French paper just as they buy Punch. A khedival decree has abolished the But it is the utter absence of generosity kurbash. The kurbash was the thong of and fair play which is at times annoy- hippopotamus-hide with which all offending.

And now it remains to enumerate the reforms carried out in Egypt during the last eight years; the great work already accomplished may be held to be a gauge or pledge of the greater triumphs which are yet to come.

ers and non-offenders were punished by being flogged on the soles of their feet. To see a man standing up and being flogged is not pleasant; but to see him thrown on his face on the ground, and then flogged on the soles of his feet, is truly degrading. It is like standing in a A khedival decree has abolished the slaughter-house. We remember the feel. corvée, an institution as ancient as Egypt, ing of loathing with which we witnessed as hateful as slavery. The corvée was the the first application of the kurbash on a name given to the gangs of forced laborers, wretched peasant. Men were flogged for invariably the poorest and most helpless civil offences, for inability to pay rent, for in the land, who for six months every year the purpose of extracting evidence from were compelled to clear the canals and them on suspicion - indeed for well-nigh repair the banks. Egypt existed on their everything. We saw a man kurbashed work. They received no payment except because, after working like a slave in a in blows; they provided their own tools, gang of twenty men trying to cut a bank, carrying wet earth on their bare backs the work could not keep pace with the when they were too poor to provide bas-rising water, and he was the nearest man kets; they brought their own bags full of to the overseer. The fear of punishment dry biscuits, on which they existed; they slept out of doors in all weathers, with the bare sky above their heads. The government did absolutely nothing for them except punish and imprison them when their stock of food failed and they ran away to beg or steal. In the Delta their lives were made bitter by feeling that all this hard labor benefited them but little; for while they were digging and clearing the canals, their rich neighbors, principally Turkish pashas and European-protected subjects, were pumping up the water and irrigating cotton, while their own fields had to wait for the Nile flood. The Turkish pashas never sent a man to the corvée off their estates; the European-protected subjects were just as bad, except that they made mean excuses, which the Turks scorned to do. High ministers not only sent no men, but used the poor corvée for weeding their own cotton-fields or transplanting their rice. It cost the country over £800, ooo per annum to clear the canals indifferently and totally neglect the drains; while to-day both canals and drains are thoroughly done for £400,000 per annum, by means of machinery and free labor. This is the greatest reform which has been made. It has been put on such a sure foundation that it will be difficult ever again to reintroduce corvée. Discussing the subject with a number of peasants one day, we asked them what they thought of it. In their own unpoetical and realistic way, they said that they were now able to swallow their own spittle, an operation impossible before, as some one always had them by the throat.

was so perpetually present to everybody
in the country that it crippled them all
whenever an emergency occurred. This
government by fear is lauded by many as
the masterful rule of the Turks. We
once saw a white-haired man at the house
of an Egyptian effendi, and addressed him
as though he were a patriarch. He told
us that he was a comparatively young man,
but had had the misfortune to be sub-
governor of a district where a serious
breach had occurred in the Nile bank in
Ishmael Pasha's time. On hearing of the
accident the khedive telegraphed back
that the engineer and the sub-governor
were to be thrown into the breach. The
telegram arrived in the evening, and be
fore next morning the sub-governor's hair
had become grey. Meantime harim in-
fluence had been used, and the khedive
countermanded his order. The effect had
been so terrifying that when the next
breach nearly occurred in 1887, the en-
gineer in charge, in anticipation of punish.
ment, could not possibly think of his work,
and, in a paroxysm of fear, could do noth-
ing except slap his own cheeks until they
were like lobsters. On this last occasion
the peasantry were loud in praise of the
governor of the province because he had
been able to continue his smoking through
the whole of the excitement; for, accord-
ing to Egyptian ideas, the first effect of
fear is to incapacitate a man for smoking.
The kurbash, and with it all unreasonable
punishments, have been abolished.
still lingers on in holes and corners, but
there is not a single soul in Egypt who
does not know that it is illegal, and if its

