the Act of 1870 had been framed upon | Majesty's Government to appoint a

The House divided:-Ayes 119; Noes (Sir George Campbell) apprehended it 46: Majority 73.

could with the financiers with whom he | at the time. No doubt, such a Mission might deal, without being patted on the to an independent Power was perhaps back in official Reports to our own Go- unprecedented, and it was a very delicate vernment, or having his credit bolstered and difficult duty to carry out our inup by any other indirect means. Having structions so as to avoid giving offence made these observations, perhaps he on the one hand and to attain our object would best consult the opinion of the of obtaining accurate information on the House by not moving his Resolution, other. I hope we have performed that and by simply calling his attention to duty with tolerable success. I am sure the subject, in the hope that he would the Khedive will admit that we were not elicit some statement from the right wanting in the respect due to his high hon. Gentleman the Member for position; and I must say that His Shoreham. Highness treated us with every con

MR. STEPHEN CAVE, who was re-sideration, and seemed most desirous of ceived with cheers, said: I rise in accordance with the hon. Member's invitation, and because I imagine the House will expect me to say a few words before the Session closes; otherwise I should much prefer remaining silent. I agree with him that his Motion is now somewhat out of date. I feel that the interest which formerly attached to my Mission has well nigh died away, and that the affairs of Egypt have naturally been thrown into the shade by more urgent and important events in the East. I should not, therefore, be justified in repeating what is said in my Report, or detaining the House over the varying fortunes of the Egyptian Mission. My Report has long been before the country. All that we said and did in Egypt, and a good deal more, has been duly chronicled and commented upon. Still less is it my business to defend the policy of sending the Mission to Cairo. That will be done by others. But whatever differences of opinion there may have been in England on that point, I believe there was little doubt in other countries. I believe, moreover, that without it-without the exposure of the perilous state of the finances of Egypt which resulted from our inquiries-her Ruler would, like so many others in similar difficulties, have gone on shutting his eyes to the danger of the course he was pursuing, and the end would have been more hopelessly disastrous than the present crisis. The hon. Member charges me with unduly bolstering up the credit of Egypt. That may be his opinion, but that was not the opinion of the Khedive. He complained that the Mission, far from assisting him to borrow, closed the Money Market against him; and, if that were so, it may turn out that this was the best thing that could have happened, though his difficulties may have been aggravated

giving us all the information we could desire. Whether this information would have been so readily afforded to the "clever clerk" whom the hon. Member would have substituted for my Mission may be doubted. It has been suggested by the hon. Member that all our information was merely second-hand, and that we were obliged to take what was set before us without asking any questions. That, of course, is in the main true, though not entirely so. We did test what we had opportunities of testing; but, of course, we could hardly be expected in two months to unravel the intricacies and audit the accounts-kept in Arabic-of the Finance Minister. We might have been deceived, no doubt. Still, we had this to rely upon, that though we might easily have been deceived, yet that a person who wished to deceive us would hardly have asked for an experienced English financier to remain in his employment for five or ten years, to whom all the accounts of the Government were to be submitted, and by whom the statement furnished to us would, of course, be examined. The result, however, has exceeded my expectations. I fully expected that many errors would be detected and exposed, and was prepared to be satisfied if the truth at length came out amid the conflict of statements. But what has happened? The Report has been before the public for four months. It has been translated into every civilized language, and as far as I know, beyond some very minor details chiefly arising from accidental errors of transcription the detection of which shows the care with which the Report has been scrutinized-it has been accepted as accurate, and has formed the basis of every negotiation which has up to this time been carried on.

The dif

ference between the French computation | rangements may be made in future, I and the figures in my Report, I have am convinced that such a control must already explained, in answer to a Ques- form part of them; and one of the tion in the House, to be due to circum- worst features in the Decrees which have stances which have taken place since my been issued in favour of the French Report was written. I at one time scheme is the absence of any security hoped that the plan indicated in that for the independence and permanence of Report-not of assisting the Khedive to the Control Department. I think I am borrow, as the hon. Member for the Kirk-bound to say a few words, and they caldy Boroughs (Sir George Campbell) imagines, but of preventing his borrowing more- -would have been carried into effect by capitalists in this country. We had good reason for expecting this; but unfortunately our expectations were not realized, and the matter was afterwards complicated by the extreme pretensions of the French holders of Treasury Bonds, to whom the necessities of the Khedive, driven as it were into a corner, obliged him to yield. For this I am in no way responsible. Indeed, I told the Khedive plainly, and placed it on record, that the acceptance of any plan which did not provide for the full payment of his creditors was really an act of bankruptcy, and was incompatible with the expenditure which he was still carrying on. I believed that his liabilities might have been met then. I believe they may be met even now, though of course it is much more difficult. The total indebtedness is far larger than when my Report was written, and the Khedive is most unfortunately again involved, this time probably against his will, and in consequence of the obligations he is under to the Porte, in the waste of war. I am naturally sorry that my own labours did not bear fruit more speedily and more conspicuously, but I hope that they may yet be carried to a successful issue by more fortunate and abler hands. This one merit I may, without presumption, claim for my scheme-namely, that it kept steadily in view the equitable demands of creditors on the one hand, and on the other the relief of the taxpayer-for whom the hon. Member expresses very natural sympathy-from burdens too heavy for him to bear. It was in order to further both these objects that I laid much stress upon a complete control over both the collection and the appropriation of the revenue, to be vested in the Control Department presided over by the financial agent whom the Khedive was anxious to obtain from this country. This is the key of the whole position. Whatever ar

