44 Milner in Egypt [1890 



before the Sultan's refusal, nor is it possible to say that she was without 

 justification in feeling the matter strongly. In accordance with this, 

 Baring was beginning those changes in the fiscal and administrative 

 domain which were intended to transfer all real power in Egypt, little 

 by little, from the Turco-Circassian class represented by Riaz which he 

 had hitherto patronized, into his own. The new policy, however, was 

 as yet only in embryo, and the intention of remaining in Egypt was not 

 avowed. It was impossible to do so openly, not only through the fear 

 of trouble with France, but also because Liberal opinion in England 

 was not prepared for it, and unless it could be converted to the idea 

 before the next general election, which was to take place in 1892, it 

 was always possible that Gladstone, coming once more into power, 

 might suddenly reverse the whole process of absorption, and without 

 further waiting recall the troops from Cairo. 



It was with this fear before his eyes that Baring had obtained the 

 services in Egypt of Alfred Milner, a journalist of distinction, the 

 same whom I had known in 1884 as sub-editor of the " Pall Mall 

 Gazette " under Stead (see " Gordon at Khartoum "), and who, a year 

 later, had been taken on by Goschen as his private secretary. It was 

 through Goschen's recommendation that Baring gave him a place in 

 Egypt of f 1,000 a year at the Ministry of Finance, nominally for ad- 

 ministrative work, but in reality with a mission of organizing a press 

 campaign in London in favour of a continuance of the Egyptian occupa- 

 tion. For this work no man could have been better chosen. He was 

 nominally a Liberal, and had stood as a supporter of Gladstone at the 

 general election of 1885, while his experience in Northumberland Street 

 had put him in touch with all the chief writers of the English Liberal 

 press. No man better than he knew the length of the English electoral 

 foot. At Cairo, without appearing personally in his journalistic char- 

 acter, he knew how to bring the case he had to argue forward by en- 

 couraging the various Englishmen officially employed there to write 

 articles in the monthly magazines and elsewhere in praise, not of their 

 own, but of their fellow-administrator's achievements in the way of 

 reform, knowing well that if it could be proved that Egypt, instead of 

 a burden on the British Exchequer, was becoming a paying concern, 

 the battle would be won with the new government, should a Liberal one 

 come into office, even with Mr. Gladstone. And so, in fact, it hap- 

 pened. The appearance of Milner's very able volume, " England in 

 Egypt," in which he drew together all these threads of argument in 

 lucid and attractive form, and which was published a few months be- 

 fore the general election of 1892, effected, as I will show later, exactly 

 the object aimed at. Milner's reward for this service was not delayed. 

 The same year he was relieved from his nominal functions in Egypt, 

 and given the important place at home of Chairman of the Inland 



