LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
LORD CROMER 
 

 
 S ;,,,,- 
 
 
LORD CROMER 
 
 BY 
 
 H. D. TRAILL 
 
 If 
 
 LONDON 
 BLISS, SANDS AND CO. 
 
 1897 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 EARLY YEARS 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 ii 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 COMMISSIONER OF THE EGYPTIAN DEBT 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE DUAL CONTROL . . . . . 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA . . 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO . . . . 85 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT . . . . 116 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 GORDON AND BARING . . . . . 143 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY . . . . 163 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE FINANCIAL CRISIS . . . . 184 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 211 
 
 220795 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XI. PAGE 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS . . .230 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED . 256 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE NEW KHEDIVE . . .281 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA . 310 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS . : 33 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PORTRAIT OF LORD CROMER (Photogravure) . Frontispiece 
 
 CAIRO (a Bird's-Eye View) . . . faces page 26 
 
 THE BRITISH AGENCY (Lord Cromer's Residence) . ,, ,, 86 
 THE COMMANDANT'S QUARTERS (Commandant of Army 
 
 of Occupation) . . . . ,, ,, 93 
 
 KHARTOUM (a Bird's-Eye View) . . ,, ,, 104 
 
 THE FIRST CATARACT (The Great Gate) . . ,, 132 
 
 PORTRAIT OF OSMAN DIGNA . . ,, ,, 144 
 
 KHARTOUM (The Palace) . . . ,, ,, 182 
 
 A VIEW BELOW THE FIRST CATARACT (above Assouan) ,, ,, 201 
 
 THE KASR-EL-NIL BARRACKS . . . ,, 227 
 
 THE ABASSIEH BARRACKS . . . ,, 245 
 
 PORTRAIT OF THE KHEDIVE . . . ,, ,, 282 
 
 THE ABDIN PALACE . . . . ,, 292 
 
 THE SECOND CATARACT (at Low Water) . ,, ,, 303 
 
 PORTRAIT OF GENERAL KITCHENER . . ,, ,, 304 
 
 A GROUP OF NUBIANS . . ..,,,, 316 
 
 NUBIAN VILLAGE (above Korosko) . . ,, ,, 327 
 
LORD CROMER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Early Years 
 
 THE family of Baring, originally of German 
 extraction, but for now two centuries domi- 
 ciled and naturalized citizens of this country, 
 has for more than half that long period been 
 conspicuous in the world of British commerce, 
 finance, and politics. Its founder, John, son of 
 Franz Baring, a Lutheran minister of Bremen, 
 came to England in the year 1697, and established 
 himself as a merchant and cloth manufacturer at 
 Larkbeer, in Devonshire. His son Francis, born 
 at that place in 1 740, was sent to London to study 
 commerce under a leading firm of city merchants. 
 Though deaf from his youth, his indomitable 
 energy enabled him to overcome all obstacles, and 
 to establish his business on the surest foundations. 
 He prospered exceedingly, and had risen to wealth 
 and importance by the time he had reached 
 middle age. Towards the end of the century, 
 
12 LORD CROMER 
 
 when Pitt had determined to strengthen the titled 
 orders with an infusion of new blood from the 
 middle classes, Francis Baring was a personage 
 of sufficient prominence in the commercial world 
 to have become a natural object of the Minister's 
 selection. The elevation of another financial 
 magnate, his contemporary, was celebrated by a 
 political rhymer of the day in the irreverent 
 
 distich : 
 
 "Billy Pitt made me a peer, 
 And took the pen from behind my ear." 
 
 Francis Baring was at least as wealthy as the 
 founder of the noble house of Carrington, and 
 had other and higher claims than any that Mr. 
 Robert Smith is known to have possessed. He 
 was an authority on questions of Currency and 
 finance, and a contributor of weighty additions 
 to the literature of the subject. He had made 
 himself specially conversant with the principles 
 and details of Indian finance ; and his advice 
 was sought by the Government of the day on 
 matters of administration connected therewith. 
 He had been a Director of the East India 
 Company since 1779, and in 1792-93 he acted 
 as its Chairman. Yet, although in spite of these 
 varied claims to enrolment in the peerage he re- 
 ceived in the last-mentioned year only the minor 
 honour of a baronetcy, it proved but the first 
 of a series of distinctions attained by a family 
 
EARLY YEARS 13 
 
 which, during the last sixty years, has added no 
 fewer than four new titles to the roll of Peers. 
 
 Alexander, second son of the first Baronet, 
 was created Lord Ashburton in 1835. Thomas, 
 grandson of Sir Francis, was raised to the Peerage 
 in 1866 as Baron Northbrook, a dignity ex- 
 changed in 1876 for the Earldom now held by 
 his son, the distinguished statesman who in the 
 last-mentioned year concluded his term of office 
 as Viceroy of India. In 1885 another of Sir 
 Francis's grandsons, Edward Charles Baring, was 
 created Lord Revelstoke ; and in 1892 his younger 
 brother Evelyn, the subject of this memoir, com- 
 pleted for the present the list of the family 
 honours by his elevation to the Peerage under 
 the title of Lord Cromer. 
 
 Evelyn Baring was born on February 26th, 
 1841, the sixth child of his father Henry Baring's 
 second marriage. From his mother, a daughter 
 of Vice- Admiral Windham, and a woman of high 
 culture, moving in a brilliant literary society of 
 which George Grote the historian and Arthur 
 Helps were members, he himself derived that 
 marked literary bias of which those who enjoy 
 his intimacy are so often and in so many ways 
 reminded. After a year or two at a preparatory 
 school, kept by Rev. F. Bickmore, he was trans- 
 ferred to the Ordnance School at Carshalton, the 
 well-known training seminary for the scientific 
 
14 LORD CROMER 
 
 branches of the Army ; and migrating thence, at 
 the age of thirteen, to Woolwich Academy, he in 
 due course qualified himself for a commission, 
 and passed out into the Artillery in 1858, in 
 his eighteenth year. 
 
 His military career was as uneventful as such 
 careers could not help being for all those who 
 commenced them after the last of the two great 
 opportunities for active service during the middle 
 years of the century the Crimean War and the 
 Indian Mutiny had come and gone. The first 
 ten or twelve years of his life as an Artillery 
 officer seem to have been passed in the usual 
 routine of military duties during periods of peace. 
 Early in the sixties he was stationed at Corfu, 
 where he served as aide-de-camp to the last High 
 Commissioner of the Ionian Islands before their 
 retrocession, Sir Henry Storks; and it was through 
 his connection with that official that Baring was 
 subsequently selected to accompany him on his 
 appointment to preside over the Commission 
 which was sent out to inquire into the circum- 
 stances of the Jamaica outbreak, suppressed 
 with such memorable controversial results by 
 Governor Eyre. 
 
 In the year 1868, shortly after his return from 
 Jamaica, Lieutenant Baring entered the Staff 
 College ; and his two years' course of military 
 study in that institution bore fruit in a volume 
 
EARLY YEARS 
 
 of Staff College Essays, published by him in his 
 own name in the spring of 1870. The moment 
 for their publication was not so favourable as 
 it would have been a few months later, when the 
 catastrophic overthrow of France by Germany 
 had set every European nation anxiously study- 
 ing the new and terrible phenomena of warfare 
 which that tremendous event had thrust upon 
 their view. An awakened interest in military 
 matters generally was, however, already abroad, 
 and Baring's essays deserved, and no doubt 
 obtained, attention on other than the grounds on 
 which he relies in his modest preface. He offered 
 them to the public, he said, with considerable 
 diffidence, "for I am fully aware," he continues, 
 "that they possess little intrinsic merit of their 
 own ; the subjects of which they treat are fully 
 discussed by a variety of authors of far greater 
 experience and ability than myself. My chief 
 object in publishing them is to show the public 
 in general, and in particular those officers of 
 the Army who are unacquainted with the Staff 
 College system, the nature of the work that is 
 done at that institution. They do not pretend 
 to anything original ; all that I have attempted 
 is to give a clear and concise account of the 
 various military operations discussed, and to add 
 such comments as a study of the best writers on 
 strategy and tactics would seem to suggest." 
 
1 6 LORD CROMER 
 
 That he succeeded in accomplishing his "chief 
 object " will not be disputed by any reader of 
 these essays, which in their grasp of principles 
 and mastery of details afford ample testimony 
 to the thoroughness of the system of training 
 which the young officer had just undergone. But 
 their interest and significance for a biographer 
 by no means end here. Their technical accuracy 
 and scientific soundness he must, if a civilian, be 
 content of course to take more or less on trust ; 
 or at best he must accept the guarantee afforded 
 by their origin, and by the approval of the 
 authorities to whom they were submitted for 
 approval. But of the form in which their criti- 
 cisms are presented, of the manner in which their 
 narrative of events is unfolded, and of the intel- 
 lectual characteristics which they indicate in the 
 writer, the civilian is an even better judge perhaps 
 than the military expert ; for the amount of his 
 own original ignorance, and the extent of his 
 subsequent enlightenment, give the true measure 
 of the essayist's abilities, and form the surest 
 criterion of his success. It is no easy matter 
 to make the operations of war intelligible to a 
 reader of this description, while it is an even 
 more difficult task to make them interesting ; but 
 both these feats the author of this volume has 
 managed to achieve. The combination of 
 military and diplomatic manoeuvres by which 
 
EARLY YEARS 
 
 Napoleon checkmated the unhappy Mack, and 
 destroyed the Austrian Army, as he put it, par de 
 simples marches, could not have been more lucidly 
 or succinctly set forth ; and it was a curious and, 
 after a sinister sort of fashion, a felicitous coinci- 
 dence, that the student should have chosen for his 
 theme the greatest capitulation known to military 
 history until that which the world was to witness 
 within six months after the publication of his 
 studies. Strange, indeed, was the irony of fate 
 which drew from a great French strategist the 
 following comment on Mack's surrender : " A 
 general-in-chief should never consent to become 
 the instrument of the destruction of his army. 
 When placed between dishonour and glory, the 
 safety of the State, and the loss of his army, he 
 should be capable of taking a part worthy of 
 himself. Mack, after being shut up within Ulm, 
 might at least have attempted a sortie to follow 
 Jellachich. It is always shameful to capitulate 
 without an effort to escape." What would Jomini 
 have said if he had been told that sixty-five years 
 later Mack's "shameful" example was to be 
 followed almost to the letter by the nephew of 
 his conqueror ? 
 
 Apart, moreover, from their scientific merits, 
 the essays display in many passages a shrewdness 
 of judgment on men and things, and a reflective 
 habit, which testify to a wider reach of general 
 
1 8 LORD CROMER 
 
 / 
 
 capacity than is usually to be traced in the pro- 
 fessional exercises of the average military student. 
 Take for instance the following acute remarks on 
 the influence of the "personal equation" in war- 
 fare : 
 
 " The private character of the men at the head of affairs, 
 their integrity, patriotism, and singleness of mind in a word 
 their force of character must always react on the affairs in 
 which they take part. This is self-evident. Take the case of 
 Napoleon himself. We are now well acquainted with his 
 character ; we know that his fervid imagination enabled him to 
 grasp great projects, while his vast powers of organization and 
 minute attention to detail eminently fitted him for the direction 
 of the means by which these great objects were to be attained; 
 his imagination and his reason were equally balanced, and it 
 is the resultant of these qualities which forms the man most 
 capable of finding and influencing his fellow-creatures. And 
 we also know that Napoleon often displayed a meanness of 
 character quite unworthy of his undoubted genius. But it 
 will be found that he never allowed his military combinations 
 to be influenced by jealousy or caprice. On the contrary, 
 these were always based on sound strategical grounds ; and it 
 is this which render them so instructive, even in those cases 
 in which they failed to accomplish their object. The re- 
 putation of a great strategist must ultimately rest on his 
 strategy ; posterity or rather military posterity takes only a 
 passing interest in the special moral influences which actuated 
 the man. We are concerned with the acts he did and the 
 result of them, and not so much with the train of thought 
 which led him to decide on the committal of those acts, 
 if in that train of thought private influence occupies a 
 conspicuous place. Jealousies such as Benningsen's of 
 Buxhowden ; panics such as the exaggerated fear of Napoleon ; 
 caprices, incongruities of character, &c., will recur . to the 
 end of time ; but they will recur in infinite variety, for the 
 
EARLY YEARS 19 
 
 inconsistencies of the human mind are infinite. In the 
 meanwhile it will readily be admitted that no theory for future 
 action can be formed which is based on acts admitted to have 
 been determined by such influences." 
 
