310 



EGYPT. 



two oceans. Ivory, gums, and ostrich-feathers 

 were the principal articles of trade, and the 

 commerce in 1874, when Gordon first went to 

 the Soudan, was chiefly in the hands of the 

 Dongolowee, the nomadic people of Dongola ; 

 and Mohammed Achmed, since become the 

 Mahdi, and Zebehr Pasha were indirectly in- 

 terested with their countrymen in that trade. 

 The confiscation of the property of these Don- 

 gola merchants sowed the seeds of the discon- 

 tent that culminated in the insurrection. 



Sir Henry Drummond Wolff's Mission. Sir Henry 

 D. "Wolff was accredited as envoy extraordi- 

 nary and minister plenipotentiary to the Sul- 

 tan some time in July. He arrived in Con- 

 stantinople on the 29th August of this year, 

 and was received the next day by the Sultan. 

 The reported object of Sir Henry Drummond 

 Wolff's visit was to establish an entente with the 

 Sultan in Egyptian matters. Considerable oppo- 

 sition was made in England to his appointment 

 on the ground that he was a persona grata at 

 Constantinople and at Cairo, Sir Henry having 

 declared that Tewfik Khedive was nothing else 

 than an accomplice in the massacre of Alexan- 

 dria a charge which had been made by Sir 

 William Gregory, Mr. Blunt, and Mr. Broad ley, 

 counsel for Arabi. 



As late as October 11, advices from Constan- 

 tinople stated that the basis of an agreement 

 arrived at was a reform of the entire civil, 

 military, and financial government of Egypt ; 

 autonomy ; exclusion of Turkish troops ; with- 

 1 drawal of British troops when safe. Turkish 

 commissioners and Sir Henry Drummond Wolff 

 are discussing schemes of government. 



The English Occupation, This was a long 

 chapter of blunders and mishaps, a comedy of 

 errors alternated by dark and bloody trage- 

 dies, from Arabi to the Mahdi. The bombard- 

 ment of Alexandria had been prevented, if a 

 month earlier, on the llth of June, England 

 had promptly used the naval forces at her com- 

 mand to suppress the pitiless massacre of her 

 subjects on that day. The burning of the city, 

 and the massacres that followed, had been 

 averted, if Admiral Seymour had used ordi- 

 nary care. The defeat of Hicks, of Graham, 

 and of Baker was the consequence of England's 

 vaulting ambition to possess the Soudan, while 

 Gordon's mission was, in fact, but the corol- 

 lary of Lord Dufferin's proposition to abandon 

 the Soudan, so far as Egypt was concerned, 

 and then, in connection with the railway to be 

 built from Suakin to Berber, to establish an 

 entente with the Mahdi, or, as Gordan attempt- 

 ed to do, buy him off with money and recog- 

 nize him as the Emir of Kordofan, Gordon 

 himself, it being understood, to be, as he an- 

 nounced in proclamation, the Vali or Sultan of 

 the Soudan. ^ One and all of these have failed, 

 and the cost in treasure and precious lives is a 

 source of great humiliation to England. With 

 three years of so-called reform in Egypt, Eng- 

 land has not succeeded, either in military or 

 civil administration, nor in politics. The army 



has been defeated, the finances are in disorder, 

 and bankruptcy has been averted only by re- 

 course to the powers; commerce is stagnant, 

 crime is rampant. The administrators, from 

 which the Arabic element has been eliminated 

 to give place to English bureaucracy, are para- 

 lyzed. The prestige of the Khedive is nil. 

 The Soudan, that magnificent conquest of Me- 

 hemet Ali, is lost. Scientific exploration in that 

 country is indefinitely checked, and the march 

 of civilization impeded. Arabi could scarcely 

 have done worse. 



The financial situation at the close of 1884 

 was desperate in the extreme. Lord North- 

 brook, with a view to remedy the evil, had been 

 sent to Egypt and de visit render a report to 

 the British Government. The memorandum 

 of the 29th of November, submitted to the pow- 

 ers for their approval, contained the following 

 considerations : 



1. The necessity imposed by the state of the 

 Egyptian budget to lighten the debt by caus- 

 ing the creditors to submit to a reduction of in- 

 terest. 



2. The necessity of meeting in some regular 

 way the immediate charges imposed upon the 

 country, upon the one part, by the floating 

 debt, works on irrigation, etc. ; and upon the 

 other part by the indemnities awarded by the 

 Alexandria Commission. To this end England 

 proposed, first, the emission of a loan of 5,- 

 000,000, the product to be applied to the pay- 

 ment of the first group; and, second, a new 

 emission of bonds of the privileged debt, to be 

 applied to the payment of the indemnified of 

 Alexandria. On the 19th of January, 1885, 

 counter - propositions were submitted by M. 

 Jules Ferry, President of the Council and Min- 

 ister of Foreign Affairs for France, and ad- 

 dressed to Lord Gran vi lie. Bri efly stat ed , th ey 

 were as follow: Instead of a loan of 5,000,000 

 at 3 per cent., to be guaranteed by England, 

 covering the floating debt, and the creation of 

 4,500,000 of preferred stock at 4 per cent, to 

 meet the Alexandria indemnities, there should 

 be a pre-preference loan of 9,000,000 at 3 per 

 cent., guaranteed by all the powers. The Do- 

 main and Daira revenues, which the English 

 plan proposed to assign as security for the 5,- 

 000,000 loan, are to remain separately adminis- 

 tered, largely by French officials, and applied 

 to their special objects as at present. The re- 

 duction of interest on the debt all around 

 not considered admissible by the powers, but 

 they assent in principle to the levy of a tax of 

 5 per cent, on the coupons of every class of 

 Egyptian security, should it be necessary. 



A commission (Tenquete is suggested in orde 

 to ascertain the actual necessities of the Egyp- 

 tian treasury. There is an admission of the prn 

 ciple of the right to tax foreigners in Egypt. 

 The powers also had drawn the attention of 

 her Majesty's Government to the question of 

 the freedom of navigation of the Suez Canal, 

 and point out that Lord Granville had express* 

 a favorable opinion to an agreement on tl 