It

application is reported, very serious notice | a number of these people took possession of it will be taken by the government. of a canal about a mile long, belonging to The Egyptian authorities, emboldened a village; they ploughed it up and sowed by the presence of the English, have stood it with cotton. The wretched villagers, between the peasantry and the European- cut off from their water, would formerly protected subjects; these latter people have sold their land to their tormentors returned to Egypt in the rear of the Brit- for a fifth of its proper value and become ish forces, just as the mixed multitude tenants-at-will. But the beginning of a followed the Israelites. Then, as now, new day had dawned for Egypt, and the the mixed multitudes were at the bottom peasantry appealed to the government. of every rascality which occurred. By the The English officer of the district was capitulations European-protected subjects, sent down, and was met by half-a-dozen be they negroes from Timbuctoo or out- men who turned out with rusty guns and casts from some South American republic, pistols, and declared that the canal had though they are principally Greeks and never existed. What they wanted was a Levantines, cannot be interfered with by protracted lawsuit with frequent appeals, the Egyptian authorities while they have during the whole of which time the lands a roof over their heads. They are not of the Egyptian peasantry would have resubject to the ordinary tribunals. These mained unirrigated and barren, and they men built houses on government property; would have given in. Of course the officer they actually took possession of govern- re-dug the canal, irrigated the lands, and ment bridges and built shops on them; saved the peasantry from ruin. This acthey stopped thoroughfares, and then tion had a very wholesome effect on the preyed on the peasantry. Nothing could whole district. The comment of the be done with them. None of them had French press on the transaction was, that ever built anything themselves; every one if the new government officers were going of them had just bought the houses for to encourage the Moslem peasantry to considerable sums of money. It would thus browbeat and maltreat Europeans, take one long to guess how they were dis- in a few months it would be impossible lodged. Finding that the ground on which for a European to traverse the Delta in they had built was government property, safety. The best evidence of the feeling the authorities, emboldened by the British of security in the country now is given by occupation, enclosed their houses with dry the rapidity with which the peasantry are brick walls, prevented ingress and egress, buying back the land which they were only and eventually starved them out. Again, too glad to get rid of in old days. Conno one is allowed by law to put up a pump versing with a Greek the other day he for lifting water from one of the govern- declared to us that Egypt was fast going ment canals without first obtaining a per- to the dogs "Why," he added, "a few mit. If an Egyptian does so, his pump years ago hundreds of my countrymen is quickly removed. But the protected came to the country, and soon returned subjects threw wooden huts over their with well-filled purses; while now they engines and appealed to the capitulations. need to bring capital, and may lose even At first the authorities were helpless be- that." fore the capitulations, but they learnt that the roof only protects that which is under it, and any projecting part of the machinery (as there must always be some projecting part in a pump lifting water) may be removed. By this means the illegal gains of large numbers of protected subjects, who had defied the government before the occupation, and made handsome revenues as middlemen selling water which did not belong to them, were curtailed, and the peasantry themselves allowed to put up their own pumps. These very men, who had no right to the pumping-engines, did not hesitate to hold the government responsible for failures of water-supply when the Nile flood was insufficient. We shall give one instance of many of the ways they treated the peasantry. Early in 1884

The financial outlook is just as bright to-day as it was dark in 1883. In 1883 all the heads of departments in Egypt, the khedive leading the way, sacrificed ten per cent. of their salary to enable the financial equilibrium to be preserved! Since then, taxation represented by £650,000 per annum has been taken off the necks of the poorest of the peasantry. The gov ernment has remitted £1,000,000 of old arrears of land revenue which were recorded against the peasantry. In spite of these remissions, the prosperity of the country has become so great that the reve nues of 1890 were higher than those of any previous year in the annals of modern Egypt. The surplus of revenue over expenditure in 1890 was £600,000. The postage and telegraph charges have been

halved. The interest on the debt has been reduced by £350,000 per annum. The public works of the country have been so improved that land has risen twenty per cent. in value, in spite of the depreciation of agricultural produce over the whole world. The railways have been supplied with sufficient funds to maintain them in efficient order, A municipality has been created for Alexandria, and it has been given half the octroi dues of the city. A reserve fund of £1,750,000 has been formed to enable the government to meet all emergencies. The unified debt of Egypt has risen in value twenty-six per cent. It was quoted at seventy in 1883, to-day it is at ninety-six. The financial position of Egypt is so good that Egyptian bonds are now treated as first-class secu. rities. Blue-book No. C. 6320 of 1891, which contains Sir Evelyn Baring's report on the finances of Egypt, reads more like the despatch of a victorious general than the financial statement of a country.

That Egyptian army with which Ibrahim Pasha early in this century defeated Turkey, and would have taken Constantinople, if the European powers had not interfered, had so degenerated, owing to mismanagement and dishonest treatment, that it had become a mere rabble. It has been entirely reconstructed, and fresh life given to it. The glaring abuses of recruiting have been done away with; discipline and smartness have been taught. The officers and soldiers have learnt to respect themselves, and have shown by their behavior on numerous fields that they are worthy of taking their place by the side of those troops with which Mehemet Ali established his throne in Egypt and the Soudan.

In the hospitals and in the prisons there has been progress, while the Kasrel-Ain hospital in Cairo will bear comparison with similar institutions in England.