shall be very few, on the character of the Khedive, who has sometimes been spoken of in very hard, and in some instances, I think, very unjustifiable terms by a portion of the public Press. The Khedive has been even compared to the late Sultan, but no two characters could be more unlike. The Sultan's fall was preceded by his abdication of the functions and duties of a Sovereign. His vast expenditure was mainly upon unworthy favourites, upon luxury, and debauchery. The Khedive, on the contrary, is the most intelligent and laborious man in his dominions. In his Cabinet early and late, there is hardly any public business with which he is not familiar. He allows himself scarcely any rest or relaxation. His Highness told me once that nothing was so delightful to him as a few weeks' repose at Minieh amid his private estates, but that he had not been able to go there for three years. Profuse in hospitality, proud of entertaining the princely visitors now not unfrequent in Egypt in a princely way, he is frugal and simple in his personal habits. He is, however, obliged to work with the instruments which custom and tradition have handed down to him, to employ officials whom he cannot trust, and whose object is to enrich themselves as rapidly as possible, and to insure against their uncertain tenure of office by plundering the Exchequer. Consequently he endeavours, as many others have done, to manage everything himself, which Rulers of far greater bodily activity would entirely fail to do; and though his knowledge of detail is extraordinary, it is difficult for him to see what it is everybody's interest to conceal. I was once told in Egypt by an eminent official, that the difficulty of educating Arab children lay in the fact that they had no conscience, their only motives being fear and the hope of gain. Probably in consequence of being aware of something of the same kind in others than children, His Highness is too prone to throw him

self into the arms of hardly more | done very little. In reply to this, I need disinterested foreign advisers who press only allude to the Bahr Ibrahim, a upon him schemes of various kinds, navigable irrigation canal 160 miles some good, some crude and ill-considered, long, fertilizing vast tracts of land. He but mostly involving heavy expenditure, speaks also of the Khedive originating an undue proportion of which goes into sugar cultivation, which, he says, is only the pockets of these advisers, who are successful on virgin soil. But I may reoften identical with or closely allied to mind him that Mohamed Ali originated the contractors who carry out the this cultivation, and that the place where works, and the financiers who find sugar pays perhaps best, is the colony the means. Loans at ruinous rates, of which we have heard so much lately, bonds renewed on terms still more the island of Barbadoes, where the soil ruinous, supplementary contracts in is almost as artificial as in Malta. Still, which, for obvious reasons, the Khedive I agree that the cost of these enterprizes is as much at the mercy of the contractor has been enormous; sugar factories unas the English Post Office used to be in finished, with expensive machinery lying respect of the great steamship companies about; irrigation works, with recent when contracts were to be renewed. All inventions, never completed; experiments these have eaten out the resources of the half tried-these represent a waste of country. The Khedive is of a sanguine capital never to be restored. The great disposition, easily impressed with new body of Europeans resident in the ideas, which uncontrolled power and country think only of getting as much impatience of restraint lead him to as possible out of the general plunder, realize without proper deliberation. and of exempting themselves from the Those around him are afraid to tell him taxation to which they ought to conthe truth. It is most rare for him to tribute. A curious specimen of their find his ideas combated or corrected. character and ideas might be seen in a The answer of his highest Ministers complaint from Alexandria, in The Times is usually, "Arda,"-" As you please." of Wednesday last, that high rates of The customs of the country, polygamy, interest could no longer be obtained; the system of adoption, the palaces and that a contract for a thousand quarters great establishments considered neces- of wheat, which used to change hands sary for the various branches of the ruling 30 times, paying 30 brokerages and family, the practice, as old as ancient employing the staffs of 30 merchants, Egypt, of never repairing or finishing was now made direct by the Government the work of another, all contribute to with one exporter, who paid one brokerthe ruinous expenditure. Even Nature age, and then sent it out of the country. appears to encourage this kind of ex- This was regarded as a sign of degenerate travagance. The slowness of the growth times. The great want, and one we of trees in the North seems to attach have endeavoured to impress upon the people to one locality. There is no Khedive and to some extent to supply, chance of making more than one place is that of an official body of high-class in a lifetime. In Egypt, not only is the Europeans, such, for instance, as our growth of trees extraordinarily rapid, public servants in India-a class which but the acacia and sycamore can be the hon. Member who has just spoken transplanted at almost full size. The knows well-men accustomed to deal avenue to the Gezeerah Palace, which with Native races in outlying Provinces, was not in existence a few years ago, and to conduct affairs in which tact, looks as if it had been planted 50 integrity, and decision are required. years. It is only fair, however, to men- Under such men the railways and Custion that the Khedive is the first of his toms duties would produce far more race who has shown an appreciation of than at present. I have alluded to the the antiquities of his country. In Mo- uncertain tenure of office. There seems, hamed Ali's time, the priceless monu- moreover, to be no system of appointments of the past were used as quarries ment. We do not expect a complicated for his bridges and factories. His system of Civil Service Examinations Highness has collected these objects in like our own; but we might suppose a most valuable museum, freely open to that when a man was found fit for his the inspection of travellers. The hon. post, he would retain it. Far from it: Member talks of the Khedive having Ali Pacha, when at the head of the