 The two succeeding years were devoted by 
 Baring to the assiduous study of his profession, 
 and the effects of the German victories are no 
 doubt traceable in the particular direction taken 
 by his studies. 'Translations of German works 
 on military organization appeared from his hand 
 in 1871 and 1872, and in the latter year his 
 attention seems to have been drawn to the game 
 of Krieg- spiel, which was then attracting the 
 notice of soldiers and students of the art of war. 
 An English version of the rules and principles of 
 this game, as formulated in a treatise from the 
 pen of a German officer, was prepared and pub- 
 lished by him in 1872. It was in the following 
 year, however, that the event occurred which had 
 the effect of directing his energies and abilities 
 into a new channel, and this in all probability 
 proved the turning-point in his career. 
 
 In the year 1873 Lord Northbrook was 
 appointed to the Viceroyalty of India, and 
 Evelyn Baring was invited by his cousin to 
 accompany him in the capacity of Private 
 Secretary. It was, if we except his brief and 
 much less useful experiences in Jamaica with Sir 
 Henry Storks, his first introduction to official 
 
20 LORD CROMER 
 
 life in the civil sphere ; and it may reasonably 
 be assumed that he here first disclosed to others, 
 and perhaps first discovered for himself, that, 
 whether or not he was fitted to win distinction 
 as a soldier as in all probability he also was 
 he possessed all the varied qualifications for 
 success in the diplomatist's, the administrator's, 
 or the financier's career. There could hardly be 
 a better school of training for service in any one 
 of these three capacities than India, or a better 
 "form" in that school than that to which the 
 confidential assistant of an Indian Viceroy obtains 
 admission as of right. It may well be said that 
 Baring's three years' experience of Indian 
 government, in all its various departments, 
 counted for much in the formation and develop- 
 ment of the future Comptroller of Egyptian 
 revenues, the future Finance Minister of India, 
 the future Consul-General at Cairo during the 
 first arduous and troubled years of the British 
 Protectorate in Egypt. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 Commissioner of the Egyptian Debt 
 
 LORD NORTHBROOK'S Viceroyalty of 
 India lasted but three years. He returned 
 to England in 1876, and in June of that year 
 he married Ethel Stanley, the daughter of Sir 
 Rowland Stanley Errington, the representative of 
 one of the oldest Catholic families in England. 
 In the spring of the year following Baring was 
 appointed English Commissioner of the Egyptian 
 Debt. 
 
 The circumstances under which he received this 
 appointment must here be briefly recapitulated. 
 Towards the close of the year 1875 Ismail Pasha, 
 the then Khedive of Egypt, was compelled by 
 financial embarrassments to part with the greater 
 portion of his financial interest in the Suez Canal. 
 His shares were acquired by the British Govern- 
 ment for the sum of ^4,000,000 sterling. This 
 step was followed shortly afterwards by the 
 despatch of Mr. Cave to inquire, at the request 
 of the Khedive, into the condition of Egyptian 
 finance. Large hopes were built in the sanguine 
 
22 LORD CROMER 
 
 minds of Stock Exchange speculators on the 
 result of this mission, which many of them 
 believed or declared to indicate an intention on 
 the part of Her Majesty's Government to take 
 the entire financial affairs of Egypt under British 
 control ; nay, even (it was dreamt by some of 
 the more visionary of the " bull " operators) to 
 guarantee the whole Egyptian Debt. In March, 
 1876, Mr. Cave's report was received in England, 
 and its publication was followed by the immediate 
 collapse of this stock-gambler's house of cards. 
 It was found that Egypt was financially in a most 
 embarrassed condition, not to say upon the verge 
 of bankruptcy ; and that even if the British 
 Government had been meditating any attempt 
 to rehabilitate its credit, they must certainly have 
 already abandoned it. Egyptian stocks fell 
 heavily, and their decline was accelerated by the 
 announcement a few days later of the Khedive 
 having suspended payment of his Treasury Bills. 
 Meanwhile, and prior to these revelations of 
 the virtual insolvency of Egypt, Ismail Pasha 
 had issued a decree establishing a Commission 
 "for the regular service of the interest of the 
 General Egyptian Debt including both the 
 consolidated and the floating debt and for 
 the amortization of such debt." It was to be 
 composed of three special commissioners, nomi- 
 nated by his Highness the Khedive, on the 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 23 
 
 presentation to him of each by the Governments 
 of England, France, and Italy respectively. By 
 this time, however, Lord Beaconsfield's Govern- 
 ment, as it happened, were not a little out of 
 conceit with their Egyptian policy. The im- 
 mediate effect of their intervention had been, 
 apparently, only to precipitate a financial crisis 
 in Egypt, which they could only deal with by 
 taking in hand at any rate, to some extent, and 
 with some consequences of responsibility to them- 
 selves the reorganization of Egyptian finance. 
 
 From this step, however, they shrank back 
 almost in affright. It was not that they regarded 
 the task as an unpopular one ; not, perhaps, that 
 they reckoned it a peculiarly dangerous one from 
 the " business " point of view ; but they were 
 influenced partly by their recognition of the fact 
 that such a step could never be made perfectly 
 safe except by the assumption of a larger 
 measure of political control over the country, 
 and personal constraint of its ruler, than they 
 were then prepared for, and partly by the less 
 respectable motive of a terror of Parliamentary 
 attack. The Radicals of that day, who to a 
 man were much too innocent to have ever heard 
 before of gambling on the Stock Exchange, were 
 scandalized at the occasionally wild speculation 
 in Egyptian securities, which the movements of 
 British diplomacy, now advancing, now retreating, 
 

 24 LORD CROMER 
 
 not unnaturally produced. They taunted the 
 Government with allowing their policy to be 
 influenced by " bondholders," and the Govern- 
 ment were weak enough to fear the taunt. 
 The Khedive's proposal to them to appoint an 
 English Commissioner was for the time declined. 
 It was not till nearly a year after, in the spring 
 of 1877, that they consented to it, and Baring 
 took his place at the Board. The Commission 
 consisted in the meantime of a Frenchman, an 
 Italian, and an Austrian. 
 
 One of its first acts was to effect the unification 
 of the Egyptian Debt. In June the Egyptian 
 bondholders solicited the intervention of Mr. 
 Goschen for the protection of their sorely im- 
 perilled interests, and that eminently capable 
 financier, with whom was associated M. Joubert 
 as a representative of the French creditors, pro- 
 ceeded in the course of the autumn to institute a 
 strict and searching inquiry into the state of the 
 Khedive's affairs. Their investigation bore fruit 
 in November, 1876, in a report and recommenda- 
 tions which Ismail Pasha embodied without delay 
 in a decree. This ordinance, marking, as it may 
 be said to have done, an epoch in the financial 
 history of Egypt, deserves perhaps to be noticed 
 in some detail. 
 
 It starts with the appointment of two Comp- 
 trollers-General, who are between them to super- 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 25 
 
 vise the incomings and the outgoings of Egyptian 
 administration, and define the objects of this 
 step as being to secure (i) the regular payment 
 of the State revenues, whether of those appro- 
 priated to the service of the Debt, or those which 
 remain at the disposal of the Government, the 
 two being so intimately connected that it is im- 
 possible to dissever their administration ; (2) the 
 due application of these to the purposes for which 
 they are designated, whether by decrees assigning 
 them to creditors or by the budgets ; (3) the 
 establishment of guarantees ensuring that ex- 
 penditure will be kept down to such a figure 
 as receipts show to be necessary to balance the 
 budget ; and (4) a means of providing these 
 guarantees in such a way as to avoid interference 
 with the administration properly so called." 
 The two Comptrollers-General were to be one 
 English and the other French, and under this 
 arrangement Mr. Romaine and Baron de Malairet 
 were appointed to the two offices in question. 
 
 But the article in the scheme which was fraught 
 unknown to its author with the most serious 
 consequences for himself, was that by which he 
 created the Commission of the Debt, a body 
 which was to hold permanent authority until the 
 entire extinction of the Debt. The Commission- 
 ers were to have the power of remitting the funds 
 received by them directly to the Bank of England, 
 
26 LORD CROMER 
 
 or to that of France. The commodities received 
 in kind, in payment of taxes, were to be directly 
 transmitted to them, and they were to have the 
 sole right of disposing of them without the 
 intervention of the Finance Minister. The Com- 
 missioners were to accept no other functions in 
 the Egyptian Administration, and were to remain 
 entirely independent of the control of any other 
 council or committee whatever. 
 
 It was to this Commission that on March 2nd, 
 1877, Major Baring was attached, and he con- 
 tinued to serve upon it for upwards of two years, 
 until March, 1879, when he was succeeded by 
 Sir Auckland Colvin. The period was an 
 eventful one in European history, covering as 
 it does the whole course of the Russo-Turkish 
 War, and of the prolonged diplomatic crisis which 
 terminated in the substitution of the Treaty of 
 Berlin for the Convention of San Stefano ; and 
 it was not without its passages of importance in 
 the affairs of Egypt. At the beginning of the 
 year 1878 the Commissioners of the Debt found 
 it their duty to propose a Commission of Inquiry 
 into the state of the Egyptian finances, and on 
 the 23rd of January the Khedive gave a qualified 
 and limited assent to the proposal, and appointed 
 a Commission with General Gordon as its 
 President. This, of course, was not satisfactory 
 to the Powers ; but it took more than two 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 27 
 
 months of vigorous diplomatic pressure to pro- 
 cure the required enlargement of his concession. 
 It was not till April 4th that he assented to a 
 full investigation of the financial position, which 
 was forthwith set on foot under the direction of 
 Mr. (now Sir Rivers) Wilson, and in which 
 Major Baring took an active and most valuable 
 part. On August igth the Commission issued 
 its first report. Its account of the financial 
 position of Egypt was sufficiently discouraging ; 
 but that which most forcibly arrested public 
 attention was the indirect evidence which its 
 recommendations afforded as to the extent to 
 which the personal appropriations of the Khedive 
 and his family had contributed to the disastrous 
 result. The Commission announced that it had 
 accepted an offer of Prince Mahommed Tewfik, 
 the hereditary Prince, made on the advice of 
 Nubar Pasha, to surrender all his estates, the 
 annual rental of which amounted to ,30,000. 
 Princess Fatmi, daughter of the Khedive, had 
 also declared her intention of doing likewise ; 
 and Prince Hussein Kamil Pasha, the Khedive's 
 second son, was expected to follow her example. 
 The mother of the Khedive had also agreed to 
 cede her estates, amounting in value to ,30,000, 
 to the Commission. 
 
 More, however, was to come. The issue of the 
 Report was soon followed by an announcement 
 
28 LORD CROMER 
 
 of the Khedive's intention, not only to surrender 
 all his private estates to the Commission, so as 
 to reserve nothing from the public resources of 
 Egypt, but to accept absolutely the European 
 system of constitutional government, with its 
 principle of ministerial responsibility ; and to 
 appoint a new Administration holding office on 
 this basis, with Nubar Pasha, a man of high 
 ability, at its head, and with European Ministers 
 associated with him in the work of government. 
 Nothing could have been more correct and 
 satisfactory than the Khedive's language. He 
 signified his acceptance of the recommendations 
 of the Commission, and begged Mr. Rivers 
 Wilson to accept his assurance that he did so 
 seriously. 
 
 " My country," he said, " is no longer African : 
 we now form part of Europe. It is proper, 
 therefore, to abandon our old ways and to adopt 
 a new system more in accordance with social 
 progress . . . Above all we must not be 
 satisfied with mere words, and for my own part 
 I am resolved to prove my sincerity by my 
 deeds ; and to show how thoroughly in earnest 
 I am, I have entrusted Nubar Pasha with 
 the formation of a Ministry. And," he added, 
 " I am firmly determined to apply European 
 principles to the Egyptian administration in- 
 stead of the personal power hitherto prevailing. 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 29 
 
 I desire a power balanced by the Council of 
 Ministers, and am resolved henceforth to govern 
 with and through this Council, the members 
 of which will be jointly and severally responsible. 
 The Council will discuss all important questions, 
 the majority deciding. Thus, by approving its 
 decisions, I shall sanction the prevalent opinion. 
 Each Minister will apply the decisions of the 
 Council in his own department. Every appoint- 
 ment or dismissal of higher officials will be made 
 by the President of the Council and the Minister 
 of the department, with my sanction. The 
 officials will only obey the chiefs of their own 
 departments." 
 
