FALL OF SHERIF PASHA
The political crisis at Cairo, by the middle of January, was evidently
approaching fast. Indeed it had become inevitable. The publication of
the Joint Note happened to coincide with the drafting of the new _Leyha_
or Organic Law, which was to define the power of the Representative
Chamber in the promised Parliament. In regard to this, the Financial
Controllers had been insisting with the Ministry that the power they had
been exercising for the last two years of drawing up the yearly Budget,
according to their own view of the economic requirements of the country,
should remain intact, that is to say, that it should not be subject to
discussion or a vote in the Chamber; and to this Sherif Pasha had
agreed, and had already drafted his project of law without assigning to
the Chamber any right in money matters. The majority of the delegates,
however, were not unnaturally dissatisfied at this, arguing that the
Foreign Financial Control, having its sole status in the country as
guardian of the foreign obligations, and as the interest on the debt
amounted only to one-half of the revenue, the remaining half ought to be
at the disposal of the nation.
Nevertheless, there is no reason to suppose that the point would not
have been conceded by them, especially as Sultan Pasha, who had been
named their President, was with Sherif in considering it prudent to
yield, had things remained during the month as they were at the
beginning. It has been seen how readily the War Office had come to terms
with the Controllers in the matter of the Army Estimates. Now, however,
under the menace of the Note, the Notables were no longer in a mood of
conciliation, and met Sherif's draft with a counterdraft of their own,
adding a number of new articles to the Leyha, largely extending the
Parliamentary powers, and subjecting the half of the Budget not
affected to the interest of the debt to vote by the Chamber. This
brought the Controllers into active conflict with them, M. de Blignières
taking the lead in it and bringing Colvin into line with him. The
Controllers declared it absolutely necessary that the Budget should
remain whole and undivided in their hands, and denounced the
counter-draft as being a project, not of a Parliament, but of a
"Convention." The phrase, founded on memories of the French Revolution,
was doubtless de Blignières', but it was adopted by Colvin, and pressed
by him on Malet. The dispute was a serious one, and might lead to just
such mischief as Malet feared, and give excuse to the French Government
for the intervention it was seeking. Sherif having already committed
himself to the Controllers' view, was being persuaded by them to stand
firm, and the Khedive's attitude was doubtful. A quarrel between the
Khedive and his Parliament on a financial question involving European
bondholding interests was just such a case as the French Government--for
Gambetta was still in office--might be expected to take advantage of for
harm.
In this emergency Malet--and Colvin, who though he wished to get his way
as Financial Controller had no mind for French intervention--joined in
asking me yet once again to help them, and to make a last effort to
induce the extreme party among the Notables to yield something of their
pretensions, and after consultation with Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, who as
usual was for prudence and conciliation, it was arranged that I should
have a private conference at his house with a deputation from them, and
argue the case with them, and show them the probable consequences of
their resistance--namely, armed intervention. Accordingly, I got up the
case of the Controllers with Colvin, and drew up with Malet the
different points of the argument I was to use. These I have by me in a
paper headed, "Notes of what I have to say to the Members of the
Egyptian Parliament, 17th January, 1882."
According to this my instructions were to represent to the Members of
the Deputation that the existing procedure respecting the Budget was an
international affair, which neither Sherif nor the Parliament had any
right to touch without gaining the consent of the two controlling
Governments. I was to recite the history of the Control's establishment,
and show them a private Note which had been appended by Malet and Monge
(the French Consul-General), 15th November, 1879, to the Decree
instituting it. I was to invite the members to consider whether
an alteration in the form of determining the Budget was not an
international matter, and, as such, outside the sphere of their action.
They had admitted that international matters must be left untouched by
them. The control of the Budget was an international matter. Therefore
it should be left untouched by them. I was, however, authorized by
Colvin to say that personally he had no objection to a slight
modification of the present arrangement, such as should give the
Parliament a consultative voice which might later become a right of
voting. Should they accept such a compromise, Malet would represent the
matter favourably to his Government, though he had no authority to
promise its acceptance by France or England. All other differences with
Sherif they must settle with him themselves, etc., etc.
