented if it had been possible for me to
write this chapter as a parody of that ever famous one on "The Snakes
of Ireland." Unhappily there are unhealthy influences in
Egypt--influences placing difficulties in the way of the English
administrators of the country, ever discouraging and disheartening the
Egyptian, ever tending to turn him from the path of progress,
influences that have been and are holding back the advance that is
being made.
In my last chapter I spoke of the benefits derived from the liberty of
the Press; in this I have to speak of the evil it produces, for first
and chief of all the unhealthy influences in Egypt is the _Mokattam_,
the newspaper that is regarded as the special organ of English
interests in Egypt. While yet Sheikh Ali was wholly unknown, three
Syrian Christians who had established a monthly literary magazine at
Beirout, decided to transfer it to Cairo. There it acquired a
well-deserved popularity it still maintains. Possessed of ability, and
full of the energy and enterprise that is a characteristic of their
race, the proprietors of this monthly saw in the English occupation
an opportunity of enlarging their sphere of action and started a daily
paper, the _Mokattam_, just a year before the _Moayyad_ appeared. The
policy that this new journal adopted, and has persistently maintained
to the present day, was the twofold one of supporting English
interests in Egypt and of attacking Islam and the Turkish Empire on
all possible occasions. Caring nothing for their adopted country, and
ever mindful of the fact that it was the interference of the European
Powers that compelled Mahomed Ali to abandon Syria, they entered upon
their task with enthusiasm, and, though the _Moayyad_ was not long in
passing it in popularity, they early succeeded in gaining for the
_Mokattam_ the position it holds of undoubtedly the ablest of all the
Christian journals published in the Arabic language. Save only as to
the lines upon which it seeks to promote the policy it advocates, it
may indeed justly claim the highest praise for the manner in which it
is written and conducted.
In the days when the English occupation and the two rival journals,
the _Moayyad_ and the _Mokattam_, were all still young, Egyptian
politics and therefore Egyptian newspapers were run upon purely party
lines, and as Dr. Johnson thought he was best fulfilling his mission
in seeing that "the Whig dogs did not get the best of it," so all who
dabbled in any degree with Egyptian politics thought it their bounden
duty to admit no good or merit in any who opposed their views. Hence,
while the English administrators were still blunderingly trying to
find their way through the maze of difficulties they had to encounter,
and trying first this and then that remedy for the evils they had to
contend with, from the newspapers and people of the country they could
get no assistance whatever. It was the policy of the _Mokattam_ to
support the English, and with the editors' primitive ideas they could
find no other way of doing this than by lauding with indiscriminate
praise everything the English did or proposed to do. It was the policy
of the _Moayyad_ to decry and depreciate all that the _Mokattam_
approved or supported. Each of the two papers was thus pursuing
exactly the line most calculated to defeat its own aim, and throw
discredit on its own cause, for as the praise of the _Mokattam_ was
constantly being discounted by the admitted failure of the measures it
had lustily approved, so the discrimination of the _Moayyad_ was
belittled by the success of those it had condemned. From that day to
this the _Mokattam_ has learned nothing. It pursues the same line
to-day that it did then. It has not been so with the _Moayyad_. Sheikh
Ali Youssef was far too able a man to be long in seeing the folly
inherent in politics of this puerile type, and he determined to adopt
a higher line. It was no easy task he thus set himself. He was still a
young man, and as such his abilities received rather stinted
acknowledgment from the greybeards, who were the leaders of the Moslem
and National party. His journal was not yet strong enough to choose
its own position, and its existence and influence, as well as his own
future, depended wholly upon the support he received from
self-satisfied, self-willed men, who thought it their province to
dictate and not to learn. And with this difficulty Sheikh Ali had the
graver one of having to find a policy and a method of advocating it
that would practically reconcile the almost irreconcilable. Like all
Egyptians, and indeed all non-Christian Easterns, he held then, as
now, that of all the European Powers England was the one with which
friendship was most possible. It was, however, at the moment the
approved policy of the Egyptian National party to profess a preference
for France, and therefore the Moslem papers were expected to hold up
France and the French as the friends and allies of Islam. Had Sheikh
Ali attacked this view, his rashness would have been the death-knell
of the _Moayyad_. He saw this clearly, but he was not a man to be
