"SPOILING THE EGYPTIANS:" REVISED VERSION. Spoiling the Egyptians: A Tale of Shame. Told from HE author of the pamphlet, "Spoiling the Egyptians," has rendered controversy, an almost brilliant illustration of the fallacy of "Blue-Book-history writing." With the growing voluminousness of Parliamentary papers, this fallacious mode of arguing is in danger of becoming increasingly common. Indeed, the author of this pamphlet has already received a warning from his own experience. He confesses to have "exposed" the East India Blue Books "to an analysis similar to that now adopted." He dolorously complains that "the only result thus far has been that our Indian officials, duly warned thereby, now compile their State Papers more cunningly than before, relegating all important despatches to a Secret Department, which places itself beyond the ken of Parliament altogether." On The author, indeed, is not unaware of the characteristic imperfections of the only evidence on which he relies; though he somewhat gratuitously assumes that if these imperfections were supplemented, the result would always be in his own favour. Thus, in his Preface, he says that "official documents do not, in a case like this, divulge all the facts that they should reveal, but only what their compilers cannot conceal." p. 31 he notices that "at this point there is a hiatus of more than eighteen months in the published political correspondence. England has been purposely kept in the dark regarding what is perhaps the most important chapter in recent Egyptian history." Again, on p. 52: "A question should also be put as to whether the same class of evidence is not contained in the unpublished portions of the numerous letters which are only given in the Blue Books in extract." The fact is that, like "circumstantial evidence," Blue Book evidence is both the best and the worst of all evidence. As an argumentum ad hominem mode of reasoning directed to the author or receiver of a despatch it is of the highest value, and the indispensable basis or complement of a debate. It is notorious that no effective assault can be made on the conduct of a Minister, or on the policy of a Government, nor can a Minister or Government defend a course of action, till all the relevant written correspondence is produced. In fact, it is on this very question of the production of papers that the first, and often enough the chief, or sole, Parliamentary struggle turns. Thus the quantity and the subject-matter of the correspondence published during a series of years are an exact reflex, but nothing more than a reflex, of the direction and intensity of Parliamentary debate. This is especially the case with foreign correspondence, of which, from the necessity of consulting the susceptibilities of strangers, little is ever published that is not imperatively demanded. The result is that history, patched up out of Blue Books, and extending over years, with no material to supplement it except the historian's guesses, may be of the most surprising texture. In fact, it may only have a very subordinate connection with the real stream of events and negotiations, a full account of which alone could find for it, and restrict it to, its proper place. In the case of the Egyptian Blue Books during Ismail's reign, there are certain special circumstances which alone would invalidate them as selfsufficing historical proofs. Two essential and ever-present factors in the political and diplomatic situation throughout, were, first, the extravagant and profligate habits of the Khédive Ismail, and, secondly, the sinuous, incalculable, or vacillating policy of the Continental Powers, especially of France. Yet neither of these radical elements could be brought into their due prominence in papers to be submitted to the full blaze of Parliamentary and public scrutiny. Some few of Ismail's more venial shortcomings and political misdoings are hinted at in scrupulously veiled terms. But it was not possible to describe in published documents the true sources of the ruin which Ismail was bringing on his country, and of the extravagant expenditure which was the real rival with the claims of his creditors. How could the following recentlypublished narrative, to the general truth of which every dweller in Egypt at the time bears witness, have figured in a despatch (say) of Colonel Stanley, or in the papers laid on the table of the House of Lords by Lord Derby?— "When Ismail ascended the throne and he and Nubar Pasha set to work to acclimatise European institutions on the Nile, their first care was to introduce the bouffe opera, at what a gigantic expense it would be now impossible to say. .. Manchester had to look for a cotton supply to Egypt while the Civil War in the United States was raging. Ismail, intelligent as he was, could not understand that liberated blacks would work in cotton fields. He accordingly reckoned upon the new sources of revenue becoming permanent, and rushed into every kind of extravagance. He was not satisfied with real power and the title of Viceroy. A mint of money was spent in buying of the Sultan the right to style himself Khédive, and to implant in the Valley of the Nile the Frankish law of primogeniture. Verdi was engaged to compose a national Egyptian opera, and produced "Aïda," which was brought out at Cairo, at his Highness's expense. Showy hospitality was extended to literary people, savants, and artists. M. Viollet le Duc was taken up the Nile to the Cataracts in Royal State. Pretty actresses and bouffe singers were not the worst treated. English Viceroys and Generals, going to India, found Cairo an earthly paradise. They were lodged sumptuously, their dinners being prepared by French chefs, and the bills all being paid by his Highness. If they went with parties to climb the Pyramids a lunch which he had sent awaited them when they descended. Lord Napier of Magdala once turned aside from the route he intended following, to pass a few days in the Egyptian capital. The Khédive got wind of his project, through a telegram sent to the manager of Shepherd's Hotel, which found its way into the papers. All his numerous palaces were occupied by relatives and distinguished foreigners. But he was determined that Lord Napier should be his guest, so he ordered a residence to be bought and furnished within twelve hours. When the General arrived he was taken to the improvised lodging, which was made ready at an expense of about £30,000. Blood-horses and carriages were in the mews. Dozens of servants were in attendance. They were ordered, under pain of flogging, not to ask for backshish." In the present case it is just through missing or withholding the key, supplied by the character, tastes, and conduct of Ismail, that the author of the pamphlet "Spoiling the Egyptians" has made the Blue Books tell a tale which is, and even if he had told it accurately would still have been, the reverse of the truth. The author's contention is, that the policy of the British Government in Egypt, from the middle of Ismail's reign to now, has been mainly dictated by concern for the safety of the principal and interests of the debts incurred by Ismail to British speculators; that in pursuit of this policy, successive British representatives in Egypt, and successive