On this basis, with Sabunji's help and Mohammed Abdu's, I argued the
case thoroughly with them, and convinced myself that there was no
possibility of their yielding. They agreed, indeed, to modify three or
four of the articles which the Controllers had principally objected to
as giving the Chamber powers of a "Convention," and the amendments I
proposed in these were in fact incorporated later in the published
Leyha. But on the Article of the Budget they were quite obdurate,
notwithstanding the support Sheykh Mohammed Abdu gave me. They would not
yield a line of it, and I returned crestfallen to report my failure, nor
did I again undertake any mission of mediation between Malet and the
Nationalists. I had done my best to help him to a peaceful solution of
his difficulties, but our points of view from this time forth became too
divergent for me any longer to be able to work with him. Although I had
done my very best to persuade the Notables to give way--for I was then
firmly convinced that they were menaced with intervention--I could not
help in my inner mind agreeing with them in their claim of controlling
the free half of the Budget as a sound one, if Parliamentary Government
was to be a reality for them, not a sham. Malet's despatches of the time
show that they were all of one mind on this point, and even Sultan
Pasha, who was a timid man and easily frightened, declared roundly that
Sherif's draft was "like a drum; it made a great sound but was hollow
inside." As between Sherif and the Notables in the quarrel which
followed, my anti-Turkish sympathies put me on their side rather than on
his. At Malet's suggestion I had a little before called on Sherif and
had discussed the matter with him, and had been unfavourably impressed.
Sherif was a Europeanized Turk of good breeding and excellent manners,
but with all that arrogant contempt of the fellahin which distinguished
his class in Egypt. Malet had a high opinion of him because he was a
good French scholar and so was easy to deal with in the ordinary
diplomatic way, but to me he showed himself for this very reason in
disagreeable contrast with the sincere and high-minded men who were the
real backbone of the National movement, and for whom he expressed
nothing but the superior scorn of a fine French gentleman. He was
cheerfully convinced of his own fitness to govern them and of their
incapacity. "The Egyptians," he told me, "are children and must be
treated like children. I have offered them a Constitution which is good
enough for them, and if they are not content with it they must do
without one. It was I who created the National Party, and they will find
that they cannot get on without me. These peasants want guidance." When,
therefore, a fortnight later the quarrel became an open one between him
and them I had no difficulty in deciding which way my sympathies lay.
I was no longer at Cairo when the news of Sherif's resignation on the
2nd of February reached me. The failure of my negotiation, just
described, with the Notables, had depressed my spirits. I felt that by
undertaking it I had risked much of my popularity with my European
friends, and that they perhaps distrusted me for the pains I had taken
to convince them against a course on which their hearts were set; and I
had retired to a distance from the conflict which I could no longer
control or help in to any good purpose. While living at the Hôtel du Nil
during the winter I had all the time had a camp with tents and camels
and attendant Arabs, pitched outside the city, to which I had
occasionally gone, and now I retired to it altogether. The camp was
pitched on the desert land between Koubba Palace and Matarieh, then a
wholly desert region at a point now called Zeitoun, where there were the
insignificant ruins of what had once been a _shaduf_, the sole sign of
human habitation. Here we were completely alone, except that at the
distance of a mile there was another camp, that of Prince Ahmed, outside
Materieh. There was no communication then by any form of public
conveyance with Cairo, and when at rare intervals we went in, we rode
our camels to a point between Abbassiyeh and Faggalah where donkeys were
to be hired. There was not a single house on the sands beyond Abbassiyeh
to the north-east. For a moment thus I was able to forget politics and
to enjoy what I have always loved best, life in the open air. I had,
however, rendered a last service to my friends by writing a warm defence
of the Egyptian National policy in the "Times." To this I was urged by
my friend, Sir William Gregory, who had himself sent more than one
powerful letter in the same sense to what was then emphatically the
leading journal of Europe.
It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance a letter on any
subject had in those days when published by the "Times," and the
certainty there was, if it was on any political question, of its being
read by the statesmen concerned and treated with full attention. Nor is
it, perhaps, too much to say that Gregory's letters and mine, especially
his, were largely the means of obtaining a respite for Egypt from the
dangers that threatened her. As they came back to Cairo and were
reproduced in Arabic by the native Press, our Egyptian friends were
reassured about us and their confidence in me revived. It was at the
expense, however, of Malet's goodwill. Like all diplomatists he hated
publicity, and he was angry with us both because we, who had both been
in the Government service, had appealed as it were over the head of the
Foreign Office and his own to the Press. With the regular Press
correspondents he knew how to deal, but he could not deal with us who
were independent writers, or exercise the smallest censorship on our
opinions. There was an end therefore to the close intimacy I had, up to
that point, in spite of small disagreements, had with the Agency. This
was unfortunate, as it threw Malet, who always needed to lean on some
one stronger than himself, into other and less conciliatory hands.