So far we have considered the good work already performed; it remains to Turn where one will, he will find im- consider what has yet to be done. The provements in every direction that the reforms in the judicial, educational, intecapitulations have allowed of improve- rior, sanitary, and police departments are ments. The great dams across the Nile in their infancy as compared to those in have been secured; a new life has been the financial, military, and public works given to the interior navigation of the departments. It was impossible to adcountry; a thorough system of drainage vance all along the line simultaneously. has been inaugurated; and the first Canal Though the work of reformation in some Law Egypt has any record of has been departments has begun late, it is all progpassed. This Canal Law does not apply ress in one direction. Nowhere has there to the European-protected subjects; but been any retrogression. The appointment while the executive is strong these people of Justice Scott has been followed by will not dare to take advantage of their the introduction of measures which will position, as the Canal Law confers favors bring justice near the people, ensure the as well as disabilities on those to whom it efficiency of the judges, and enable the applies. All government servants have police to work with the bench. The been put on graded lists according to judges themselves look forward to their seniority and service, so that promotion emancipation from the ministry of justice. should go by seniority or merit, and not by This ministry has up to the present enfavoritism or worse. It is the absence of joyed a power which has killed all indeall lists like these which so debases and pendence on the bench. That almost degrades government servants, and encour-historic war which the police, hampered ages the worst men to use unworthy means to secure promotion. The collection of the land tax has been so regulated that it is now paid in instalments after the different harvests, and not just before them, as it was originally; the peasantry are thus no longer compelled to be perpetually borrowing money and becoming involved. A new coinage has been introduced. The Upper Egypt Railway is being gradually extended southwards, and two bridges over the Nile are under construction. Egypt has so improved that the imports and exports of Egypt proper alone are at the same figure as those of both Egypt and the Soudan in 1881.

by the ministry of the interior, has waged against the judges, tied hand and foot by a code as unsuited to Egypt as the statutes of Manu would be to Great Britain, is on the eve of coming to an end. The separation of the police from the ministry of the interior will be followed by the subordination of the interior itself to the finance ministry. This last ministry has an executive so strong that it will easily manage both departments. The capitulations strangle the sanitary department, but as the Europeans themselves who do the strangling are the chief sufferers, there is a kind of grim justice here, which will set matters right after the first serious epi,

demic. In the educational department an | wonders of a land of wonders. By the enormous amount has still to be done. It use of sculptures and inscriptions on those is here that prejudice has its deepest imperishable rocks, it will be possible to roots. The enlightened Egyptians send hand down a record of our own times to their sons to be educated abroad, do not the most remote future, and to stamp ininterest themselves in the unenlightened, delibly on the page of history the name of and do not see how it degrades their that khedive of Egypt whose reign has country to have no national education witnessed the awakening of Egypt from worthy of the name. There will be no her long sleep. national spirit until the Cairo schools and colleges, supplemented by a university, educate boys and men as well as they can be educated abroad. It is no uncommon thing in Egypt to find Egyptians educated in Europe speaking of their countrymen who have been educated in Egypt much as Brahmins speak of pariahs. The most talented Egyptians we have met with have been all educated in their own country, but their education was so lamentably deficient that they have appeared to disadvantage before men who, though possessing no ability, have still been well instructed abroad. But even in the educational department there is some life to-day. A good agricultural college has been started, and is exceedingly popular. The success in this direction will now encourage the government to be practical in others, and abolish all that unprofitable instruction which makes everything in Egypt so thoroughly second-hand.

Of two other tasks before the government we shall speak more fully, as they are destined to play no unimportant part in the future history of Egypt. One-half of the land of Egypt can produce the valuable crops of sugarcane and cotton, and is worth on an average £40 per acre; the other half cannot produce these crops, owing to the insufficiency of the summer supply of the Nile, and is in consequence worth only £15 per acre. A project for storing and utilizing water, which will cost only £5,000,000, and add £60,000,000 to the wealth of Egypt, is under consideration. The profits of this enterprise will go almost entirely to the poorest of the peasantry, for they possess nearly all the poor land in Upper Egypt. One of the most important projects is to construct an open dam across the valley of the Nile at the head of the first or second cataract, which will make a reservoir capable of storing all the necessary water. This dam will, it is hoped, be among similar works much what the Forth Bridge is among viaducts. It is to be built of imperishable granite, and of a design in keeping with the architecture of ancient Egypt; when completed, it is hoped that it will not be unworthy of taking its place among the