deterred by difficulties, or daunted by dangers. That which was right
and true was right and true, and it was his duty, as one of the Ulema,
to teach and to preach that which was right and true. But to run amuck
against the prevailing prejudices would be to ensure failure. If he
were to succeed, it must be by degrees, by the slow and patient
conversion of others to his views, by a steady and almost stealthy
diffusion of his ideas. In the East the circulation and writings of a
journal are often but little guide to the power and influence really
possessed by its editor, for an editor is frequently able to
accomplish far more by his direct personal influence, outside his
journal, than he could by the most earnest or able advocacy of those
views in its columns. It was so with Sheikh Ali. There were men of
influence who were quite prepared to listen attentively to anything he
had to say to them in private, and to accept and adopt his views in
the same way, but who would not have tolerated a journal that rashly
published the same ideas to the world at large. Starting boldly, yet
with due caution, Sheikh Ali set himself to the task of educating his
supporters. Slowly, and in sugar-coated pills of homeopathic size, he
administered to them minute doses of the ideas he wished them to
digest. Slowly, but surely and steadily, he overcame the difficulties
before him. One by one, even those who would not consent to the
_Moayyad_ propagating such ideas, admitted that the Sheikh was right.
Time went on, and with its flight the old fiery spirits of the
Nationalist party, the "No surrender" men of the old type, gradually
died out, and changes of many kinds came to pass, and still the Sheikh
was struggling with opposition, and still he was steadily gaining
ground; but as falling bodies gather speed and force in their descent,
so intellectual movements gather force and speed in their ascent, and
thus in spite of all difficulties, difficulties that only undauntable
pluck, unwearied patience, and ability could face, much less triumph
over, the Sheikh accomplished his purpose, and scarcely knowing how,
or why, or indeed that it is so, the Egyptians have adopted the
Sheikh's policy, a policy that may be summed up in the phrase, "Peace
and Progress."
It would have been well for Egypt, and not less so for British
interests, if the editors of the _Mokattam_ had followed in the wake
of Sheikh Ali, but, as I have said, their policy is to-day what it was
at the beginning, the same narrow-minded bigotry in its pro-English
partisanship and the same foolish fanaticism in its anti-Turkish
crusade. The true interests of the country, or of their
co-religionists, or of the occupation, are all alike sacrificed to
their morbid love of wounding and hurting the religious and social
sentiments of the Egyptians, or of venting their impotent hatred of
the Turk. Thus their record is a record of evil, a record of needless
difficulties heaped up in the way of the English administrators of the
country, of ill-will and animosity excited among the people. The two
strongest factors in the formation of Egyptian opinion are, as I have
shown, the attachment of the people to their religion and their
attachment to the Turkish Empire. Both these sentiments are
persistently and wilfully outraged by the _Mokattam_. It does not
indulge in the rabid rant of the anti-Turkish Press in England, but
while keeping within the limits of decent language it loses no
opportunity of saying aught that can wound the feelings, offend the
prejudices, or excite the anger of the Moslems, and it does this as
the organ of the English occupation, as a journal universally believed
to be largely subsidised by the English, and therefore a journal
believed also to be the expression of the real views, aims, and
sentiments of the English occupants of the country. Is it any wonder
that the pacific policy, the unbroken respect for Moslem prejudices
that Lord Cromer has always shown, should assume in the eyes of the
Egyptians the character of a temporary policy--a policy to be
abandoned as soon as circumstances should permit the open adoption of
the anti-Islamic policy of the avowed organ of English interests? The
old reactionary party has almost wholly died out; what remains of it
is not less in touch with the real sentiments of the people than is
the Young Egypt party that to a certain extent is its successor, but
neither of the two parties ever has done, or could do, a tithe of the
harm the _Mokattam_ is still doing. The attacks of the anti-Turkish
Press in England, the anti-Islamic writings of the late Sir William
Muir and other critics affect Moslems in Egypt or elsewhere but
little, for it is known that these represent but narrow circles of
thought, but that the local journal which is spoken of by Englishmen
themselves as the "English organ" should be for ever out-Heroding the
efforts of those circles has, and could have, but one result--a
profound distrust of the professions made as to the true aim and
object of the occupation. This is the key to the lack of enthusiasm,
the want of gratitude, for which the Egyptians are so often rebuked.