On the 31st of January, the very day of the change of Ministry at Paris,
I find a note to the effect that I went in to Cairo and saw Colvin and
had a remarkable conversation with him. This has become of great
historical importance through subsequent events, for it marks the date
within a few days of the change of the temper of the English Financial
Control, and with it of our diplomacy towards Egyptian Nationalism, and
also fixes upon Colvin, what is indeed his due, the chief responsibility
of the rupture which afterwards through his contriving came about. I
have already said something of Sir Auckland Colvin's character. He was a
typical Anglo-Indian official, strong, self-reliant, hard, with the
tradition of methods long practised in India, but which were still new
to our European diplomacy, endowed with just enough sympathy with
Oriental character to make use of it, without loving it, for English
purposes; but cold in manner and unattractive. I had at an earlier stage
of affairs taken Sheykh Mohammed Abdu to call on him, thinking to bring
about a _rapprochement_, and I had also tried to do the same with the
officers. But his manner had repelled the Sheykh, and the officers had
been too shy to come with me. He was sometimes astonishingly frank in
speech. I remember his telling me, on one occasion, when we were talking
of Eastern duplicity, that it was a mistake to suppose that in this
Orientals were our masters. An Englishman who knew the game, he said,
could always beat them at their own weapons, and they were mere children
in deceit when it came to a contest with us.
In the present instance he was more than usually outspoken. The quarrel
between the Notables and Sherif was at its acutest stage; and I asked
him what he thought of the situation. He said he considered it most
grave. It was evident that the Nationalists were resolved upon the fall
of Sherif, and, if they succeeded, he (Colvin) would have no more to do
with them. He told me he had completely changed his mind about them. He
had thought them amenable to reason, but he found them quite
impracticable, and he would do his best to ruin them if ever they came
into office. I asked him how he proposed to do this, or stop a movement
which he had so lately approved, but which had gone quite beyond his or
anybody's control--how, except by that very intervention we had all
along been trying to avoid. He said he had changed his mind about
intervention too; that he believed it now to be necessary and
inevitable, and that he would spare no pains to bring it about. I
expostulated with him, urging that intervention meant only war and war
meant only annexation. He said he quite understood it in that sense. The
same thing had been seen over and over again in India. England would
never give up the footing she had got in Egypt, and it was useless to
talk about the abstract rights and wrongs of the Egyptians. These would
not be considered. He repeated what he had said about ruining the
National Party, and added that he had made no secret of his view. He
should work for intervention and, if it must be so, for annexation. I am
quite sure I am not mis-quoting this conversation in any essential
feature. It was not merely half a dozen words spoken in haste, but an
argument which lasted half an hour; and it affected me so strongly that
I decided to warn my Egyptian friends, to whom I had pledged my word for
Colvin's good feeling towards them, that they must now expect the worst
of him. They answered that they knew it, as they had received
information already in the same sense about him.
This conversation opened my eyes to a new danger. Only the day before I
had received two letters, written the one from the Liberal, the other
from the Tory camp in England, and both conveying the same warning. John
Morley, in answer to a letter I had written asking his sympathy with the
National cause, wrote: "Whether your schemes will come to much I am at
this moment inclined to doubt. Egypt, unluckily for its people, is the
battlefield of European rivalries; and an honest settlement in the
interests of its population will be prevented to suit the convenience of
France. I don't see my way out of it. It is that curse of the world, _la
haute politique_, which will spoil everything." Lytton also had written:
"That small portion of the British public which thinks at all of foreign
affairs is much pre-occupied and disturbed in mind by the false position
into which we are drifting in Egypt, and almost too frightened to speak
loudly on the subject. It seems to me, however, that their ideas are
very hazy. In my own mind there is no doubt that this is only the first
fruits of a radically wrong policy which has lost us the co-operation of
Germany and Austria, and placed us practically at the mercy of France, a
power with which we can never have any sound or safe alliance." Both
letters had been written before the fall of Gambetta, and here I seemed
to hear an echo of their words, especially Morley's words, "la haute
politique," from the man who had it most in his power to spoil an
honest settlement, and that to suit the convenience, not of France
merely, but of England. I was very much alarmed. I have often regretted
my last words to Colvin on this occasion. "I defy you," I said, "to
bring about English intervention or annexation." I regret it because I
think it added a personal as well as a political stimulus to his
subsequent action. It had become a trial of strength between us.