 A reform of administrative system, especially 
 when described in language of such edifying 
 propriety by the ruler who was submitting to it, 
 could not fail to be received with much gratifi- 
 cation in Western Europe. Moreover, the 
 Khedive's undertaking, that he would not be 
 satisfied with mere words, was with commendable 
 promptitude made good. Mr. Rivers Wilson was 
 added to the new Cabinet as Minister of Finance; 
 and M. de Blignieres, who had been a member 
 of the Commission of Inquiry, was appointed 
 Egyptian Minister of Public Works, with control 
 over all railways, canals, and ports, except Alex- 
 andria. Ismail further pledged himself, as a 
 concession to the mutual jealousies of France 
 
30 LORD CROMER 
 
 and England, that if he dismissed either the 
 French or English members of his Government 
 he would dismiss both. 
 
 Meanwhile a summary of the Report of the 
 Commission had been published, and must have 
 convinced the most hesitating of observers that 
 reform had come none too soon. The old system 
 abounded with oppressions, abuses, and even 
 ludicrous absurdities, all of which the Com- 
 missioners pointed out with a terseness and vivacity 
 which bordered at times on the epigrammatic. 
 "No tax in Egypt," they say, " is regulated by 
 law. The superior authority asks, the inferior 
 authority demands, and the lowest authority 
 takes just what the Treasury has ordered, and 
 there is no appeal. New taxes are imposed at 
 discretion, and are occasionally quite absurd. 
 For example, when a bridge is built the charge 
 for it is imposed on the boatmen, whose boats 
 are impeded by the bridge, not on the passengers 
 whose journey is facilitated. All who do not 
 own land pay the tax on professions, because not 
 being landowners they might take to professions 
 if they liked. * Egyptians are not allowed to 
 
 * This delicious impost, with its still more exquisite reason, can 
 only be paralleled by the posting-tax which was extorted under 
 the fiscal system of the ancien regime in France from Tristram 
 Shandy. He had insisted that he owed the King of France 
 nothing but his good-will ; but this did not satisfy the official. 
 
 " Pardonnez-moi? replied the Commissary, "you are indebted 
 to him six livres four sous for the next post, which, being a post- 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 31 
 
 own scales because they might evade the 
 weighing-tax ; while the salt-tax is levied accord- 
 ing to population, which is never counted, and 
 fixed by an order which is never varied in 
 Egypt. Old Sarum would pay a salt-tax on the 
 consumption of 500 houses. Finally the con- 
 scription is forced on anybody who cannot bribe 
 the Sheik, the regulation price for exemption 
 being ^"80, which an Egyptian peasant can no 
 more save than an English labourer could." 
 These taxes are all levied by "moral pressure," 
 says the I nspector- General ; and the Commission 
 add that moral pressure had been explained to 
 them by other evidence, and meant, in fact, the 
 threat of torture. 
 
 This was pretty well for a First Report, and 
 it is not surprising either that the Commissioners, 
 on the one hand, were desirous of prolonging 
 their investigations, or, perhaps, that Nubar 
 
 royal, you pay double for the horses and postillions ; otherwise 
 'twould only have been three livres two sous." 
 
 " But I don't go by land," said I. 
 
 " You may if you please," replied the Commissary. 
 
 " Your most obedient servant," said I, making him a low bow. 
 
 The Commissary, with all the sincerity of grave good breeding, 
 made me one as low again. I never was more disconcerted with 
 a bow in my life . . . 
 
 " Sir," said I, collecting myself, u it is not my intention to take 
 post." 
 
 " But you may," said he, persisting in his first reply ; " you may 
 take post if you choose." 
 
 "And I may take salt to my pickled herring," said I, " if I choose. 
 But I do not choose." 
 
 " But you must pay for it, whether you do or no." 
 
32 LORD CROMER 
 
 Pasha, who was now nominally responsible for 
 the whole administration, should have preferred 
 to put a stop to its disclosures. He contended 
 that now that the government was in the 
 hands of a constitutional Ministry of enlightened 
 European views, the necessity for this extra- 
 ordinary inquisition had ceased. He was 
 vigorously opposed, however, by the two 
 European Ministers, whose view ultimately pre- 
 vailed ; and on January 17, 1879, a decree was 
 issued authorizing the Commission to continue 
 its labours, and to propose a project for the 
 definite settlement of the financial difficulties of 
 the country. 
 
 Incidentally, no doubt, the inquiries already 
 made had revealed the fact that the appointment 
 of the tw r o Comptrollers two years before had not 
 proved as effective a check upon financial mis- 
 management as had been hoped. According to 
 the arrangement then made by the decree of 
 November, 1876, one of these two officers was 
 to superintend and check the collection of all 
 revenues of the State, and their payment into the 
 respective Public Chests ; and the other, as 
 Comptroller-General of Audit and Public Debt, 
 was to watch the execution of regulations 
 affecting the State Debts, and generally control 
 the Treasury accounts. But they were allowed 
 no voice in the appropriation of the audits 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 33 
 
 assigned by the Budgets to the respective heads 
 of service. Some difference of opinion arose 
 between the two European Ministers as to the 
 expediency of maintaining the institution of the 
 Comptrollership ; but Mr. Rivers Wilson, who 
 advocated its suspension, eventually carried his 
 point, and by a decree of December 15, 1878, 
 the functions of Mr. Romaine and Baron de 
 Malairet came to an end. 
 
 The situation, however, was not a convenient 
 one, and indeed must, in any case, have sooner 
 or later become impossible. Friction between 
 the European Ministers and their Egyptian 
 colleagues was inevitable ; but it was also of 
 course anticipated, and might to a certain extent 
 have been provided for. The Governments 
 of France and England were acting together 
 at this juncture in a fairly cordial fashion, and 
 by agreeing with each other to support the 
 French and English members of the Egyptian 
 Cabinet, whenever these two Ministers con- 
 curred in their views, the Khedive could no 
 doubt have been constrained to accept their 
 policy. But friction arising between the 
 Khedive's European Ministers and the diplo- 
 matic representatives of the European States 
 of which those Ministers were subjects, was not 
 so easily to be relieved. It was natural enough 
 that an English or French Consul-General 
 
34 LORD CROMER 
 
 should object to having his authority weakened 
 and discredited by the overruling of his advice 
 in favour of that offered by an English or French 
 official not directly responsible to Paris or 
 London ; and, indeed, it is impossible to deny 
 that the continuance of such a state of things 
 would have been gravely detrimental to the 
 public service, and injurious to the interests of 
 the two Western Powers in their foreign relations. 
 An international crisis, of a much graver character 
 than any financial difficulties could bring about, 
 might at any moment have arisen in Egypt, 
 when it would have become of the first impor- 
 tance that the diplomatic agents of England and 
 France should have the entire support and con- 
 fidence of the Government accrediting them. 
 
 For the moment, however, it was the authority 
 of the English and French Egyptian Ministers, 
 Mr. Rivers Wilson and M. de Blignieres, which 
 was principally suffering. Weakened as it was 
 by the differences of opinion and rivalry for 
 influence which sprang up between them and 
 the diplomatic representatives of England and 
 France, its progressive decline must sooner or 
 later have brought the arrangement to an end. 
 But events precipitated its downfall. The 
 Khedive, who had perhaps hoped that Nubar 
 Pasha, as his Prime Minister, would assist him 
 in quietly counterworking and defeating the 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 35 
 
 attempts of his European tutors to tie him down 
 to the position of a constitutional sovereign, 
 found to his dismay that that astute Armenian 
 statesman had unreservedly thrown in his lot 
 with the two Western Powers. It became a 
 contest for power between Ismail and Nubar, 
 and the former had speedy recourse to the 
 oriental weapon of intrigue. In secret he be- 
 came the chief of the Opposition. He fomented 
 the disaffection of the Turkish and Arab officials 
 and pashas, whose predominance or privileges 
 were threatened by the new administration, 
 and taking advantage of it he secretly insti- 
 gated a tumultuous meeting at Cairo of a 
 large body of Egyptian officers discharged from 
 the army without settlement of their long- 
 standing arrears of pay, who mobbed and 
 assaulted the Prime Minister and Mr. Rivers 
 Wilson. He compelled Nubar Pasha, on February 
 1 9> J S79, to resign his office. A few weeks 
 afterwards Prince Tewfik was appointed his 
 successor, the Khedive at the same time stipu- 
 lating for a more active participation in the 
 proceedings of the Cabinet Council. His specific 
 claims in fact were (i) to have the right of 
 summoning the. Council and proposing measures 
 to it; (2) to have all measures submitted to 
 him by the Minister before being laid before it ; 
 and (3) to preside at all its deliberations. 
 
36 LORD CROMER 
 
 The last of these demands was strongly 
 opposed by the two European Ministers, who in- 
 sisted also on the reinstatement of Nubar Pasha, 
 and invoked the interference of their Govern- 
 ments in support of their views. Mr. Vivian, 
 the English Consul-General, advised his Govern- 
 ment against the reimposition of Nubar on the 
 Khedive, and eventually the agents of England 
 and France were directed to inform Ismail Pasha 
 that the two Governments would not further 
 press the readmission of the late Prime Minister 
 into the Cabinet, in consideration of its being 
 agreed (i) that the Khedive should not in any 
 case be present at Cabinet Councils ; (2) that 
 Prince Tewfik should be appointed President of 
 the Council ; and (3) that the two English and 
 French Ministers should possess an absolute 
 right of veto over any proposed measure. These 
 conditions, which were accompanied by a warning 
 almost amounting to a menace of the conse- 
 quences of refusal, were formally accepted by the 
 Khedive. 
 
 It was not, however, in the nature of things 
 that the arrangement thus forced upon Ismail 
 Pasha diplomatically speaking, at the sword's 
 point should last long. Its collapse was pre- 
 cipitated by the Second Report of the Commis- 
 sion of Inquiry. Major Baring and his colleagues 
 pursued their investigations with an uncom- 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 37 
 
 promising thoroughness which dismayed the 
 old-fashioned officialism of Egypt, and the results 
 of which, at first communicated only confiden- 
 tially to the Khedive, were of such a nature 
 as to determine him on a last desperate stroke 
 for independence. On April 7 he suddenly 
 dismissed his Ministry, and appointed another 
 under the presidency of Cherif Pasha, while at 
 the same time he brought forward a counter 
 project to that which had been formulated in the 
 Second Report of the Commission of Inquiry for 
 the reorganization of Egyptian finance. 
 
 It seemed at first as though the Governments 
 
 o 
 
 of England and France intended to submit 
 tamely to this coup d'etat of the Khedive's. In 
 spite of the protest of the European Commission- 
 ers of the Caisse de la Dette, and the resignation 
 of nearly every official of high rank connected 
 with the finances of the country, the so-called 
 "National Project "- was embodied in a decree; 
 and the English Government contented itself 
 for the moment with a grave remonstrance 
 against the action of the Khedive, as showing 
 contemptuous disrespect for the Powers who had 
 nominated Messrs. Wilson and De Blignieres, 
 and as contrary to the special engagement which 
 he had taken in accepting the terms of the 
 arrangement concluded with him so shortly 
 before. 
 
38 LORD CROMER 
 
 Nor was there any sign of a disposition on the 
 part of France for more energetic measures. On 
 the 25th of April she joined England in a formal 
 demand for the reinstatement of the European 
 Ministers ; but when ten days later the two 
 Powers met with a flat refusal, they seemed 
 indisposed to take any more vigorous measures. 
 A week elapsed without movement on the part of 
 the Powers, and, with a Government so unwilling 
 to move as that which then held office in 
 England, it is even now a question of much 
 uncertainty what turn events might ultimately 
 have taken, had it not been for the sudden 
 appearance of an unexpected deus ex machind 
 in the person of Germany. 
 