Foreign Ministers at home, were prepared to sacrifice, and did sacrifice, again and again, at each recurrent payment of a coupon, the well-being of the Egyptian people; and, implicitly, that but for this iniquitous interference, the Khédive Ismail would have been able and disposed to improve indefinitely the administration of his country, and largely to relieve his people by remissions of taxation. The main proofs of all this are supplied by extracts from the despatches of Consuls-General, in which, with one hand, they describe the sufferings incurred by the people through the load of taxation, and the means resorted to of collecting the taxes; and, with the other, record the pressure they remorselessly bring to bear on the Khédive and his Government in order to extort the payment of the half-year's coupon. Now, there could not be a more excellent illustration than this of the "Blue-Book history" fallacy. It is quite true that in the published despatches of Consuls-General and Foreign Secretaries, the two sole constantly recurrent topics are the necessity for the punctual payment of the half-yearly coupons, and the sufferings of the over-taxed and cruelly-taxed peasantry. And yet it is not true-it is the opposite of the truth-that the British Government was, at any time during the transactions, exerting its influence, or allowing its influence to be exerted, in such a way as to postpone the interests of the country and its inhabitants to the payment of Ismail's creditors. There is no dispute about the condition of insolvency to which Egypt was being rapidly precipitated at the time of the original British interference of a financial sort in 1875. The author himself cites (p. 5) Mr. Cave's report to the effect that the loans (in 1875) were estimated at £68,000,000; that there was a floating debt to the extent of £18,000,000; and "that this floating debt was being renewed from time to time at the ruinous rate of 25 per cent. per annum;" "that a sum of £34,898,000 had been paid away as interest in ten years;" that "it was to be feared that three years' taxes are sometimes paid in two years ;" and that there were collected "forced loans which the peasant cannot distinguish from taxes." So much, and much matter of the like kind, appears from Mr. Cave's report as contained in the Blue Books. It was incontestable that Ismail was, on the one side, availing himself of all the inexhaustible credit he enjoyed in Europe to burden his country with debt; and that he was simultaneously following Turkish precedent in rapidly reducing his people and country to the condition of the worst-administered province of the Ottoman Empire. Over and above what the Blue Books could possibly tell, it was notorious to every one concerned that Ismail's need for money was insatiable; that for divers purposes of his own, connected with his family aggrandizement, he had spent, and might spend again, after the manner of Oriental viceroys, king's ransoms in bribing the officials who blocked the way to his sovereign lord at Constantinople, as well as in bribing that sovereign lord himself; that his artificial taste for Oriental pomp and display, as well as his appetite for the sensuous indulgence to which his early experience at the French Court had habituated him, called for endless gratification and involved limitless expenditure; that, in fine, Ismail had a subtle, not to say winning, skill, in petty financial diplomacy and finesse, which made even practised speculators who came to be paid remain to lend afresh. All this, and far more than all this, which even at this date could hardly be written down here, was known to every English, French, German, Italian, and Egyptian diplomatist, and it constituted the essential political embarrassment of the situation. But if it could not be written down in black and white, there was no need for writing down what all knew too well. And for other reasons the Blue Books do not tell-what was transparent to all-that every French or English speculator who had money to lend knew well the rich natural resources of Egypt, as well as the complicated interests of European States in Egypt, which would, if it did nothing else for Egypt, at least prevent it being left to insolvency and ruin; that these speculators saw their way to blend, in outward show and account, the private and the public debts of the Khédive; and that his mixed Oriental and European habits of administration favoured the fraud of isolating him from his country as a borrower, and then again merging him in his country so soon as he became a debtor. Yet none of these material facts were hidden from the British Government in 1876, when they sent Mr. Rivers Wilson to Cairo as a consequence of Mr. Cave's Report, but not in strict accordance with his recommendation for the constitution of a European Control Department. The purpose of Mr. Wilson's mission was the re-organization of the Khédive's financial administration. Our author admits (p. 7) that Mr. Rivers Wilson "was recalled on the ground that, owing to the crushing magnitude of the claims for interest, every scheme which had been proposed for liquidation was too onerous for Egypt to bear." It is at this point, if anywhere, that the objection must be raised to British financial intervention in Egypt; because every step which has been taken since has been a logical consequence of the intervention policy adopted in 1876, on the occasion of the mission of Messrs. Goschen and Joubert to Egypt in October of that year. Our author is quite right in implying that, inasmuch as these gentlemen are represented as having come "at the Khédive's express invitation," conveyed through the British Consul-General to the British Foreign Office, and as they were formally introduced by Lord Derby to the Khédive through the Consul-General, it is mere trifling to draw a line between "official" and "unofficial" assistance. The affected distinction belongs to the delicacies of diplomacy, not to the realities of politics. It is not necessary, for the purpose of the present argument, to defend the policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government, which, between the alternative courses of letting Egypt lapse into insolvency and anarchy and of intervention, decided on intervention. What is essential to notice is that though Messrs. Fruhling and Goschen and the London Council of Foreign Bondholders, naturally enough, came prominently forward to press on the Government the approaching insolvency of Egypt, yet there is nothing whatever to show that it was the claims of British or other creditors, and not the general condition of Egypt-looked at in the light of the permanent interests and policy of Great Britain in that country-which originally determined, and has since continuously maintained, English intervention in Egypt. On the contrary, there is abundant evidence to show that the monetary claims of private persons only entered incidentally into the policy of the British Government; and they only entered at all, because in Egypt solvency and good government were, or were honestly believed to be, inextricably intertwined. The case was a far more difficult one than that of a private bankrupt; because the royal spendthrift, in spite of his crushing liabilities, was |