Two days later, 2nd February, Sherif Pasha, finding he could not bend
the National Delegates to his will, and under the influence, I make
little doubt, of Colvin's threat of intervention, resigned office, and
was succeeded, at the choice of the Delegates, by Mahmud Pasha Sami as
Prime Minister, with Arabi as Minister of War, a thoroughgoing
Nationalist combination at which all Egypt rejoiced.[9] I heard the news
at my retreat in the desert with mixed feelings of jubilation and
anxiety, an anxiety which was only relieved when on the 27th I received
an answer from Mr. Gladstone to my letter of six weeks before enclosing
to him the National program. The long delay in replying was doubtless
due to the embarrassment and perplexity as to a policy which Lord
Granville's deal with Gambetta had involved him in. Gambetta's
providential fall, however, had now to a large extent freed our
Government's hands, and a passage was being inserted in the Queen's
speech at the opening of Parliament which conveyed something like an
expression of sympathy with the National Egyptian hopes. This, Mr.
Gladstone sent me later, and his letter concluded with the following
reassuring words: "I feel quite sure," he said, "that unless there be a
sad failure of good sense on one or both, or as I should say, on all
sides, we shall be able to bring this question to a favourable issue. My
own opinions about Egypt were set forth in the 'Nineteenth Century' a
short time before we took office, and I am not aware as yet of having
seen any reason to change them."[10]
The reference thus made to his article "Aggression on Egypt," was of the
very highest importance, for, as already mentioned, the article was a
scathing denunciation of just that forward policy of intervention and
annexation which Colvin had propounded to me. Armed with this proof of
Gladstone's goodwill I went back joyfully to Cairo, and was able to tell
Arabi that I had not assured him of my sympathy in vain. I found him at
the War Office surrounded by his friends, and in converse with the
Coptic Patriarch, and with a tribe of idle sycophants as well,
Levantines and Europeans, come to salute the rising sun. Among these the
new Minister moved with a certain dignified superiority which became him
well. He was no longer the mere colonel of a regiment, but a man sobered
by the sense of public responsibility, a fellah still, and still a
patriot, but also with the manner of a statesman. He took me aside, and
I showed him Gladstone's letter, and we rejoiced over it together as a
message of good omen.
The first fruits of Colvin's hostility, nevertheless, we had not long to
wait for. Who precisely was the originator of the lie I do not know, it
was probably the Khedive, whose malicious jealousy was already at work
against his Ministers, but a false report was telegraphed by Reuter to
Europe that the action taken by the Notables against Sherif was due to
military intimidation. A story was related and was repeated at some
length in the "Times" to the effect that Sultan Pasha, the president of
the Chamber, had only yielded to personal menace, and that Arabi had
drawn his sword in his presence, and had threatened to make the old
man's children fatherless. It was a foolish tale, for Sultan happened to
be without offspring, and at Cairo it was laughed at by all who knew the
truth, and how close an intimacy there was between the two, but it was
sufficient as a weapon to "ruin the Nationalists," and easily passed the
censorship of the Agency, being reproduced even in Malet's despatches of
the day, as was a similar tale, which had also been telegraphed, that
the Khedive's acceptance of Sherif's resignation had been extorted under
a like pressure.
Absurd, however, as the tale was, Sultan was offended by it, and, as I
was now generally known to the Deputies as their friend, he begged me to
call on him and convey to Malet his emphatic denial of the whole story.
I consequently went to Sultan's house, where he had assembled a large
party of Deputies and other high personages, among whom were the Grand
Mufti el Abbasi, Abd el Salaam Bey Mouelhy, Ahmed Bey Siouffi, Ahmed
Effendi, Mahmud, Rahman Effendi, Hamadi, and El Shedid Butros, a leading
Coptic deputy. All these, with Sultan, absolutely denied and repudiated
the idea that they had acted under any kind of pressure, and Sultan
spoke with indignation of the absurdity of the tale as regarded himself.