 On May n Her Majesty's Government was 
 informed by a circular from the German Minister 
 of State, sent through the Ambassador in 
 London, that the German Consul-General had 
 been instructed to declare to the Khedive that 
 "the Imperial Government regarded the decree 
 of April 22, by which a settlement of the 
 Egyptian Debt was arbitrarily made by the 
 Egyptian Government acting alone, so as to 
 involve the abolition of acquired and recognized 
 rights, as an open and direct violation of the 
 international obligations imposed by the judicial 
 reforms; and that the German Government could 
 not therefore admit any binding legal force in the 
 
COMMISSIONER OF EGYPTIAN DEBT 39 
 
 said decree, in so far as it touches either the 
 competency of the Mixed Courts or the rights of 
 the subjects of the empire ; and that they held 
 the Viceroy responsible for all the consequences 
 of this illegal conduct." This formal protest was 
 delivered to the Khedive on May 18, and within 
 a month the Governments of the other two 
 Powers had associated themselves with it. 
 
 For Ismail Pasha it was the beginning of the 
 end. Both France and England had been 
 thoroughly alarmed by the intervention of 
 Germany. They felt that the Khedive had 
 become impossible, and that to permit his con- 
 tinuance on the throne would simply be 
 throwing down Egypt as a bone of contention 
 to be fought for by the Powers. Having 
 accordingly secured the concurrence of his 
 suzerain at Constantinople for any measures 
 they might find it necessary to adopt, the two 
 Governments directed their representatives to 
 advise the Khedive to abdicate in favour of 
 his son Tewfik. Should he refuse to take this 
 course he was to be told that the Powers would 
 address themselves to the Sultan, in which case 
 he would not be able to count upon obtaining 
 any pension, or on the maintenance of the 
 succession in favour of his son. The German 
 and Austrian Consuls -General made a similar 
 statement four days later. The Khedive hesi- 
 
40 LORD CROMER 
 
 tated, and asked for time to refer the matter 
 to the Sultan ; and at the last moment declared 
 his willingness to submit his whole plan to the 
 approval of the Powers, and withdraw the decree 
 against which Germany had originally protested ; 
 but it was too late. On June 26, by telegram 
 from Constantinople, the Sultan despatched an 
 Imperial Trade", deposing Ismail Pasha and re- 
 placing him by his son Tewfik, who was 
 proclaimed Khedive with every sign of general 
 relief and satisfaction. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 The Dttal Control 
 
 ISMAIL'S successor, Tewfik Pasha, in whose 
 favour as his eldest son the succession had 
 been settled by a firman of the Sultan, assumed 
 the government with a high reputation for 
 integrity and loyalty to western ideas. His 
 habits were simple, and his entourage compared 
 very favourably with that of his father, with 
 whom, indeed, he had for some time past been 
 on no very cordial terms. When the report of 
 the Commission of Inquiry was published on 
 August 28, with all its damaging disclosures 
 of the consequences of Ismail Pasha's financial 
 recklessness, and it was pointed out that the 
 surrender of the lands acquired by him and his 
 family was the only means of saving the country 
 from immediate bankruptcy, Prince Tewfik set 
 the example of at once offering the unconditional 
 cession of his own share of the estates. His 
 first act, moreover, on succeeding to his father, 
 was to lower his own civil list from ^360,000 to 
 ,200,000 a year. 
 
 41 
 
42 LORD CROMER 
 
 The Porte at first showed a desire to make 
 capital out of the crisis by revoking the firman 
 of 1873, which had practically emancipated Egypt 
 from the control of the Sultan ; but the Powers 
 had, of course, no mind to allow the country 
 to be reduced to its ancient state of vassalage 
 to Constantinople. Under strong pressure from 
 them the Porte withdrew its pretensions, and 
 a firman was granted confirming Tewfik Pasha 
 in all the privileges enjoyed by his father. 
 A week or so after it was intimated to Cherif 
 Pasha that his resignation was expected, and on 
 his tendering it, Riaz Pasha, who was regarded 
 as the most liberal of Egyptian statesmen, and 
 who, as a member of the Administration which 
 had accepted the Dual Control, had incurred the 
 greatest odium with the Turkish party, was 
 charged with the formation of a new Cabinet. 
 
 Meanwhile active negotiations were going on 
 in Europe concerning the form in which the 
 control of the government of Egypt, which 
 had been gradually assumed by England and 
 France, should be maintained. The introduc- 
 tion of European Ministers in the Egyptian 
 Cabinet had not, as we have seen, turned out 
 an unqualified success. It had led, as it was 
 inevitable that it should, to misunderstandings 
 between the European Ministers and their 
 Consuls-General ; the latter claiming, and with 
 
THE DUAL CONTROL 43 
 
 technical right, to be the only official represen- 
 tatives of their countries, while the former 
 considered themselves entitled to demand the 
 support of their diplomatic colleagues for all 
 their ministerial proposals, whether approved of 
 at the Agencies or not. More smoothly working 
 machinery for bringing the will of the two 
 Western- Powers to bear upon the policy and 
 acts of the Egyptian Government might be 
 found, it was thought, in the reappointment 
 with greatly extended powers of the two Con- 
 trollers established under the Goschen Scheme. 
 Indeed, shortly before the dismissal of the Nubar- 
 Wilson Ministry in April, 1879, the two Powers 
 had obtained from Ismail Pasha an express 
 undertaking that this step should accompany 
 any material change in the system of respon- 
 sible government established in the previous 
 August. 
 
 Accordingly on September 4 the Dual Control 
 was by decree revived, and Baring, plainly 
 designated for the post by his services in the 
 Commissionership of the Public Debt (in which 
 four months before he had been succeeded by 
 Sir Auckland Colvin), and by the valuable 
 assistance which he had rendered in the inquiry 
 into the finances of Egypt, was appointed 
 English Controller, with M. de Blignieres as his 
 French colleague. Their new powers and 
 
44 LORD CROMER 
 
 functions were not defined, however, until two 
 months later, when a decree was issued formally 
 reciting that these powers had been settled by 
 an understanding between England and France, 
 and were as follows : 
 
 (1) They were to have the fullest powers of 
 inquiry into all branches of the public service, 
 and each administration was to furnish them with 
 periodical accounts of receipts and expenditure. 
 
 (2) They were/0;" the present (and this by the 
 express consent of England and France) not to 
 take part in the business of the public offices, 
 but to confine themselves to making suggestions 
 to the Ministers. 
 
 (3) They were to have the rank of Ministers, 
 and a seat and a deliberative voice in the Cabinet; 
 or in other words, were to fill a position analogous 
 to that of an English Cabinet Minister holding 
 no departmental office. 
 
 (4) They were to be removable only with the 
 consent of their respective Governments, and 
 were to have full powers of appointing and 
 dismissing all subordinate officials. 
 
 The first and most important task before the 
 new Controllers was the construction, on the 
 basis of the Second Report of the Commission 
 of Inquiry of 1878, of a scheme for the general 
 settlement of the financial difficulties of Egypt. 
 
THE DUAL CONTROL 45 
 
 It had been originally proposed to appoint an 
 International Commission of Liquidation, nomi- 
 nated by all the great Powers, for the execution 
 of this work ; but this idea, as the time approached 
 for its realization, was viewed with less and less 
 favour by France and England, and the duty 
 eventually devolved upon the English and French 
 Controllers alone. Before, however, any steps 
 could be taken in the matter of the liquidation, 
 the Controllers were confronted by a difficulty 
 curiously illustrative of the conflict of juris- 
 diction which had been brought about by 
 successive interventions of the European Powers, 
 singly, dually, or collectively, in the affairs of 
 Egypt. Concurrently with the decree defining 
 the functions of the Controllers, another had been 
 issued declaring the lands ceded by the Khedive 
 on the First Report of the Commission to be 
 inalienable and free from legal seizure, except 
 on terms agreed to by Messrs. Rothschild, who 
 had taken them on security for their loan of 
 October, 1878. At the same time it secured 
 the rights of all those judgment creditors who, 
 by registration of those judgments, had obtained 
 priority over Messrs. Rothschild. 
 
 The treatment of these creditors and their 
 debtor gave rise, as was indeed but natural, to 
 an irreconcilable dispute between the judicial 
 and the administrative authority. A judgment 
 
46 LORD CROMER 
 
 creditor's right to preference over unsecured 
 creditors is in the eyes of a lawyer sacred ; 
 to a Minister of Finance, solicitous only for 
 the credit of the State for which he is acting, 
 and therefore for the strictest possible equality 
 of treatment as between the holders of that 
 State's securities, the recognition of this prefer- 
 ence might well seem both unfair and incon- 
 venient. 
 
 The Commission of Inquiry of 1878 had 
 openly declared Egypt to be insolvent, and had 
 proposed that a general liquidation should be 
 commenced as upon the bankruptcy of a private 
 individual. Proceeding upon this principle, it 
 would of course follow that all creditors should 
 be put on an equal footing and paid pro raid, 
 and the insolvency should relate back to the 
 suspension of payment and unification of the 
 General Debt of the decree of May 7, 1876. 
 It was contended, therefore, by the Controllers 
 that it was unjust that those creditors who 
 had obtained the accidental advantage of 
 priority of registration of their judgments 
 upon the Khedival domain lands should be 
 paid in full, while others were only paid a 
 dividend out of the insolvent estates. But the 
 Mixed Courts had by more than one decision 
 refused to admit the right of the Government 
 to override vested rights by financial decrees ; 
 
THE DUAL CONTROL 47 
 
 and as far back as 1876 the Court of Appeal 
 at Alexandria had expressly recognized the 
 priority of the claims of registered judgment 
 creditors upon the lands which had been specially 
 appropriated to the settlement of the Floating 
 Debt. It was therefore necessary to obtain the 
 consent of all the Powers, who had been parties 
 to the judicial reforms of 1876, to a law enacting 
 the removal of the attachments ranking prior to 
 that of Messrs. Rothschild. This consent Eng- 
 land and France were ready to give, and when 
 Germany and Austria refused to agree, the 
 English Controller and his French colleague 
 were despatched to Vienna to endeavour to 
 persuade the Austrian Cabinet to accede to the 
 view of the Western Powers. The efforts, how- 
 ever, of Mr. Baring and M. de Blignieres, though 
 we can well believe that they were energetic 
 enough, proved fruitless. The Austrian and 
 German Governments refused to consent to 
 anything which touched the principle of the in- 
 violability of the decisions of the Mixed Courts. 
 
 Most people, we imagine, would now agree in 
 approval of their attitude. The institution of 
 the privilegium, or special law, passed for the 
 benefit of individuals in derogation of the settled 
 law of the land, is in no sense a commendable 
 one, nor is it any more to be commended even 
 when the favoured individuals constitute so large 
 
48 LORD CROMER 
 
 a class as the general body of the unsecured 
 creditors of a State. And the blow which it 
 necessarily strikes at the authority of the legal 
 tribunals of a country is even more to be depre- 
 cated when those tribunals are, as they were in 
 this case, the creation of Foreign Powers, and 
 dependent on the support of those Powers for 
 the maintenance of their authority. 
 
 On the other hand, it was not unnatural, for the 
 reasons above given, that this view of the matter 
 should fail to commend itself to a Controller of 
 the Finances. In a letter addressed to the 
 Khedive on November 30, the Controllers 
 openly protested against the decision which had 
 been forced upon them, and expressed their 
 deep regret at their inability to overcome the 
 resistance of the tribunals and of the Foreign 
 Governments by whom they were upheld. At 
 the same time they proposed a plan for diminish- 
 ing as much as possible the injury done to the 
 other classes of creditors. 
 
 The decree thus framed was at last accepted 
 by all the Powers, with the exception of Greece ; 
 and on December 19 it was formally announced 
 to the Courts as having been accepted by all the 
 Treaty Powers, and incorporated with the codes 
 of the country. It now remained to give effect to 
 it. Early in January, 18^ a financial report was 
 presented to the Viceroy. In it the difficulties of 
 
THE DUAL CONTROL 49 
 
 the situation were in no way minimized ; but at 
 the same time no doubt was thrown on the 
 possibility of re-establishing Egyptian credit, 
 if only the Egyptian Government would under- 
 take to " draw a distinct line of demarcation 
 between the past and the future, and to decide 
 that by the enforcement of the new law all 
 claims, prior to its promulgation, should be 
 finally liquidated." 
 