Men like Mr. Dicey may build up theories of their own on what, to the
Englishman at home, may seem at least plausible arguments, but they
are only drawing herrings across the trail of the true explanation.
Thus the journal which, as Mr. Hartmann says, has "gained favour with
Lord Cromer," has been of all other causes the one which has most
freely and wantonly strewn his path with needless difficulties. Face
to face with the anti-Islamic sentiments of the English organ in
Egypt, it is utterly hopeless to expect Moslems in Egypt or elsewhere
to regard the English occupation with any other feelings than those of
distrust. Had the _Mokattam_ been conducted upon conciliatory lines,
had it striven to guide the English with the healthy, honest advice it
could have given, had it endeavoured to promote an intelligent
appreciation of the good work that has been done and is doing, it
would have rendered a service of incalculable value to the English and
to the Egyptians alike, and with their undoubted ability its editors
would have taken their place among the greatest benefactors of the
country. As it is they have wrought no service and much ill, and may
pride themselves upon having been the greatest obstacle in the way of
the progress that has been made. The one thing that Lord Cromer has
needed most of all throughout his long, brilliant, and self-devoting
struggle has been the cordial co-operation of the people. The one
thing that more than all else has tended to deprive him of that
co-operation has been the anti-Islamic attitude of the Arabic organ of
the occupation. Had I been writing this a year ago it would have been
possible for me to say that happily the growing confidence of the
people in Lord Cromer and in the intentions of the English Government
was steadily, if very slowly, undoing and counteracting the evil thus
done. Unfortunately I cannot say so to-day. Events have occurred that
have almost wholly scattered all the fruit of the progress that had
been made in this direction.
We have seen that, little inclined as the Egyptians were to welcome
any prolongation of the occupation, they had accepted the evacuation
of Fachoda as at least a temporary resolution of all the doubts and
uncertainties that had worried them for so long. It was what those who
understand them might have expected. They are essentially an impulsive
people. In every emergency their decision is made without hesitation
or faltering, too often without consideration or thought of any kind
but the impulse of the moment. To such a people nothing could be more
trying, more irritating than that they should be kept on from month to
month and year to year helplessly waiting on the decision of others,
or on a development of events they were powerless to control. This
cause was alone almost sufficient to stay all progress, social or
political, prior to the evacuation of Fachoda. For years they had been
"waiting to hear the verdict," and when it came, the mere fact of the
ending of their long, anxious suspense, took much of the sting from
the bitterness the verdict itself might otherwise have created. And
apart from all political and religious feeling there were two causes
that greatly intensified the Egyptian's burthen during that trying
wait. These were his love of freedom and his love of peace and
concord. As an individual there is nothing the Egyptian prizes more
than his freedom--not his liberty, but his freedom; not the legal and
formal admission of his rights, but the absence of restraint that
gives a sense of unfettered ease; not the liberty that is the
birthright of every British subject, be he master or man, but the
freedom the master enjoys as master. For this the Egyptian can and
will make many sacrifices, even bartering much of his liberty that he
may enjoy it. And this freedom he could not enjoy while yet the fate
of the country was in the balance. Reticent to his nearest kin in the
expression of his thoughts, he yet loves to speak freely within the
limits he allows himself, and this he could not do while yet he had to
guard against exciting the animosity of rival parties and interests.
He was neither sitting on the wall nor trimming. On the broad general
question at issue he was clear in his own mind and did not hesitate to
say what he thought, but he could not get beyond that. He could not
discuss men and matters as he should have liked to have done. Once the
die was cast and the supremacy of the English settled, he was no
longer tossed on the horns of the dilemma, Which of two evils is the
least? but free to take a side and say as he would, This thing is good
or bad. It was the same with his love of peace and concord. Hospitable
and kindhearted, ever ready to surrender his own comfort and
convenience, not only for his friends but for the stranger, the
universally prevalent discord was to him a real grievance, so real
that he would have accepted almost any solution provided only that it
offered a reasonable hope of the re-establishment of harmony. When
after the revolt of Cairo, and again after the siege, truce was
declared, the people of the town accepted it loyally and kept it
faithfully. They submitted to the rule of the French most unwillingly
and only under compulsion, but having done so they adhered without
murmur or quibble to the pact. It was the same after Marchand had left
the Nile behind him on his homeward way. Finding themselves
definitely under the English, they accepted the inevitable, and were,
as they still are, ready to loyally, honestly, and fully discharge
their acceptance.