"Ahmed Arabi," he said, "is as a son to me, and knows what is due to me
and due to himself. His place is at the War Office, mine with the
Parliament. It is of me that he would ask advice rather than venture to
give me any on my own concerns, and as to his drawing his sword in my
presence he could only do so if I were attacked by enemies. These are
stories which no one who knows us both could for an instant believe, and
they are absolutely false. You may take it for certain that the least of
the members present who represent the people are better judges of their
wants than the greatest of the soldiers. We respect Ahmed Arabi because
we know him to be a patriot and a man of political intelligence, not
because he is a soldier." These words of Sultan Pasha's are quoted from
a memorandum I made of them at the time. The old man also spoke bitterly
of Malet for encouraging the newsmongers, and begged me to tell him the
facts, and also to telegraph them to Mr. Gladstone, and make them known
in the London press. This I did to the best of my ability. I sent a full
account of it to the "Times," though, if I remember rightly, it was, for
some reason, never printed, and I telegraphed in the same sense to Mr.
Gladstone, and also wrote him a long letter giving my view of the
general situation.
To Malet I went straight from Sultan's house and expostulated with him
warmly. But he insisted on the truth of his tale, which he had got, he
told me first, from Sultan himself, and then not from Sultan but at
second hand from "some one on whom he could depend," and, when I
pressed him further as to who this was, lost temper and said I had no
right to cross-question him. This was my last talk with him on any
political matter. Malet's new attitude proved to me that he, like
Colvin, had gone over to the enemy's camp, and was now no longer to be
trusted. I saw that the situation was a very dangerous one, for between
them they had the Press and the Foreign Office wholly in their hands,
and though I possessed at home the Prime Minister's ear and a certain
publicity for my views in the "Times," I felt that I was fighting
against them at an extreme disadvantage. I consequently decided to delay
no longer my return to England, where I could do more for the Egyptian
interests than I could at Cairo, by word of mouth and by a personal
appeal to Gladstone. Before going, however, I had numerous conversations
with the leading Deputies and with my friends at the Azhar, to whom I
communicated my design, of which they all approved; and I arranged with
Sir William Gregory that after my departure he should continue to defend
the National cause, in which he was as enthusiastic as I was, in the
"Times" and by letter with his friends in England. My thought was to
return to Egypt, perhaps, in a few weeks' time, and take part in any
further developments that might arise.
I paid a last visit to Arabi the morning of the day I left for England,
27th February. I had been little more than three months in Egypt, and it
seemed to me like a lifetime, so absorbing had been the interests they
had brought me. I looked upon Egypt already like a second _patria_, and
intended to throw in my lot with the Egyptians as if they were my own
countrymen. I was estranged from those of my countrymen in blood,
except Gregory, who formed the then little English colony at Cairo.
Following Colvin's lead they had all gone over like sheep to ideas of
intervention, for be it noted that it was now no longer French
intervention that was talked of, but English, and at once in English
eyes the immorality of aggression had been transformed into a duty. What
had been abominable when threatened by Gambetta now appealed to them as
just and desirable and patriotic when proposed by Granville. Similarly
the new Prime Minister at Paris, M. de Freycinet, having reversed his
predecessor's policy of intervention, the French colony were for peace
with the Nationalists, all except de Blignières and those who had
official posts they feared might be suppressed in the new reign of
National economy.
