PRESENT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL POSITION. 311 



For nearly a century the conquerors of western Europe have disputed the 

 possession of Egypt, which was even in 1672 spoken of by Leibnitz as the natural 

 centre of the Old World, and the key to all the colonial possessions on the shores 

 of the Indian Ocean. The vital importance of this commanding position could not 

 fail to be observed by statesmen who were contending for the possession of the 

 Indian peninsula. Had the armies of the French Republic succeeded in retaining 

 Egypt, which they had so rapidly overrun, there would have been an end to British 

 rule in Hindustan, and England would have lost the inheritance of the Great Mogul. 

 But after the destruction of the French fleet in Aboukir Bay, Great Britain, resum- 

 ing undisputed possession of the ocean highways, again became in her turn the 

 mistress of Egypt, without even having the trouble to conquer it, and the French 

 were obliged to withdraw after two years of occupation. 



To the clash of arms succeeded diplomatic manœuvres and incessant struggles 

 for obtaining the upper hand at Cairo and Constantinople. At the time of the 

 inauguration of the Suez Canal, which opened up a direct route for steamers to 

 India, and was the work of a French engineer, France at last seemed on the verge 

 of obtaining a kind of suzerainty over Egypt. But England, concentrating all her 

 efforts to secure this highway to India, has finally succeeded in acquiring political 

 possession of Egypt, just as she has secured to herself the commercial pre-eminence 

 over the canal between the two seas. Officially, England intervenes only to advise 

 and assist the sovereign, but in reality her envoys are not far from being the 

 absolute masters of the land. They draw up the treaties, declare war, and conclude 

 peace, distribute places and pensions, dictate the sentences to the magistrates. But 

 they leave the authority to the Egyptian officials, when it is necessary to sanction 

 lists of taxes or to undertake affairs for which it does not suit them to be respon- 

 sible. 



It may be said that the Nile basin, with its 40,000,000 inhabitants, has for a 

 period, more or less extended, virtually become part of the vast British Empire. 

 Although the English generals have scarcely any army at their disposition, mer- 

 cenaries of all nations will be found ready to assist them in finishing the conquest 

 of the country, in recent times commenced on behalf of the Khedive and the Sultan 

 by Munzinger, Baker, Gordon, Gessi, Stone, Prout, and others. 



But the military difficulties attendant upon the annexation of this country will 

 not be the only ones that Great Britain will have to deal with. Even should the 

 other European powers assist England in consolidating her supremacy in Egypt, 

 this authority would not be supported, as in most other English colonies, by the 

 co-operation of a population of British origin. Those amongst the foreigners 

 settled in the country who dispose of the financial resources, establish industries, 

 conduct the papers, and guide public opinion, are mostly Continental Europeans, 

 Italians, Frenchmen, Greeks, and Austrians, whose interests and aspirations are 

 often antagonistic to those of the English. These European immigrants, much 

 better preferred by the natives to the phlegmatic Englishman, who will always be 

 prevented by the climate from founding colonies properly so-called, form in the 

 towns an ever- increasing community, which already numbers nearly 100,000 