There was therefore a complete change in the attitude of the people
towards the English, and it was not unnatural for them to look for a
corresponding change on the part of the English. No such change
occurred. Up to Fachoda the Egyptians had been courted and flattered
by the anti-English Europeans in the country. The English, with a few
rare exceptions, held aloof from them. After Fachoda the anti-English
quietly dropped the Egyptians. The English maintained their attitude
of indifference, and to the Egyptian seemed rather to assume a
haughtier air, to adopt more and more the tone of conquerors in a
hostile land, to treat the people as enemies, and as enemies scarce
worthy of a thought. The Boer War broke out, and in the torrent of
disasters that pursued the British troops the Egyptians found excuse
for the reserved and chilling manners of the English. But the closing
of the war brought no change, and the Egyptians began to ask
themselves, Of what avail is it that we seek to conciliate the English
when they make no response? None the less they adhered to the position
they had taken, and hoped, as they still do, that Englishmen would
wake up to a sense of the injustice with which they were acting.
Meanwhile the utter failure of the English to understand the real
attitude and feelings of the people towards them lends weight and
force to the evil wrought by the _Mokattam_. If, the Egyptians ask,
the English are really anxious to benefit us, how is it that they thus
hold us at arm's length? How can they benefit us without knowing or
understanding what are our hopes, our wishes, our aspirations, our
prejudices, our predilections? And how can they know aught of these
while they sedulously avoid all intercourse, friendship, or
familiarity with us?
But it is not simply English aloofness of which complaint is made, but
the vulgar and aggressive self-assertion, the rudeness and want of
common civility so many are constantly guilty of in their accidental
intercourse with the people of the country. These are things
complained of by Europeans, and, as is well known, in Europe as well
as in Egypt. The Englishman flatters himself that these complaints are
due to envy and fanaticism. Nothing could be more contrary to the
fact. It is the expression, not of envy, but of contempt, the utter
scorn of the man of the world for the uncultivated boor. That this is
so is proved by the fact that this antipathy is felt and shown only
towards two classes of Englishmen: classes that have unfortunately of
late years grown--as other unhealthy excrescences are prone to
do--rapidly, the cads and those who ape these under the guise of "good
form." Men of the latter type are much too numerous in Egypt, and may
claim the credit of placing endless difficulties and obstacles in the
way of Lord Cromer and English interests. The men who have made the
Empire were men cast in another mould. They were masterful men; men
who could and did command respect through inherent force of character
and ability; men born to command; men whom others followed and obeyed
as a privilege. The men I speak of are of a different type. Lacking in
the high qualities of their predecessors, and sensible of their
defects, these seek to obtain by arrogance the respect they cannot
command. With many it is their misfortune. The true cad owes his
contemptible character to his narrow training and the want of a
healthy, manly brain. "Born of a butcher, by a bishop bred, how high
he holds his haughty head!" But the great majority of those who by
their caddish behaviour, like the ill-birds of the old adage, foul
their own nests, have not this excuse to offer. They sin wilfully,
deliberately choosing to act as cads in toadying compliance with what
the monied cads whose society they crave are pleased to consider "good
form." Like the pariah dogs of the street, fawning upon all who
perchance may have a bone to throw to them and snapping and snarling
at all others, the true cad can never rise above his brainless,
soulless self, but the man whose caddish manners are as the
mud-stained garb of he who has rolled in the gutter is, often enough,
at heart a sound and healthy-minded man, a brave and honest gentleman,
a lion wrapped in the skin of an ass! Verily a wondrous spectacle,
most strangely reversing the old fable! I have seen and known such men
in times of stress and danger to be all that men should be, and I have
marvelled to see them return to the old false, lying lives.
