34 The Drink Question in Egypt [1890 



of English rule. It had been against the spread of drink as much as 

 anything that the revolution of 1881 had acquired its moral strength in 

 public opinion and, with the suppression of the Nationalists after Tel- 

 eliKebir, and the reinstatement of European control, the evil had re- 

 turned in double force. It is hardly too much to say that we had in- 

 tervened in Egypt to reinstate the Greek drink sellers, who combined 

 it with moneylending in the villages of the Delta. The country district 

 where I had my home was a good instance of how the evil worked. 

 The villages in our immediate neighbourhood at Sheykh Obeyd were 

 inhabited entirely by Mohammedans ; in the whole of them there were 

 not half-a-dozen Copts or Christians of any sect and there was no 

 demand whatever for drink in any of them. On my return there, 

 however, in this year I found that a small local railway had been 

 opened, joining these with Cairo, and that at each station on the line 

 as the first sign of the coming civilization a drink shop had been estab- 

 lished, kept by a Greek moneylender in the interest of his financial 

 business. It was calculated that if the fellahin could be tempted inside 

 his doors to taste the forbidden liquor the rest of his morality would 

 soon give way, and with it his independence of borrowing. Against 

 this coming evil the respectable heads of the villages were doing their 

 best to make opposition, and one morning they called on me to advise 

 what they should do. I advised them to make formal protest to the 

 Government, and offered if they should fail in obtaining a favourable 

 answer, to plead their cause with Baring, who alone had it in his power 

 to put pressure not so much on the Khedivial officials as on the Greek 

 Consulate. The Greek drink-sellers were most of them Hellenic sub- 

 jects, and as such protected by the international agreements known as 

 the Capitulations against interference in their trade by the Khedivial 

 police, and the privileges thus enjoyed by them had been re-established 

 in full force with the overthrow of the National Government, and it 

 rested with Baring, who exercised all real power, to decide to what 

 extent the privileges should be permitted to go. The whole question 

 of the drink shops might, if he was willing, be treated as a police matter 

 to be dealt with as a common nuisance, and it would not have been 

 possible for the Greek Consul-General to make a serious question of 

 it if Baring should insist. The secret reason, however, of the protection 

 extended to them at the Consulate was, that they bought their immunity 

 there in part with cash paid down, in part with threats of complaints laid 

 against the Consul-General at Athens, a form of black-mailing much in 

 vogue amongst the Greeks. 



" 25th March. — Saw Sir Evelyn Baring on the drink question, es- 

 pecially with regard to our being threatened here at Sheykh Obeyd. 

 I told him of the deputation which had come to me from Merj and 

 Kafr el Shorafa (in protest against the drink shops being open in those 