Colvin and de Blignières were industrious in spreading trepidation among
the holders of sinecure offices, and it was amusing to note how suddenly
and completely the poet Lord Houghton abandoned his first attitude of
romantic sympathy with Egyptian liberty when his son-in-law, Fitzgerald,
who had one of these sinecures, represented to him that his daily bread
was thereby threatened. It was well known, as part of the Nationalist
program, that it was intended to reduce the expenditure on unnecessary
salaries and to suppress the duplicated posts. This was ascribed by
Colvin not to its true cause, a very legitimate economy, but to
"fanaticism," a convenient word which began now to be freely used in
describing the National movement. What, however, I think more than
anything else was condemned just then by the little group of English
officials was the "monstrous" determination which the Egyptian Chamber
was said to have come to, if it could secure the right of voting the
Budget, to cut down the subvention of £1,000 a year paid to Reuter's
Agency. Without this it was felt that it would be impossible any longer
to know at Cairo the odds on the Oxford and Cambridge boat race or even
on the Derby or Grand Prix. There was a dark hint, too, thrown out that
the charge of £9,000 a year then figuring in the Budget as a grant in
aid to the European Opera House might be reduced, and on this astounding
proof of "fanaticism," Fitzgerald, as a patron of the ballet, was
especially insistent. These things, with others almost as trifling, were
made a serious crime to the Notables and to the new Ministry, who were
countenancing the reductions. I used to hear the tale of their
complaints from Gregory, who was now in much closer touch with them than
I any longer was. It was in answer to their threats of intervention,
which were beginning to have an effect on the Stock Exchange in the
lowered price of Egyptian Bonds and of property generally in Egypt, that
I at this time resolved to give proof of my confidence in the national
fortunes by buying a small estate for my future residence in the
neighbourhood of Cairo, and the result was my purchase of Eheykh Obeyd
Garden, a property of some forty acres, between Merj and Materieh.
It will be interesting to Egyptian readers to know what the prices of
land in that neighbourhood then were. There was, as I have said, at that
time not a single house built on the desert strip between Abbassiyeh and
Kafr el Jamus, and the Government was willing to sell it to anybody who
would buy it at the rate of a few piastres an acre. I thought at one
moment of establishing myself on the land where my camp of the moment
stood, and I made inquiry of my friend Rogers Bey, who was in the Land
Department of the Ministry of Finance, and I find among my papers the
draft of an application I sent in for a hundred acres, where now the
suburb of Zeitoun stands, for which, at his suggestion, I offered
fifteen piastres (three shillings) an acre. The same land is worth
to-day, 1904, at least two hundred pounds an acre, ground value. But
while I was in negotiation for it I chanced to hear that Sheykh Obeyd
Garden was in the market, and I purchased it, so to say, "over the
counter" from the Domains' Commission for £1,500. It was then the best
fruit garden in Egypt, enclosed in a wall with a bountiful supply of
water, and contained, on estimation, 70,000 fruit trees, all in splendid
order.
The history of the garden is worth recording. It was a piece of good
land standing on the desert edge, belonging in the early part of the
nineteenth century to the Imam of Ibrahim Pasha's army during the
campaign of Arabia but the Imam falling into indigent circumstances, the
Pasha bought it of him, enclosed thirty-three acres with a wall, dug the
sakiehs, and laid it out as it now is some time in the early thirties.
The fruit trees with which it was planted were brought in part from Taif
in the Hejaz, in part from Syria. Ibrahim had a passion to make it the
best of its kind, and in his time and the time of his nephew, Mustafa,
to whom it descended, the fruit from it brought in a yearly revenue of
£800, the labour being all done by _corvée_ of the fellahin of the
neighbouring villages. The pomegranates of the garden were so large that
it was a tradition with the gardeners there that thirty went to a camel
load, and that they were sent yearly to Constantinople as a present to
the Sultan. What is certain is that in the time of Ibrahim's grandson,
Tewfik, when in his father's reign he was living in retirement at
Koubba, the ladies of his household used to be carried there every
Friday during the spring season to spend the day. In the ruin of
Ismaïl's fortunes it came, in 1879, to the Domains Commissioners, and
was one of the smaller properties scheduled by them for sale, and so it
chanced into the market. On our way to Syria the year before we had
camped one night outside its walls and had wondered at its beauty with
the apricot trees in full flower. No sooner did I hear of it as a
possible acquisition than I abandoned all other schemes of purchase; and
in one of its shady walks I am writing my memoirs to-day.
But to return to my farewell visit to Arabi. On this occasion we talked
all the questions over which were being debated at the moment by the
Nationalists with their plans of reforms and their hopes and fears at
home and abroad. The few weeks that Arabi had been in high office had
matured him and strengthened him, and he discussed things with me with
all possible sobriety of thought and language. He assured me
emphatically that he and his fellow Ministers were most anxious to come
to a friendly understanding with the English Government on all matters
in dispute between them and the Agency at Cairo; and he begged me to
convey to Mr. Gladstone a formal message to that effect. He complained,
however, strongly of Malet and Colvin, whose recent action and the part
they were taking in the campaign of misrepresentation being organized in
the English Press proved their hostility. "There will never be peace at
Cairo," he said, "as long as we have only these to deal with, for we
know that they are working mischief against us in secret, if not openly.