 The report of the Controllers was promptly 
 followed by the publication of the Budget, which 
 was generally regarded by those best acquainted 
 with the country as having been framed on a 
 sound estimate of its resources. It certainly 
 offered a great contrast to the Budget of the 
 previous year, the last of the Ismailian rdgime, 
 which was essentially what would be called on the 
 Stock Exchange a " bull " Budget a financial 
 scheme conceived in the spirit of a ''specu- 
 lator for the rise." In this the revenue had 
 been estimated at nearly eleven millions sterling. 
 Mr. Baring and M. de Blignieres were content to 
 budget for eight millions and a half. On the 
 expenditure side the interest on the Unified Debt 
 was calculated at four per cent., at which rate 
 it had been provisionally fixed by the Commission 
 of Inquiry of the previous year. Beyond doubt 
 it was as high a rate as the country at that 
 moment was able to pay ; but it is not to be 
 
 D 
 
50 LORD CROMER 
 
 supposed that the bondholders were prepared 
 to accept it with cheerfulness or even resignation. 
 For though the absurd denunciations which were 
 so incessantly levelled at him in those days by 
 a certain political party in England were ignorant 
 and absurd, yet it is nevertheless true that the 
 bondholder does not take any more kindly than, 
 let us say, the Radical traders and manufacturers 
 who used to abuse him in the House of Commons, 
 to losing any of his expected gains ; for there is 
 a great deal of human nature in the bondholder, 
 and human nature is not "built that way." He 
 strongly opposed the reduction of the interest, 
 and at one time it seemed as if the Egyptian 
 Government would give way to him. Baring 
 and his colleague, however, stood firm, and on 
 February 24 the President of the Council of 
 Ministers addressed to them a formal surrender 
 of the principal points in dispute. 
 
 In the President's letter reference was made 
 to the goodwill with which the recommendations 
 of the Commission of Inquiry had been carried 
 out, by the abolition of the poll-tax, the reform , 
 of the salt-tax, and other measures. The 
 Khedive, the letter went on to show, had 
 already paid more than a million and a half 
 of his father's debts to the mortgage creditors, 
 and was ready to come to terms with the holders 
 of the Floating Debt. " But," added the Presi- 
 
THE DUAL CONTROL 51 
 
 dent of the Council, "we are stopped by the 
 international principle which prevents Egypt 
 from making her own laws without the consent 
 of fourteen Powers." " Egypt," he went on to 
 say, " contained all the elements of a durable 
 prosperity. The Government has commenced 
 reforms which will enable that prosperity to 
 develop ; the most perfect harmony exists 
 between the Controllers and the Ministers. 
 But all these elements of prosperity are para- 
 lyzed by the check imposed ,on our legislative 
 powers by the principle of internationality. A 
 Government cannot live unless it can make laws. 
 Either, therefore, the Egyptian Government 
 must be allowed to make its own laws, or the 
 Powers must agree to make them with her. 
 Egypt is ready to accept either of these solutions. 
 But long negotiations will imperil the vital 
 interests of the creditors as well as the country. 
 If the Government did not know that an Inter- 
 national Commission was now being discussed 
 by the Powers a settlement would be at once 
 offered to the creditors." 
 
 Riaz Pasha is not perhaps the most en- 
 lightened of statesmen, but there was good sense 
 in these words of his, especially in their closing 
 suggestion of a prompt settlement with the 
 creditors of Egypt. The diplomatic jealousies 
 referred to above had been now allayed, and the 
 
52 LORD CROMER 
 
 Commission of Liquidation was at last appointed 
 on an international basis. It consisted of seven 
 members, England and France being represented 
 by two Commissioners each ; Germany, Austria, 
 and Italy by one each ; and the other European 
 Powers parties to the Capitulations, agreeing to 
 leave their interests in their colleagues' hands. 
 On. July 17 the Report of the Commission was 
 presented to and approved by the Khedive, and 
 a law was at once framed to give effect to their 
 recommendations. Its main provisoes were as 
 follows : 
 
 (1) The privileges of the Railway Preference 
 Loan as fixed by the Goschen-Joubert decree of 
 November, 1876, were maintained, and a further 
 issue of ^5, 744,000 was authorized. The interest 
 of this stock was secured by the railway and 
 telegraph revenue, and constituted a first charge 
 on the other revenues set apart for the service 
 of the Unified Debt and the revenue of the 
 harbour of Alexandria. 
 
 (2) The interest on the Unified Debt was 
 maintained at 4 per cent., to be paid from the 
 aforesaid revenues assigned to it; and, the charge 
 of this debt amounting annually to a little more 
 than two millions and a quarter, it was provided 
 that any receipts in excess of this sum should 
 form a sinking fund, to be applied to the purchase 
 
THE DUAL CONTROL 53 
 
 and extinction of the stock in the open market. 
 At the same time the normal expenditure of the 
 Egyptian Government was fixed at ,4,898,000, 
 which sum was to cover the tribute payable to 
 the Porte, the interest due to Great Britain 
 on the Suez Canal shares, and certain other 
 charges. 
 
 (3) The property of the Daira Sanieh the 
 estates surrendered by the Khedive was for- 
 mally declared to belong to the State, and the 
 interest on the Daira Loan, to the extent of 4 per 
 cent., was guaranteed by the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment, the balance being payable contingently 
 only on the revenue of the estates proving 
 sufficient to provide it. 
 
 (4) The Floating Debt was divided into a 
 preference and a deferred stock, holders receiving 
 30 per cent, in cash and 70 per cent, in prefer- 
 ence stock at par. A sum of ,650,000 was 
 reserved to meet the claims pending before the 
 international tribunals, and a loan to that amount 
 on the lands belonging to the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment was authorized. Certain debts were paid 
 in full cash ; namely, the mortgages on the 
 Domain lands prior to the Rothschild mortgage 
 (which had formed, it will be remembered, a 
 matter of international difference in the previous 
 year), together with all the arrears of salaries and 
 pensions, the arrears of the tribute, and certain 
 
54 LORD CROMER 
 
 other sums which had been diverted by the ex- 
 Khedive. 
 
 These proposals of the Commission of Liquida- 
 tion, and their ratification by the Khedive and 
 his Ministers, gave general satisfaction to the 
 creditors of Egypt. It was on the whole, 
 indeed, a highly satisfying conclusion to the 
 long struggle for the re-establishment of Egyptian 
 credit, in which Baring had taken so active a part. 
 But he did not, officially speaking, live to witness 
 the final result of his labours. The law of 
 liquidation was promulgated on July 17, 1880, 
 and some weeks earlier, on June 22, he had 
 been succeeded in the Controllership by Sir 
 Auckland Colvin, and was himself shortly after- 
 wards appointed to succeed Sir John Strachey as 
 Financial Member of the Council of India. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 Finance Minister in India 
 
 THE Controllership of Egyptian Finance 
 was at all times a post of importance, and 
 one requiring both ability and force of character ; 
 but it could not of course compare for a moment, 
 either in dignity, independence of initiative, or 
 opportunities of public service and public dis- 
 tinction, with that to which Baring was now 
 appointed. It was, indeed, great promotion for 
 an Artillery officer of thirty-nine. Selections for 
 the office of Financial Minister of the Council 
 for India had heretofore been, and indeed are 
 still, generally made from the ranks of the Indian 
 Civil Service. The appointment of a military 
 man, and of one whose only acquaintance with 
 the country over whose finances he was to 
 preside had been formed during a few years' 
 private secretaryship to a former Viceroy, was 
 an innovation of some boldness ; and though it 
 would be affectation in any case of this kind to 
 ignore the operation of political and family 
 interest altogether, it would on the other hand 
 
 55 
 
56 LORD CROMER 
 
 be unjust and unreasonable to lay much stress 
 upon it. No Government can afford to risk 
 its reputation and run the chance of creating 
 countless troubles for itself, both in India and 
 at home, by any appointment which is even 
 so much as doubtful to this important post. It 
 is quite certain that Mr. Gladstone must, either 
 from personal observation or from reports on 
 which he could confidently rely, have fully 
 satisfied himself that the Major of Artillery, 
 who had had two years' experience of fiscal 
 administration in Egypt, possessed abilities 
 which fully qualified him to grapple with the 
 eternal problem of Indian finance. 
 
 The undertaking was at this juncture a 
 peculiarly arduous one, since seldom, if ever 
 before, had that problem presented itself in a 
 more formidable shape. During the previous 
 financial year, 1879-80, the chronic difficulties 
 which beset the work of providing for the cost 
 of Indian administration had been cumulated 
 with various acute troubles. The cost of the 
 Afghan War had had to be met ; an increasing 
 loss in exchange, produced by the depreciation 
 of silver, had begun to put that severe strain 
 upon the resources of India which has continued 
 to increase in severity ever since ; various public 
 works which involved a heavy outlay had already 
 been sanctioned. The returns from certain 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 57 
 
 districts showed that in some parts of the 
 country the effects of the recent famine were 
 still severely felt ; and the financial situation 
 was further aggravated by an increase in the 
 military and other branches of expenditure. 
 The gravity of the crisis was reflected in the 
 Budget of 1879-80, which was actually brought 
 on for discussion in the House of Commons 
 as early as May 22nd, and debated for three 
 nights, instead of getting only as many hours 
 at the fag-end of the Session, and which has 
 been described by a high authority on the 
 subject, the late Mr. Fawcett, as "marking 
 the commencement of a new epoch in Indian 
 finance." The character of the new departure 
 he goes on thus forcibly to describe : 
 
 "The true financial condition of India had never up till 
 this time been officially recognized. Liberal and Conservative 
 Governments had not only persistently denied that there was 
 anything in the state of Indian finance to cause appre- 
 hension, but year after year, as the time of the introduction 
 of the Indian Budget recurred, her actual financial condition 
 was depicted in roseate hues, and her future was described 
 in a spirit of increasing hopefulness. So little cause was 
 there said to be for uneasiness or alarm, that the Indian 
 Budget used always to be postponed till a period of the 
 Session when all other important business had been disposed 
 of. When the Budget was considered it was little more than 
 a repetition of an oft-told tale. By classing some branch 
 of expenditure as extraordinary, and by regarding some outlay 
 as exceptional, the Indian Accounts were almost inevitably 
 arranged so as to exhibit a surplus. The public works 
 
58 LORD CROMER 
 
 expenditure was habitually compared to the profitable in- 
 vestment of capital by a wise and beneficent landlord in the 
 improvement of a judiciously administered estate. A most 
 significant change, however, has lately occurred. A large 
 portion of the outlay in public works is now officially admitted 
 to be unremunerative ; and the Finance Minister, Sir John 
 Strachey, has been forced to admit that a review of the 
 finances of India for seven years, a period long enough to 
 show their normal position, 'made it plain that we possessed 
 no true surplus of revenue over expenditure to cover the 
 many contingencies to which a great country is exposed. ' ' 
 
 Nor was this the only important point in 
 which, according to Mr. Fawcett, a new departure 
 was to be noted : 
 
 " In order still further to show the striking change of tone 
 recently adopted by those who are responsible for the 
 Government of India, it is particularly worthy of remark 
 that the Viceroy and the Secretary of State now unreservedly 
 accept the conclusion that the limit of taxation has been 
 reached in India, and that it has consequently become im- 
 peratively necessary that expenditure should be reduced. In 
 a despatch which has been lately issued by the Viceroy and 
 his Council to the Local Governments, it is declared that 
 'immediate measures must be taken for reduction of the 
 public expenditure in all its branches.' On behalf of the 
 Secretary of State it has been with equal positiveness 
 announced that the balance between revenue and expenditure 
 must be restored not by the imposition of new taxation, but 
 by a large reduction of expenditure. 
 
 The causes which had brought about this 
 serious condition of the Indian finances may 
 if we dismiss the accidental and temporary 
 demands of the Afghan War be thus 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 59 
 
 enumerated. First, the necessity, then for the 
 first time recognized, of providing a famine 
 fund out of ordinary revenue ; secondly, the 
 increasing loss on exchange ; and thirdly, the 
 unremunerative character of a large expenditure 
 on public works. 
 
