EGYPT. 



255 





large reduction of railroad freight and passenger 

 rates, estimated at E. 200,000 a year, and the 

 poorer classes everywhere have been benefited by 

 the reduction of 50 per cent, in the price of salt, 

 which forms a state monopoly, the annual loss 

 to the treasury being E. 100,000. In Upper 

 and Middle Egypt the land tax has been reduced 

 to the extent of E. 240,000. Land brought 

 under cultivation for the first time is not taxed 

 until it yields the first remunerative crop, and 

 then for two years it pays only half the regular 

 rate. In spite of these ameliorations, according 

 to the budget report of the Legislative Council, 

 the sum total of the indebtedness of the fella- 

 heen is steadily increasing, and the land is pass- 

 ing with fatal rapidity out of their hands into 

 those of foreign creditors. There are 13,000,000 

 feddans mortgaged, and the amount of mort- 

 gage indebtedness recorded is 20,000,000, hav- 

 ing nearly doubled in ten years. This is attrib- 

 uted to the fact that the land tax, fixed at a 

 period when the prices of produce were high, 

 has not been reduced though prices have greatly 

 declined. The corvee has not been entirely abol- 

 ished, 86,615 peasants having been forced in 1893, 

 at the time of the Nile flood, to give 6,001,886 

 days' labor in the aggregate without receiving 

 pay or food. 



Session of the General Assembly. The 

 General Assembly was opened by the Khedive 

 on Feb. 6. It recommended the Government to 

 reduce the municipal electoral qualification in 

 Alexandria to a yearly rental of 15, one fifth of 

 the former property qualification, and to place 

 no limit on the number of members from each 

 nationality, instead of allowing only 3 members 

 to one nationality. The session was closed on 

 the second day, no important action being ac- 

 complished. 



Change of Ministry. On April 14 the Riaz 

 ministry placed its resignation in the hands of 

 the Khedive, who, after consultation with Lord 

 Cromer, accepted it at once. After the frontier 

 incident the Cabinet possessed neither the confi- 

 dence of the Khedive nor the respect of the pub- 

 lic. Nubar Pasha was intrusted with the forma- 

 tion of a new Cabinet, which was constituted on 

 April 15 as follows : Prime Minister and Minis- 

 ter of the Interior, Nubar Pasha ; Minister of 

 War, Mustafa Fehmy Pasha ; Minister of Pub- 

 lic Works and Instruction, Fakhry Pasha ; Min- 

 ister of Finance, Mazlum Pasha; Minister of 

 Justice, Ibrahim Fuad Pasha ; Minister of For- 

 eign Affairs, Boutros Pasha. The sale of a block 

 of land of the Daira Sanieh estate worth 300,- 

 000 to a European company almost broke up the 

 new ministry at the start. Nubar threatened to 

 resign because his colleagues insisted on reject- 

 ing a higher bid made by a native syndicate. 

 The matter was compromised by giving this land 

 to the Europeans and another block of equal 

 value to the syndicate of Egyptians. The Pre- 

 mier, who in the last reign had been an antago- 

 nist of Lord Cromer and the British, pursued a 

 policy of conciliation. His first act was to warn 

 the editor of the "Journal Egyptien," a violent 

 anti- English sheet. This editor, an Italian 

 named Guarneri, was subsequently expelled from 

 Egypt by order of the Italian consul-general. 



Slavery Trial. On Aug. 28 Ali Pasha Sherif, 

 President of the Legislative Council, Shawarbi 



Pasha, a prominent member of the same body, 

 and Hussein Pasha Wacyf, a retired general, 

 were arrested, with 4 slave dealers and 2 brokers, 

 on the charge of dealing in slaves in contraven- 

 tion of Egyptian law. The dealers had smug- 

 gled 6 Soudanese negresses into Cairo and sold 

 them to the pashas. Shawarbi admitted that his 

 wife had purchased one of the negresses, and that 

 he had two other slaves in his house. Ali Pasha 

 succeeded in postponing his trial by claiming to 

 be an Italian subject, but his claim of naturali- 

 zation was disallowed by the Italian Govern- 

 ment. The two other pashas were tried by 

 court-martial. Nubar Pasha and the Khedive, 

 who was then absent on a tour in Europe, both 

 protested against the abrupt arrest of Egyptians 

 of high rank. The trial was before Egyptian 

 officers, who acquitted the pashas because they 

 had merely bought, not traded, in slaves. The 

 sellers were sentenced to long terms of impris- 

 onment. Sir Horatio Kitchener refused to rec- 

 ognize the acquittal of the two pashas, but took 

 no further proceedings against them. Ali Pasha 

 having resigned his office as President of the 

 Legislative Council and National Assembly, 

 made a confession of the purchase of 3. slaves, 

 and sued for clemency, the proceedings against 

 him were quashed. 



Project of Nile Reservoirs. The Euro- 

 pean engineers, who have performed a great 

 service to Egypt by completing the barrage and 

 cleaning out the canals, are urging the Govern- 

 ment to undertake a more important work, viz., 

 the construction of immense reservoirs in Upper 

 Egypt for the storage of the Nile waters on 

 such a scale as not only to increase vastly the 

 area available for cultivation, but to develop 

 enormously the fertility of land already culti- 

 vated, especially in Upper and Middle Egypt, 

 and to secure permanently the whole country 

 against the calamity resulting from a partial 

 failure of the Nile. W. Willcocks, the Inspec- 

 tor-General of Reservoirs, after studying the sub- 

 ject for four years, recommended a dam on the 

 Assouan cataract in preference to one at Kalab- 

 sha or Philae, or one at Silsila, or Cope White- 

 house's project of flooding the natural depression 

 of Wady Rayan, in the province of Fayoum. 

 The proposed* reservoir would supply Upper and 

 Middle Egypt as well as Lower Egypt. A tech- 

 nical commission, consisting of Sir Benjamin 

 Baker, Signor Torricelli, and M. Boule examined 

 the ground early in 1894 and approved the Will- 

 cocks project, the French member dissenting. 

 The anticipated danger to the sanitary condition 

 of the country, the risk from earthquake, the 

 supposed insuperable engineering obstacles, and 

 the alleged destructive power of a flood in case 

 the dam should break were dismissed as unreal. 

 If the dam should give way in all parts at once 

 the valley would be swept by an inundation for 

 100 miles south of Esneh, but at Cairo and far- 

 ther down the rise of water would be no greater 

 than Nile floods that have occurred. Higher 

 dams than now exist are capable of causing 

 greater damage. The dam should be built up 

 from the solid rock, of massive granite blocks 

 laid in hydraulic cement, which would make 

 them as strong and lasting as the natural rock. 

 The proposed height is 22 metres, and the breadth 

 16 metres. Mr. Willcocks's estimate of cost is 