Happily the evil is one that will not last. Already he who hath eyes
to see may see that once more a great revolution is in progress. The
old English aristocracy of men who ruled at home and abroad by right
of their high qualities is fast dying out. The stately old oak that
has weathered the storms and stresses of so many long years is
withering and perishing, smothered under the unhealthy growth of
parasites that are sucking its life-sap. The old aristocracy is almost
gone, the new with nothing but its money-bags to sustain it, has not
succeeded, and never can succeed, to the political or social power of
its predecessors, and these, therefore, are passing on to the strong
men of the plebeian world, men who, without the polish, have much, if
not all the virtues of the Empire-building classes of the past. For
the last time that history will ever record a government that might by
any just use of terms call itself "Conservative" has sat in the
English House of Commons. Look back at the life of France ere yet the
hurricane swirl of the red flag of revolution had scattered its
aristocracy as a fierce autumn storm scatters the lingering leaves of
the bygone summer. The lesson is an old, old one--one taught in many
pages of history, one coming down to us from those far-off days
wherein men first heard the proverb, "Pride goeth before destruction,
and an haughty spirit before a fall."
The evil is one that will not last. Pharaohs, Ptolemies, Mamaluks,
Cesars, Bonapartes; patricians, feudal lords, aristocracies; in short,
all caddisms and flunkeyisms and falsities and other abominations,
however they may flourish and thrive for the moment, if it were not
for the clamour and blare of their own conceit, would ever hear Time
tolling the passing bell that tells of their open graves.
Meanwhile, in Egypt and elsewhere, the two cads, the real and the
mock, are among the most potent and the most active of the enemies of
England and the English Empire, and the most costly luxury that the
easy-going British taxpayer allows himself. This is so, for the
ill-will and hatred that these excite leads thousands who might be the
friends and promoters of English interests to devote themselves to
hindering and counteracting those interests in every possible way. And
this same dislike serves as a bond of union between the enemies of
England everywhere. It is doing more than all else to unite the people
of India of all races and creeds in one compact nationality, and is
elsewhere, and in other manners, working evil for the Empire.
There are other unhealthy influences retarding the work of the
administration of the country and the progress of its people. Notable
among these is the education question, or rather questions, for there
are several. The system adopted in the Government schools is objected
to as tending to the formation of a class separated from the rest of
the people by special aims and interests, and having standards of
life, of morals, of religion, entirely different from those of their
own kith and kin; a class whose manners, customs, and habits are at
variance with those of all their countrymen and co-religionists; a
class slowly but surely drifting more and more apart from all who do
not belong to it, and which is thus losing all possibility of exerting
the healthy influence upon others it should be easy for them to do
with the advantages they possess, or of becoming the leaven in the
mass tending to raise the whole. There are men who have passed through
the schools who are doing good work, but they are few in number, and
the good they are doing is largely due to their having been subjected
to influences counteracting the pernicious effects of their school
training. A part of the evil thus charged to the schools, Government
and others, is that they are destructive of the religious sentiments
and aspirations of their pupils. They do not convert these to
Christianity nor, as is so often said, to atheism, but they do lead
them to despise the duties of their religion, to mock at its
obligations, and to ignore its social and moral restraints, and thus
destructive of all that goes to make the Moslem a worthy citizen and
man, gives them nothing in exchange, and leaves them to go through
life like wanton children drawn hither and thither by every passing
whim or fancy. Is it a retribution that for the most part they go to
swell the ranks of the anti-English party?
The direct result of this evil is that the whole of the people are
being gradually divided into two classes--the so-called (and very much
mis-called) "educated" class and the, by contrast of terms, uneducated
class, the class which, by the perversity of facts, includes almost
all who are really and truly educated, those who have had moral and
religious training, have been taught to comprehend the most essential
fact that can be taught, that every man has duties to perform, that he
is not an isolated unit with nothing to think of but his own pleasure
and profit, but one of the vast congregation of humanity whose
members are linked together by the recognition of the obligations of
their common duties to God and their fellow-men. It is true that the
schools give their pupils lessons to this effect, but all the
circumstances that surround the giving of those lessons and the whole
tendency of the life of the schools is to render these lessons
ineffective, mere tasks to be learned as part of the daily routine,
pretty theories to be applauded and admired, not verities to be
believed and put in practice. And since the education given in the
schools is held up as the very life-blood of all progress, it follows
that all that is best in the country turns aside and says, "If this is
progress, then give us stagnation; if to be an 'educated,' 'advanced,'
'enlightened' man means to be a man who ridicules duty, despises
religion, and mocks at piety, then, in the name of God, let us remain
ignorant so only that we still worship Him, and strive as best we may
to fulfil what we believe to be His law!"