 To meet the demands arising under these 
 three heads, it became necessary in the 
 Budget of 1879-80 to provide a sum of no 
 less than ; 1,100,000 by increased taxation; 
 and no doubt, after a careful review of the 
 entire fiscal system of India with the object of 
 ascertaining what new tax could be imposed, or 
 what existing import could be increased with the 
 least hardship to the people it was determined 
 to raise about two -thirds of the amount 
 required by the imposition of a trade-license 
 tax. As originally levied, this tax was virtually 
 an income - tax of about fivepence in the 
 imposed upon all persons earning not less than 
 100 rupees a year by trade or by skilled labour. 
 Official and professional incomes, from those of 
 the Governor - General and the most successful 
 of Anglo-Indian barristers or physicians down- 
 wards, were exempted altogether. Mr. Fawcett's 
 denunciation of this impost was, as might have 
 been expected, uncompromising. After animad- 
 verting on its inequality and the severity of the 
 burden which it imposed on men whose income 
 
60 LORD CROMER 
 
 was only ^10 a year, he goes on to allege other 
 and more serious objections to it. "Although," 
 he says, writing in 1880, "the tax has been in 
 operation for little more than a twelvemonth, 
 no one can deny that it has already produced a 
 feeling of deep and widespread discontent, and 
 facts can be mentioned which show that this 
 discontent is far more due to the abuses in- 
 separably connected with the levying of the 
 tax, than to the mere amount of the burden 
 which the tax, if it could be fairly raised, would 
 impose upon the people. During many months 
 the Indian papers have contained numerous 
 instances of the tax being assessed at an 
 excessive amount, and of its being levied on 
 classes who were never intended to pay it. 
 These newspapers," he added, " were abundantly 
 confirmed by communications which he had 
 received from persons holding high official 
 positions in the Civil Service of India. He 
 had found it stated on authority which could 
 not be disputed, that in one district in Bombay, 
 out of 25,000 assessments made by one official, 
 nearly one-half were appealed against, and in 
 all these appeals the assessments had to be 
 modified by the Revising Officer ; and it was 
 well known," he remarked, "that the cost and 
 annoyance involved in their appeals are so 
 great, that in a vast number of cases people 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 61 
 
 submit to an unjust assessment rather than 
 travel many miles, and thus incur the outlay 
 and the worry of appearing in court to protest." 
 He complained further that "the indefensible 
 exemption" of the official and professional classes 
 from contributing to the license-tax " converts it 
 into an income-tax in its most obnoxious form," 
 meaning, it is to be supposed, thereby, its most in- 
 quisitorial shape, as being confined exclusively to 
 those incomes which, unlike those of the official 
 and in some measure of the professional classes, 
 are matters within the knowledge of the taxpayer 
 alone. Not only so, but the present license-tax 
 was, he insisted, levied with far more rigour than 
 the income-tax had been when imposed in India a 
 few years before. " Although the tax was of the 
 same nominal amount, it appears that the license- 
 tax, in spite of its exemptions, enforces a much 
 larger contribution from the mass of the people. 
 . . . When it is borne in mind that the official 
 and professional classes, who are exempted from 
 the licensing-tax, were assessed to the income- 
 tax, and that the net yield of the former tax 
 is estimated to be considerably greater than that 
 of the latter, it seems to be conclusively proved 
 that the license-tax falls with extreme severity 
 upon numerous classes of the very poor who 
 were not reached by the income-tax. It must, 
 moreover, be remembered that throughout a 
 
62 LORD CROMER 
 
 considerable part of India the burden of this 
 new taxation falls upon many who are only 
 just recovering from the effects of a terrible 
 famine." 
 
 Some allowance may have to be made for 
 the unconscious bias of a man who, though 
 
 o 
 
 scrupulously fair in intention, was always liable 
 to be unconsciously influenced by his strong 
 democratic prepossessions ; but the substantial 
 justice of his strictures were tacitly admitted 
 by the Indian Government themselves. On the 
 1 4th of November, 1879, the Finance Minister, 
 Sir John Strachey, brought forward at a meeting 
 of the Legislative Council of the Viceroy a Bill 
 for the amendment of the license-tax, which, 
 though it left some inequalities unmodified, 
 introduced many important improvements. A 
 brief description of its provisions will show 
 clearly enough that the author of the measure 
 acknowledged the validity of the most serious 
 of Mr. Fawcett's objections to the tax. The 
 limit of exemption from it was raised from 100 
 to 250 rupees per annum a concession which 
 would, it was stated, give relief to not less than 
 a million persons. The consequent loss to the 
 revenue, estimated at about ^240,000, was met 
 by the imposition of a uniform tax of i^ per 
 cent, on all incomes derived from professions and 
 on the salaries of all persons in Government or 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 63 
 
 other employment, with an exemption, however, 
 in favour of all military servants of Government, 
 not in civil employment, whose pay and allow- 
 ances did not exceed 500 rupees a month, or 
 6000 rupees per annum, and of all other salaried 
 persons whose incomes did not exceed 100 rupees 
 a month or 1 200 rupees a year. 
 
 The spirit of this amending Bill is sufficiently 
 obvious ; but, nevertheless, the measure was not 
 regarded as going far enough to satisfy the 
 objectors to the original proposals. It was urged 
 that the lower limit of taxation was still too low, 
 and the Indian Government yielding to these 
 expressions of public opinion, reintroduced their 
 amending Bill with still further modifications ; 
 and Sir John Strachey proposed at a meeting of 
 the Legislative Council to refer it to a Select 
 Committee, with the object of passing it after 
 the next Indian Budget. In its final shape it 
 raised the limit of exemption from 250 to 500 
 rupees, and, subject to a proviso that the maximum 
 amount to be levied on any person not being an 
 official should be 800 rupees, it imposed a tax of 
 i^ per cent, on all official salaries without limita- 
 tion. By the former of these, the raising of the 
 limit of exemption to 500 rupees, it was estimated 
 that no fewer than 1,750,000 persons would in 
 future be freed from all liability to contribute to 
 the tax. 
 
64 LORD CROMER 
 
 The history of this legislation has been thus 
 reviewed in detail because it affords, perhaps, the 
 best illustration of the gravity of the financial 
 straits to which the Indian Government had been 
 reduced during the years immediately preceding 
 that in which Baring was summoned to undertake 
 his new duties. They had become even more 
 grievous during the financial year preceding his 
 appointment, for, owing to an under-estimate 
 of war expenditure, the Budget of 1 880-81, in 
 which the late Finance Minister had estimated 
 for a surplus of ,417,000, was falsified to 
 the extent of over six millions by results, 
 and the returns of revenue and expenditure for 
 that year displayed a deficit of ,6,269,000. 
 Happily, however, this extraordinary drain on 
 the resources of India was now coming to an 
 end, and Baring was able, in his first Budget, 
 to assume a reduction of outlay to the extent 
 of a little over seven millions, and to calculate 
 on a surplus of 855,000. He had no financial 
 legislation to propose,' and his statement accord- 
 ingly took the simple form of a written minute ; 
 but it contains so able and masterly a statement 
 of the bearings of the currency difficulty on 
 Indian finance a statement to which the years 
 that have since elapsed have given an enhanced 
 significance that this passage in the minute 
 deserves to be quoted in its entirety. The 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 65 
 
 writer is discussing the proposed application 
 of ,750,000, one moiety of the annual charge 
 of ,1,150,000 in the nature of a Famine 
 Insurance, and he thus proceeds to examine the 
 question : 
 
 "The disposal of this sum of money raises some difficult 
 questions of principle. Does the application of this money 
 to the reduction of debts, while at the same time the 
 Government still continues to borrow for Productive Public 
 Works, involve the old fallacy of a sinking fund without a 
 surplus ? It is this question, on which there may well be two 
 opinions, which has, to a great extent, given rise to those 
 doubts in respect to the discretion of the Famine Insurance 
 policy to which I have already alluded. 
 
 "The soundness or otherwise of the policy depends upon 
 the answer which can be given to the question, Is it desirable 
 to convert sterling into rupee debt? The Government is 
 of opinion that within certain limitations it is desirable to 
 effect this conversion. 
 
 " The grounds for holding this opinion are as follows : 
 
 "(i) It is essential to a sound condition of State finance 
 that the elements of certainty and stability should prevail to 
 as great an extent as possible. No such certainty or stability 
 can be attained if the State own a large sum of money in a 
 currency other than that in which it collects its revenue. 
 
 " (2) It is desirable in years of prosperity to reduce the 
 home liabilities in order that in times of emergency the 
 Government may fall back on the London market and borrow 
 without any aggregate increase in their amount. 
 
 " It may perhaps be urged that the object in view will, in 
 any case, only be attained in appearance and not in reality ; 
 that it signifies little whether interest is payable in gold or 
 silver, or whether a loan is issued in London or Calcutta, 
 for that in either case the money will be subscribed by 
 investors resident in Europe ; and that the so-called ' loss by 
 
 E 
 
66 LORD CROMER 
 
 exchange' depends not on the Secretary of State's bills, but 
 on the cumulated transactions of the Secretary of State and 
 the public. 
 
 "If this argument is carried out to its logical conclusion 
 it involves a reversion to the policy of contracting sterling 
 loans, wherever it is possible to obtain money by such means 
 cheaper than by contracting to pay interest in silver. The 
 adoption of this course, although in contradiction to the 
 principles which have been laid down by successive Secre- 
 taries of State, is advocated by many high authorities. 
 
 "The Government is of opinion that it would be inex- 
 pedient at present to revert to the policy of contracting 
 obligations in gold for the following reasons : 
 
 "(i) The best solution of the question would be to obtain 
 money from local investors at the same rate as from residents 
 in Europe. If Government loans are issued in India, and if 
 the interest is payable in silver, we may hope to attract some 
 local capital. If they are issued in London, and the interest 
 is payable in gold, we are almost certain to attract no local 
 capital. 
 
 " (2) It is the opinion of those who speak with the 
 authority of long practical experience that the effect on 
 exchange, of the amount which India has annually to remit 
 to England, would not be so oppressive if the bills were more 
 equally distributed between the Secretary of State and the 
 public. 
 
 " (3) Any extension of our sterling obligations is in the 
 nature of a speculation, which may prove successful or the 
 reverse, according to whether the value of silver in respect 
 to gold rises or falls. 
 
 " Although, however, the advantages of remitting to 
 England, in order to extinguish sterling debt, may be 
 admitted, it is possible to pay too high a price for these 
 advantages. The difference between the value of rupee 
 and sterling stock may be so considerable as to render the 
 transaction undesirable. Further, there are practical difficul- 
 ties in the way of giving effect to this policy. The amount 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 67 
 
 of the home disbursements is now so large that unless there 
 be a rise in the value of silver, or unless the amount 
 of exports is increased, it may be difficult to remit home 
 ^750,000 more than at present. For these reasons the 
 Government cannot give any positive pledge that even 
 when a bond fide surplus of receipt over expenditure is 
 secured it shall be applied to the reduction of sterling 
 debt." 
 
 In concluding his statement, Major Baring 
 took judicious occasion to refer to the extra- 
 ordinary miscalculation of expenditure which had 
 so deranged the Budget of the preceding year. 
 Such a startling failure in the War Estimates 
 had naturally tended to induce a belief that the 
 then financial condition of India afforded ground 
 for alarm ; whereas, as the Minister proceeded to 
 point out, it was merely from the stress of the 
 great war expenditure that India was suffering. 
 Relieved of this, it would be seen, he said, that 
 the actual financial condition of the country was 
 prosperous. The difficulties with which the 
 Government had to deal, considerable though 
 they were, were very different from those which 
 existed in the years immediately following the 
 Mutiny. India was not now in a state of chronic 
 deficit. She could not only pay her way, but 
 could provide a large surplus of receipts over 
 expenditure. 
 