We shall stand aloof from both of them. But we do not on that account
wish to quarrel with England. Let Mr. Gladstone send us whom he will to
treat with us, and we will receive him with open arms." He also talked
at great length of the practical reforms Mahmud Sami and the other
Ministers were contemplating, most of which have since been included in
the list of benefits conferred on the country under British occupation,
and which Lord Cromer has adopted as his own. Such were the abolition of
the _corvées_ which the rich Turkish pashas levied on the villagers,
their monopoly of the water at the time of the high Nile, the protection
of the fellahin from the Greek usurers, who had them in their clutches
through the iniquitous abuses of the International Tribunals, and even
that latest remedy for agriculture distress on which Lord Cromer
specially prides himself, an agricultural Bank under Government
direction.
Other questions discussed were the reform of Justice, then fearfully
corrupt, the education of men and also of women, the mode of election to
be adopted for the new Parliament, and the question of slavery. On this
point he dwelt at some length, because the European officials of the
department concerned in its suppression were beginning, like the other
foreign officials, to fear that in the new National scheme of economy
their salaries would be reduced, and were pretending that the Mohammedan
revival would mean a revival of the slave trade. Arabi showed me how
little ground there was for this pretence, that the only persons in
Egypt who still had slaves or wished to have slaves were just the
Khedivial princes and rich pashas, against whose tyranny the fellah
movement was directed, that according to the principles of the Liberal
reform all men were to be henceforth equal, without distinction of race,
or colour, or religion. The last thing compatible with these was the
revival of slavery. Lastly, as to the necessity of military preparation
for a possible war, which as a soldier and war minister he had uppermost
in his mind, he spoke plainly and with energy. The National Government
would not disarm or relax its precautions until the true Constitutional
_régime_ was firmly established and acknowledged by Europe. He hoped not
to exceed the War Estimates agreed on with Colvin, or to be obliged to
increase the number of men recruited beyond the 18,000 allowed by the
Firmans. If, however, the menace of armed intervention were long
continued they would adopt the Prussian system of short service, and so
gradually bring a larger force as a reserve under arms. He asked my
opinion of the chances of a conflict, and I told him plainly that from
what Colvin had boasted to me of his intention to bring it about, and
from the means of Press agitation he had already adopted with that end,
I considered the danger a real one, and that it was to neutralize, as
far as I could, the campaign of lies which had begun that I was going to
England. My business there would be to preach the cause of peace and
goodwill. At the same time I could not advise him to do otherwise than
stand firmly to his ground. The best chance of peace was to be prepared
for defence. The great enemies of Egypt were not so much the European
governments as the European financiers, and these would think twice
about urging an armed attack if they knew that they could not do so
without the risk of ruining their own interests in Egypt by a long and
costly war. An armed nation resolute and ready to defend its rights was
seldom molested. I remember quoting to him Byron's lines, "Trust not for
freedom to the Franks," of which he greatly approved; and these, I
think, were our last words. I promised him that if it came to the worst
I would return and throw in my lot with theirs in a campaign for
independence.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] There were one or two weak points in the formation of the new
Ministry, the most important being in the choice made of their Minister
of Foreign Affairs. Neither Mahmud Sami nor Arabi, nor any other of the
fellah leaders, knew any European language, and, as a knowledge of
French was essential in dealing with the Consulates, a man not of their
own party or way of thinking was taken in from the outside. This was
Mustafa Pasha Fehmi, a man of fairly liberal notions, but a member of
the old ruling class, and a follower of Sherif's--the same who had been
Ismaïl's A. D. C. in 1878 and had taken an unwilling part in the death
of the Mufettish. It was his horror at this crime that had converted him
to constitutional ideas. But like Sherif he despised his fellah
colleagues. He, when the pinch came two months later, did these much
ill-service by his weak or hostile presentment of their case in the
official correspondence. This, as they could not read his notes and
despatches, they were unaware of till it was too late to remedy.
[10] For full text of this letter _see_ Appendix.