In order to enable Egypt to develop itself; to find a healthy outlet for its greatly increasing population; to enable the surplus population to form colonies on the banks of the Nile, and snatch large tracts from the desert; to regain that trade of the Soudan, the loss of which has beggared all the large towns in the south of Egypt; to open telegraphic communication with Khartoum, and save the country from the uncertainties of the Nile flood which now comes like a thief in the night; to enable a civilized community to utilize those giant lakes which constitute the sources of the Nile, and bring under cultivation tracts capable of competing with the Southern States of North America — tracts which Europeans cannot work, which Arabs will not work, but which are waiting for the skilled and laborious agriculturists of the Nile valley; and finally, to strangle the slave trade in its last strongholds, it remains for the Egyptian army, thoroughly appointed and thoroughly capable of accomplishing the task, to begin the reconquest of that country which Mehemet Ali left as a heritage to Egypt -a heritage to which Egypt, indeed, might have been considered as having forfeited her right, owing to her misgovernment when under Turkish influence, were it not that Egypt to-day, freed from Turkish barbarity and under English influence, is another country. It is no more possible for Egypt to return to her old vicious Turkish systems in the Soudan, than it is possible for England to bring back the days of Chêt Singh and Omichand in British India.

But if Egypt is to be tossed into the British electoral arena as a football for party struggles, not merely the great fact of our occupation, but the whole spirit of heartiness in which our countrymen are carrying on their great work, will be exposed to very serious disadvantage. Mr. Gladstone, at Newcastle, rather insinuated than dared a disparagement of our continued presence in Egypt, and hinted that it would be the duty of his own government, on coming into office, to put an end to the occupation. We quote his exact words, which are an excellent illustration

of the science, spargere voces in vulgum | six millions of Egyptian peasantry who, ambiguas, in which he is the greatest liv- unable to read and write, know not in ing adept. "I shall indeed rejoice," said politics their right hand from their left, Mr. Gladstone in that part of his speech but who do know that they enjoy a liberty, where he is good enough to extend his freedom, and prosperity which neither patronage to Lord Salisbury's foreign they nor their forefathers ever knew bepolicy,fore; knowing that Britain stepped into I shall indeed rejoice if, before the day and many lives in saving the Greek and the breach, and sacrificed much treasure comes for the present Administration to give up the ghost, it be possible for Lord Salisbury Levantine Christians from the Egyptian to make an effort to relieve us from that bur- peasantry in their hour of just and rightdensome and embarrassing occupation of eous anger, and that she has right, over Egypt, which, so long as it lasts, rely upon it, and above her duty, to see that the peas. must be a cause of weakness and a source of antry are not handed over again to their embarrassment, which we owe entirely to en-old oppressors; knowing that the capitugagements contracted by a former Tory Government, and the escape from which I greatly fear the present Tory Government, improved as it is in its foreign policy, will, notwithstanding, hand over to its successors to deal

with.

A statesman who can compress so many
malicious misstatements into the compass
of a single sentence shows no decline in
these peculiar arts that have raised him
to eminence.

Age cannot wither him, nor custom stale
His infinite variety.

Mr. Gladstone knows quite well that our present occupation of Egypt was not brought about by a Tory government, but was a direct legacy from his own administration. He knows also that he can have no credit from a fact that is so full of security to this country and of benefit to the Egyptian millions, for he blundered into the bombardment of Alexandria and the campaign against Arabi, which planted us in Egypt without the option of removing, except at the risk of anarchy and revolution in the East. He knows also, that though he were returned to office to-morrow, his Cabinet would not or could not withdraw our troops and officers from Egypt. The insinuation, then, that the country is suffering from our occupation of Egypt, and that Mr. Gladstone will put an end to it when he comes back to office, is unworthy of the remains of a great statesman ; and the British elector, whether Conservative or Radical, who cannot help reading with pride the great work of the regeneration of Egypt which this country is carrying out, will have his own views of the policy which seeks to make party capital by decrying and disparaging it.

And finally, knowing that a few noisy Syrians and interested Turks arrogate to themselves the name of Egypt, and misrepresent to Europe the opinions of the

lations bind Egypt in as deadly grasp as that in which Nessus's poisoned garment bound Hercules; knowing that nought but ruin awaits the fellaheen if the capit ulations remain, and the strong protecting hand of one first-class European power is withdrawn, and her place taken by that crowd of jealous and conflicting opinions known as the great powers of Europe; knowing that that goodly structure of Egyptian regeneration which England is raising on deep foundations, and for which she is spending with no sparing hand her best energies, will be left unfinished and incomplete, or be thrown down, if she deserts her post; and knowing that Englishmen should stand manfully by those who have stood manfully by them, and enabled their occupation to be a success so manifest that it will be a landmark in history-every well-wisher of Egypt feels confident that Britain will continue her occupation until Egypt has made such reforms and progress, and has taken such a place among civilized nations, that no further necessity or justification of her presence can remain.