 This statement was fully confirmed by the 
 experience of the following year, when for 
 
68 LORD CROMER 
 
 1882-83 the surplus of ,855,000 calculated upon 
 in the Budget Estimates was exceeded in the 
 Regular Estimates by ,722,000, showing a total 
 surplus of upwards of a million and a half. This, 
 too, was by far the most important of Baring's 
 three Financial Statements, since in it he had 
 proposed legislation for the reduction of the duty 
 on salt and for the total abolition of the cotton 
 duties, two changes involving a loss to the 
 revenue of no less than ,2,619,000. 
 
 But before reaching the part of his statement 
 in which his projected legislation had to be 
 discussed and explained, the Finance Minister 
 had to undertake a somewhat detailed and com- 
 prehensive examination of a highly contentious 
 question, on which, perhaps, more nonsense has 
 been talked and more cant outpoured than on 
 any other controversy of modern times. I refer 
 of course to the opium question, which Major 
 Baring handles in this Budget statement in 
 admirably straightforward fashion. A great deal 
 had, he said, been written from time to time as 
 to the effects of opium, both on the individual 
 and on the Chinese nation. " I do not think," he 
 continues, "that anything is to be gained by 
 discussing this subject at any length. That 
 opium, when used in moderation for medicinal 
 purposes, is beneficial ; that in China it is very 
 often used to excess ; that when used to excess 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 69 
 
 its effect is baneful ; and that it would be better 
 for the Chinese if they smoked less opium, are 
 truisms which may be generally accepted. The 
 commonplaces on the subject may to some 
 extent be admitted by all parties. Even if it is 
 conceded to the Anti-Opium Society that the 
 effects of the drug are to the full as baneful as 
 they allege, we should, whether from the Chinese 
 or the Indian point of view, be no nearer than at 
 present to the solution of the problem which we 
 have on hand. It is useless to discuss what 
 ideal condition of things would commend itself 
 either to Chinese or to Indian statesmen. The 
 problem we have to treat is an eminently practical 
 
 one." 
 
 Then, step by step, he proceeds to point out 
 that the anti-opium agitator, who professes 
 himself scandalized by the connection of the 
 Indian Government with the opium traffic, must, 
 if he is consistent, aim not merely at dissociating 
 that Government from the traffic in question, 
 but at the total suppression of the trade. For 
 the instant economic effect of that dissociation 
 would be to aggravate the moral mischief against 
 which these agitators protest. China would in 
 that case be simply flooded with the Indian drug. 
 Its consumption in that country would be 
 increased, and the cheapening of it in price 
 would cause the poorer classes of Chinamen who 
 
70 LORD CROMER 
 
 now smoke native opium to substitute Indian 
 opium in its place. 
 
 Passing from this point, Major Baring went on 
 to deal with and dispose of the allegations that 
 the Chinese Government had been forced against 
 their will to admit opium by the Treaty of 
 Tientsin, or that they are forced to admit it now. 
 As a matter of fact, they are neither able nor 
 in any effective sense willing to stop the use of 
 opium among their people. 
 
 " Numerous edicts, couched in the most peremptory terms, 
 have been from time to time issued to prohibit the use of 
 opium and the cultivation of the poppy. In issuing these 
 decrees the Chinese Government may be credited with a 
 certain amount of sincerity. Without doubt the Emperor of 
 China, his Ministers, and the most enlightened portion of the 
 population of China, deplore the extensive use of opium. If 
 they could afford the loss of Imperial revenue consequent on 
 the importation of foreign opium ; if they could exercise any 
 real control over the numberless corrupt officials who earn 
 a livelihood from the use of the native drug ; if they thought 
 it were possible to deal with a great social evil of this sort by 
 legislation, and to coerce a large part of the population of 
 a vast empire into a groove contrary to their inveterate habits 
 and the current of their every-day life, it is not improbable 
 that they would gladly see the use of opium abandoned. But 
 whatever are the views which the Chinese Ministers entertain 
 on the question in the abstract, nothing is more certain than 
 that they, equally with the Indian Government, would be 
 embarrassed by the loss of revenue which would be caused 
 either by a cessation of the foreign trade in opium, or by the 
 suppression of the manufacture and sale of the drug in China ; 
 that save on rare occasions, when some specially energetic 
 official may have produced a temporary effect, they have up to 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 71 
 
 the present time never earnestly endeavoured to check the use 
 of the drug, and that they recognize both by word and deed 
 their complete inability to do so. A mass of evidence from 
 the consular reports might be adduced in support of these 
 conclusions." 
 
 The repeal of the cotton duties was a question 
 on which Anglo-Indian opinion was much more 
 divided, and which needed proportionately more 
 of persuasive power on the part of its advocate 
 to recommend it to general acceptance. Major 
 Baring submitted it to the Council in a speech 
 of marked ability, and the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, 
 lent all the weight of his official authority to 
 the arguments in favour. It was carried, and 
 the cotton duties, together with those payable 
 on all other articles save intoxicating liquors, 
 and arms and ammunition, were for the time 
 abolished. Public opinion in India was rather 
 prepared for than reconciled to the step. The 
 native press were almost unanimous in their 
 condemnation of what they considered to be a 
 needless sacrifice of revenue, and their discontent 
 was no doubt increased by the fact that the 
 license-tax which they still regarded, even in its 
 amended form, as unjust and unequal remained 
 untouched, the Finance Minister, though he 
 referred to it as a temporary and not very 
 efficient expedient for raising revenue, pro- 
 posing no change in its amount or incidence. 
 
72 LORD CROMER 
 
 A Budget in which the repeal of the cotton 
 duties figured as the principal feature was not 
 exactly a popular one, either in India or (out 
 of Manchester) in England, for a Finance 
 Minister to be associated with ; but the ability 
 displayed in the construction of the scheme 
 was undeniable, and its author's claim to 
 recognition as a skilled financier was strength- 
 ened by the fact that he had approached his 
 task under all the disadvantages incident to 
 convalescence from a serious attack of typhoid 
 fever, which had prostrated him in the early 
 part of the year. Even in exceptional ways, 
 moreover, his activity remained unimpaired by 
 his illness. With a view to obtaining informa- 
 tion as to the various methods by which capital 
 could obtain profitable employment, tours were 
 undertaken by some of the members of the 
 Government to various parts of India; and in 
 response to a speech of the Governor of 
 Madras, in which he hinted that that depend- 
 ency had received too little of the financial 
 attention of the Central Government, Major 
 Baring paid it a visit. He was interviewed by 
 the Madras Chamber of Commerce, with whom 
 he discussed certain public works then in 
 progress or in contemplation, and made in- 
 quiries as to the probability of attracting local 
 capital to investments in local railroads. 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 73 
 
 The Financial Statement of 1883-84 was 
 like that of Baring's first year of office, unaccom- 
 panied by legislation, and was therefore not 
 delivered orally in Legislative Council, but pre- 
 sented in the form of a minute. This practice, 
 prescribed by the constituting Act of the 
 Imperial Legislature, which expressly excludes 
 matters of Executive policy from the consideration 
 of that Council, is productive of some inconve- 
 nience by depriving the Financial Member of 
 the Council of the advantage of his colleagues' 
 criticisms on the proposals. It has more than 
 once been suggested, as indeed it was again 
 on the present occasion, that the views of the 
 non-official members of the Council might be 
 usefully obtained by means of an unimportant 
 fiscal proposal to be introduced collusively, as 
 it were, and without the intention of proceeding 
 further with it. The suggestion, however, as 
 on previous occasions, was not adopted, and 
 the Statement was introduced in the usual way. 
 
 It was of a more humdrum character than 
 that of the preceding year, when, in Baring's 
 words, " a favourable opportunity presented 
 itself for the execution of some very large and 
 beneficial improvements of the fiscal system." 
 The financial situation in 1883, though perfectly 
 sound, was one in which great caution was 
 required. The Government had to look, not 
 
74 LORD CROMER 
 
 only to the circumstances of the immediate 
 moment, but also to the contingencies which 
 might arise in future years. But so treated, the 
 situation was satisfactory enough. " Not only," 
 wrote the Finance Minister, " are we able to 
 balance our revenue and expenditure, but we 
 are able, without any increase of taxation and 
 without in any way starving the public services 
 or checking the progress of public works of 
 utility, to provide an adequate surplus in order 
 to meet any of the numerous unforeseen con- 
 tingencies which so frequently arise in India." 
 
 The Budget was accordingly framed for a 
 revenue of 67,274,000, or ,640,000 less than 
 that of the assessed estimates of the preceding 
 year ; while the expenditure was calculated at 
 more than a million less than the corresponding 
 figures for 1882-83; that is to say, at 
 66,817,000 against ,67,854,000 leaving a 
 surplus of 457,000. Including Provincial with 
 Imperial items of expenditure, an increase was 
 allowed for under the important heads of tele- 
 graphs, police, law and justice, medical, education, 
 political and territorial pensions, and subsidized 
 railways. On the other hand, that under the 
 large categories of refunds, frontier railways, 
 irrigation, civil buildings, &c., had decreased. 
 
 In his Budget statement of the previous year 
 Major Baring had frankly recognized the evils 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 75 
 
 of the license - tax, and admitted that in 
 its present form it could not be incorporated 
 into the permanent fiscal system of the country. 
 44 The Government," he said, " reserved to 
 themselves complete liberty of action in the 
 future, either to propose the abolition of the 
 license-tax, to recast it, or, even should such a 
 course appear desirable when the financial 
 arrangements for 1883-84 came under con- 
 sideration, to allow it to continue in existence 
 in its present form for a while longer. It was 
 this last course which the Government found 
 themselves, in fact, compelled to adopt. After 
 careful consideration of the whole subject, they 
 saw both general and special reasons for not 
 interfering with this tax for the present. They 
 were, in the first place, influenced by the just 
 reflection that there is nothing more undesirable 
 than to be continually introducing changes in 
 the fiscal system of a country like India. The 
 evils arising from the levy of the license-tax 
 in its present shape were emphatically such as it 
 was better to endure rather than remedy, unless 
 some remedy could be applied with reasonable 
 confidence that no further change would in the 
 immediate future be necessary. Moreover," 
 continued the Finance Minister : 
 
 "There are some special considerations which point to 
 the desirability of making no change in the fiscal system at 
 
?6 LORD CROMER 
 
 present. The financial year which is about to close has 
 presented features which are altogether abnormal, and even 
 if this had not been the case, the experience of a year is 
 not sufficient to enable any very correct judgment to be 
 formed as to the ultimate effect of the large fiscal reforms 
 which were carried out in March, 1882. The future of silver 
 and of opium is also very uncertain. On every ground, 
 therefore, the present moment is a time when great caution 
 should be exercised. Under these circumstances the Govern- 
 ment, after full consideration, is of opinion that the wisest 
 course to adopt will be to make no changes in the fiscal 
 system for the present, but to allow more time to elapse 
 with a view to watching the effect of those reforms which 
 have already been introduced." 
 
 The prospects of the opium revenue were in- 
 deed in those years regarded by Indian financiers 
 with almost as great, though as the result has 
 shown with by no means so well-founded, an 
 anxiety as that with which they had begun to 
 look on the continued fall in the value of silver. 
 Opium, in Baring's opinion, constituted the chief 
 danger of the immediate future. For a long 
 time past he said he had been inclined to take 
 a somewhat desponding view of the future of 
 the opium revenue, and recent events had 
 confirmed the view which he had theretofore 
 held. 
 
 Considering, he went on to point out, that the 
 crop was singularly precarious, that the indigenous 
 drug of China was daily becoming a more 
 serious competitor with Indian opium, and that 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 77 
 
 the Indian revenue depended in no slight degree 
 on the domestic legislation of a foreign country, 
 China, it could scarcely, in his opinion, be doubted 
 that the yearly revenue which India derives from 
 opium would in all probability show a falling off 
 in future. 
 
 This forecast perhaps erred a little on the side 
 of pessimism, but on the whole its substantial 
 accuracy has been justified. The net revenue 
 from opium, which was estimated for that 
 financial year at ,7,035,000, did indeed touch 
 a point over eight millions some five years later ; 
 but the tendency of falling off has unquestionably 
 manifested itself since then. It was lower in 
 1892-93 than in 1891-92 ; lower in '93-94 than 
 in '92-93 ; and lower in '94-95 than in '93-94, 
 falling in the latest of these years to less than 
 six millions and a half, or in other words, to a 
 sum more than half a million below that at which 
 it was possible to estimate it in this last Budget 
 of Baring's, that of 1883-84. 
 