Nor are the schools the only things mainly, if not wholly, due to the
occupation that offend Moslem sentiment, and thus retard progress and
decrease the sympathy there might be between the people and their
rulers. I can only just mention two or three of these without staying
to comment upon them, as perhaps the most active among many others.
The sale and consumption of intoxicating drinks in the open streets,
the almost unchecked promenading of brazen-faced European women in the
busiest and most crowded thoroughfares; the open eating, drinking, and
smoking during the Ramadan fast; quarantine and other sanitary
measures frequently trenching upon Moslem sentiment, such as
restrictions upon the pilgrimage and the holding of the religious
festivals of the people. These things are to the Egyptian as the
breaking of the Sabbath to the Scotchman. What would the Scotch
Sabbatarians say if a number of Englishmen were to settle among them,
and insist upon carrying on business, opening the theatres, and
breaking the Sabbath in a dozen other openly offensive ways? Would
they be considered "unreasonable" if they protested? Would they be
regarded as "ungrateful" because they did not thank the invaders for
the financial benefit they were conferring on the country? Yet when
the Egyptians protest, however faintly, against such outrages upon
their sentiments, they are told that they are "unreasonable,"
"backward," "unenlightened," "narrow-minded," and "fanatical."
There is another influence for evil to which my reference to
Sabbatarianism naturally leads me--the Christian missions and their
agents. Of the magnificent social and humanitarian work done by
Christian missions and Christian missionaries in India no one has a
higher opinion than I have. Years ago I spent a couple of days in one
of the wildest parts of the Bengal Presidency as the guest of a grand
old man who, with his wife--a worthy mate for him--were dwelling, as
they had been for years, among the semi-savage tribes of the jungle,
isolated from all the comforts and conveniences of civilisation,
seeing no European faces other than their own save once or twice in
the year when the Commissioner made his annual rounds. A grand old
couple--labouring with endless self-devotion for the good of the
stolid, stunted-brained, almost naked people, more than half savage in
nature and habit, and by dint of tedious toil and never-resting effort
lifting some few of these out of the depths, and winning them to
humanity. I have met many men and many women in my life, but none that
have claimed from me a more sincere or lasting respect than these. But
there are missionaries and missionaries; and in Moslem lands there are
some who do much ill, and not less by their speech than by the
literature they circulate. In this they are backed up by missionary
and other journals, which take a pleasure in representing Islam as a
religion that inculcates bigotry and fanaticism. I have myself heard a
missionary undertake to prove to Mahomedan hearers that unless they
hated Christians they were no better than infidels. Taking passages
from the Koran, ignoring their context and the teaching and
interpretation placed upon them by the orthodox Ulema, he had little
difficulty in apparently justifying his promise, with the result that
some of his hearers went away filled for the first time with the
conception that it was their duty to hate Christians. Such incidents
are by no means rare, and it would be difficult to estimate the
mischief they do. A few years ago the late well-known Canon MacColl
flooded the Press at home for a brief time with speeches and writings
of this kind. Every word of what he wrote was reproduced in oriental
languages, and did far more to excite fanaticism than any of the most
inflammatory articles that have ever appeared in any portion of the
Moslem Press. How often have Pan-Islamists, advocating friendship with
England and other European nations as a means of advancement for
Moslems, been met with the reply, "But they themselves say that it is
our duty to hate them"! So the bigotry that takes unholy pleasure in
misrepresenting the truth reacts with fatal effect upon the cause it
pretends to serve.
The unhealthy influences of which I have spoken so far all originate
from sources outside the direct action of the Government. None the
less, they are perhaps all influences that it lies within the province
of the Government to correct, and so long as they are permitted to
flourish so long will their existence be regarded by the people as
subjects of grievance against the rulers of the land. It may be, and
is, said that some of these matters are things in which it is wiser
for the Government not to interfere. There is much to be said on both
sides, but in all matters thus admitting of discussion there cannot be
the least doubt that the deciding consideration should be the effect
they produce upon the people at large. That which would be best in a
country like England, the people of which have long been accustomed to
look upon themselves as the final arbiters in all questions, is
entirely out of place in a country like Egypt in which, almost for the
first time, the people find themselves absolutely impotent to enforce
their wills in any matter whatever. Under the Mamaluks, as we have
seen, they had this power, and they did not lose it until Mahomed Ali
had succeeded in enslaving them. If they exercised the power they
possessed but rarely, to a limited degree, and mostly in a futile
manner, this was largely due to the ignorance that prevailed, and to
the violent methods of suppression to which their attempts in this
direction were always liable. To-day the people no longer suffer from
the crass ignorance of those of the past. The most illiterate peasant
in the country is an enlightened man compared to his ancestor of the
eighteenth century. Increased knowledge has brought, as it should do,
increased desires and aspirations, and there is nothing that could
testify to the sterling merits of the Egyptian character more than the
fact that these desires and aspirations are such as the most
enlightened cannot but approve. That the people, as a body, are not
yet capable of giving their new-found ideas a healthy, practical issue
without the aid of those more advanced than themselves is nothing to
their discredit. The path of political progress is a long and
difficult one to tread, and it is trodden most successfully by those
who, like the Egyptians, advance diffidently rather than daringly, and
the Egyptians have made such progress as entitles them to be heard. As
yet, however, they have no adequate means of making known their views.
The Press of the country is yearly filling better and better its duty
in this respect, but under the occupation the true voice of the
people--the Ulema, who in all times and in all countries have always
been the natural and most fitting representatives of the people--has
been, and is, practically silent. Among Moslems the authority of the
Ulema is greater than that of the ruling prince of their country, and
the Ulema, drawn from among the body of the people, have always
exercised the beneficent influence Macaulay has ascribed to the
Catholic priesthood, for, like it, the conditions of their existence
are such that, as Macaulay expressed it, they "invert the relations
between oppressor and oppressed, and force the hereditary master to
kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary serf." So in the
days of the Mamaluks, we see the people going for the redress of their
wrongs to the Ulema, and these going to the Beys, and rarely failing
to obtain some concession. Since the English occupation this
primitive, but in its essentials most complete, measure of
representative government, has been in abeyance.
The Ulema are no longer regarded as the spokesmen of the nation. Their
voices are heard only indirectly, and then not as speaking for the
people but as those of individuals. It is quite true that the people
of to-day belong to a generation that has never had any experience of
conditions other than those practically such as now exist; but that
they do feel the need for some such system is certain, and it is their
sense of this need that is giving force and body to the demand made by
some of the "reformers" for the introduction of a representative
government, after the pattern of those in being in Europe. For this
the people have no real desire. What they want is what their ancestors
had--an informal but ever-present means of making their wishes known
to their rulers. No formally established body could supply their need.
They have now the Legislative Council, which is intended expressly to
be the voice of the people, but while, like the Press, this is yearly
growing in merit and utility, it is not, and never can be, to the
people that which the Ulema have been in the past, and should always
be to the people of a Mahomedan country--the representatives to whom
these can go at any time and in any manner to seek counsel and advice,
and to consult with that they may act as their intermediaries with the
administrative body of the country.
It may seem to the reader that in my last paragraph I have been
wandering somewhat widely from the subject of unhealthy influences,
but it is not so, for the Egyptians' sense of their inability to make
their wishes known is unquestionably not only an unhealthy influence
but one that is very steadily growing. The Press does much to instruct
the Government as to what are the thoughts and feelings moving the
people, but at best it can only do this as the Press of other
countries does, rather as the expression of individuals or classes
than of the masses, and while it thus acts as spokesman for the people
to only a limited extent, it can never be, what is most needed, an
intermediary that can not only speak for them but bring them a reply.