 On the more urgent question of exchange 
 the Finance Minister had to report even more 
 unfavourably. At no period had the incon- 
 venience to India, of having to make a large 
 annual payment in sterling, been more apparent 
 than during the then current financial year. It 
 was, however, not so much of the loss as 
 of the disarrangement of accounts and of the 
 
78 LORD CROMER 
 
 disturbance of trade that Baring complains in 
 the following passage : 
 
 "I will not now attempt to discuss whether it is to the 
 advantage of India that the value of the rupee expressed 
 in sterling should be low ; that is to say, lower than it used 
 to be when the relative values of gold to silver [silver to 
 gold?] were as i to 15 J. That is a subject on which a great 
 deal might be said. But it is not the fact that the value 
 of the rupee is, comparatively speaking, low that causes 
 inconvenience. It would be possible, although it might be 
 exceedingly troublesome, to adjust the Indian fiscal system 
 to a rupee of any value. What causes inconvenience alike 
 to Government and to trade is that the value of the rupee 
 is unstable. It is impossible to state accurately in Indian 
 currency what the annual liabilities of the Government of 
 India are. Those liabilities have to be calculated afresh each 
 year, according to the variations which take place in the 
 relative value of gold and silver, and a calculation which 
 will hold good for even one year is exceedingly difficult to 
 make." 
 
 This difficulty had indeed received a costly 
 illustration in the very year before. 
 
 "In March, 1882, the value of the rupee was taken at 
 is. 8d., and at the time this estimate was made it was a 
 reasonable one, based on the facts of the past and present. 
 The value of silver was then about 525. an ounce, which 
 corresponds with a value of is. 8 T ^d. to the rupee. But 
 since then the value of the rupee has been as high as 
 is. 8 T 5 s-d., and as low as is. 7 T Vd. The average price 
 obtained for the bills amounting to ,1,184,000 (true 
 sterling), placed on the market up to March 9, 1883, has 
 been is. 7^fd. When it was framed it was thought that 
 a debt of ,1,184,000 (true sterling) would be liquidated 
 by a payment of 17,020,300 rupees. It has actually cost 
 17,438,100 rupees to liquidate that debt. It is sufficient 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 79 
 
 to state these facts in order to show the grave inconvenience 
 to the Government which results from the unstable value 
 of the rupee." 
 
 The Budget of that year was framed on 
 an estimate of is. 7^d. as the value of the 
 rupee, "an estimate which could not," the 
 Finance Minister remarked, " be considered as 
 erring on the side of optimism." For that date 
 no doubt it was not, but it is indeed melancholy 
 to turn from this to the financial statement of 
 1894-95 an d to note the statement of a Minister, 
 who at the same time declared that he would 
 not waste the time of the Council in " bemoan- 
 ing- " the dwindling value of the rupee ; that on 
 the first considerable issue of Council bills in 
 the previous January a rate of i4fd. was 
 obtained, which, however, fell in the course 
 of the next month to i3^d., and had since then 
 recovered to about i4d. 
 
 Those dark days, however, were still in the 
 somewhat distant future, and in this, the last 
 Budget he was to introduce, Major Baring was 
 able to take on the whole a tolerably hopeful 
 farewell of the country whose finances he had 
 directed for three years. " I will not venture," 
 he said at the close of his general review of the 
 prospective revenue of the coming year, " to 
 predict what may be the financial situation at 
 the commencement of the year 1884-85. 
 
8o LORD CROMER 
 
 "All that can now be said on this subject is that we 
 commence the year 1883-84 with a surplus of ^475,000 
 in hand; that the estimates for 1883-84 have been very 
 cautiously framed ; that the natural prosperity of the country 
 is increasing, and unless famine should intervene, will con- 
 tinue to increase, with the result that the revenue from excise, 
 salt, stamps, railways, &c., is steadily growing; and lastly, that 
 by the reduction of the salt duty the financial position has 
 been much strengthened and a fiscal reserve instituted which, 
 should the occasion unfortunately arise, can be used in case 
 of necessity. So long as the value of the rupee and the 
 opium revenue continue liable to such fluctuations as those 
 which we have recently witnessed, the financial situation of 
 India must always contain some elements of instability ; but 
 I see no reason for taking any despondent view of that 
 situation at present. On the contrary, there is every reason 
 to believe that the country will be well able to cope with 
 whatever financial difficulties the future may have in store." 
 
 Even in the hard times which have succeeded, 
 and under the far heavier stress of those financial 
 troubles which have been mainly brought about 
 by the further and most disastrous decline in the 
 value of the rupee, it is likely enough that Lord 
 Cromer would be still prepared to stand by these 
 hopeful utterances of his last Budget speech. 
 Pluck and patience are both of them such salient 
 characteristics of the man, that had he even now 
 the direction of Indian finance, he would doubt- 
 less still be "strong and of a good courage." 
 But his own lot in India was undoubtedly cast 
 in happier times than the present. For the due 
 evolution of his powers an able financier needs a 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 81 
 
 financial situation which is neither too prosperous 
 nor too much the reverse. It should neither be 
 one which anybody, nor one which nobody, could 
 successfully deal with, and the condition of the 
 finances of India at the time when Baring 1 took 
 his seat on the Council annually fulfilled that 
 condition. 
 
 Slowly recovering from the heavy drain of 
 the Afghan War, they had not yet begun to 
 suffer seriously from the more prolonged and 
 exhausting depletion to which the currency 
 trouble has since subjected them. The Finance 
 Minister could still, as we have seen, describe 
 as a mere inconvenience what has since assumed 
 the proportions of a calamity. India had still 
 breathing-time to prepare for her coming trials, 
 and it was the business of her financial counsellors 
 to turn it to the best account. On the other 
 hand, the season was obviously no opportune one 
 for " brilliant experimentalizing" in any direction. 
 It was pre-eminently a situation calling for treat- 
 ment by the methods of sound " conservative " 
 finance, and these methods Major Baring in each 
 of his three Budgets scrupulously applied to it. 
 Each, therefore, was in its way a success a 
 success of the only kind possible under the given 
 conditions and with the available materials ; and 
 their author, unlike more than one occupant of 
 that difficult post, undoubtedly left India with an 
 
82 LORD CROMER 
 
 enhanced reputation. Mr. Gladstone, it is under- 
 stood, entertained a high opinion of his skill as a 
 financier, and his Indian record was at any rate 
 not otherwise than confirmatory of the judgment 
 formed of him by the highest financial authority 
 of the day. 
 
 The last year of Major Baring's official sojourn 
 in India was rendered untowardly memorable in 
 the annals of our great dependency by one of 
 the bitterest disputes which have ever divided 
 English and Anglo-Indian opinion. It was the 
 year in which Mr. (now Sir Courtenay) Ilbert 
 introduced his Criminal Jurisdiction Bill a 
 measure by which it was proposed to allow 
 European British subjects throughout India to be 
 tried for criminal offences by native magistrates 
 and judges possessed of certain qualifications. 
 Major Baring supported it in Council, and on his 
 retirement from his post and return to England 
 he defended its principles in a well-reasoned 
 article in the Nineteenth Century. The best 
 proof of its argumentative ability is that it 
 follows a vigorous attack from the pen of the 
 late Sir James Stephen on the democratizing 
 tendencies of the Government, and that even in 
 such trying contiguity with one of the keenest and 
 hardest-hitting controversialists of his day, the 
 writer of "Recent Events in India" holds his 
 own. 
 
FINANCE MINISTER IN INDIA 83 
 
 On the side of the opponents of the Ilbert Bill 
 and of the Ripon policy in general there was 
 no point more strongly insisted upon than the 
 prematurity and gratuitousness of both. " The 
 present government," wrote Stephens in his 
 usually trenchant style, " of the people of India 
 suits all parties concerned. If it does not, it is for 
 those who feel a grievance to complain of it ; but 
 to me it appears like madness to try to train a 
 people who like an absolute government, who 
 are accustomed to it, and who make no complaint 
 of it, into a state of mind which mio-ht at 
 
 o 
 
 any moment produce frightful catastrophes, but 
 is utterly unlikely to produce anything else. 
 Suppose a master and his workmen were going 
 on perfectly well together, the master receiving 
 from the workmen good and faithful service, pay- 
 ing them fair wages and doing them kind offices 
 besides, what would be thought of his discretion 
 if he were to be continually calling meetings to 
 discuss Socialism ; if he were to ask them if their 
 wages were high enough ; whether they did not 
 think they ought to have shares in the business ; 
 whether they had no fault to find with the 
 management of it, and so on ? " 
 
 It would be difficult to put the case for a 
 Conservative policy in India more cogently than 
 this. Nor, I think, would it be easy to state the 
 only possible reply to it with more lucidity and 
 
84 LORD CROMER 
 
 skill than in the following passage from Major 
 Baring's article : 
 
 " It is always difficult in politics to decide whether it is 
 wiser to anticipate a difficulty, or to await a solution until 
 the difficulty has become a burning question. Englishmen 
 generally prefer the latter course, because they are accustomed 
 to it. The difficulties of parliamentary government are so 
 great that few Ministers will care to take up a difficult question 
 until it is forced upon their attention. The consequence is 
 that reform is often so long delayed as to prevent its producing 
 a full measure of beneficial results when it is ultimately effected. 
 As India is necessarily debarred from the benefit of parlia- 
 mentary institutions, there can be no reason why it should not 
 reap whatever advantages are incidental to a despotic form of 
 government ; and one of these advantages is that it is some- 
 times possible and desirable to anticipate a difficulty and 
 solve it before it has attained considerable dimensions. I 
 have, therefore, always thought, in Lord Ripon's words, that it 
 would be 'wiser to introduce the measure now gradually, 
 cautiously, and tentatively than to wait till the change is 
 forced upon us by necessity, and the powers which are now to 
 be given only to a few men have to be given suddenly to a 
 very much larger number of civil servants.' A fortiori I am 
 of that opinion now that the question has once been raised." 
 
 Arguments of this description had a good deal 
 more weight with Moderate Liberals of the Baring 
 type than they possess to-day. After the many 
 object-lessons on the futility of the policy of 
 " meeting nationalist moveme.-ts half-way," which 
 the past ten years have yielded for statesmen of 
 all parties, and especially for that to which the hero 
 of this biography belonged, it is not presumptuous 
 to suppose that the theories which commanded the 
 adhesion of Major Baring have lost much of their 
 influence over the mind of Lord Cromer. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 Consiil-General at Cairo 
 
 HITHERTO the duties which Baring had 
 been discharging ever since his definitive 
 abandonment of military for civil life, had been 
 wholly of a financial character. But now, on 
 his return to England, where his official services 
 of the last three years received Royal recogni- 
 tion in the form of a Knight Commandership 
 of the Star of India, he was about to be selected 
 for a post of even more importance, if not of 
 greater dignity, than any he had before filled. 
 He was appointed to succeed Sir Edward Malet 
 as Her Majesty's Agent and Consul-General at 
 Cairo, with the additional rank of Minister 
 Plenipotentiary in the Diplomatic Service. 
 
 It was thus to a country at once familiar and 
 strange, " the same, yet not the same," that he 
 returned. As a financier he knew it and its 
 circumstances well ; but as a political agent, as a 
 diplomatic official, as an administrator, nay, as a 
 statesman for nothing less than that was the part 
 for which destiny was now ''casting" him he had, 
 
 85 
 
86 LORD CROMER 
 
 it may be said without exaggeration, almost to 
 "go to school again to the facts." During his 
 three years' absence in India, catastrophic changes 
 had occurred in Egypt changes which had at 
 once revolutionized the relations between that 
 country and Great Britain, and those of the 
 European Powers among themselves. The 
 Anglo-French condominium had vanished in the 
 smoke of the British guns before Alexandria ; 
 and with it the office of the Controllership, which 
 Baring had filled on behalf of England in co- 
 partnership with M. de Blignieres as the repre- 
 sentative of France, had ceased to exist, and an 
 English Financial Adviser reigned in their stead. 
 The Khedive had been virtually deposed by 
 rebels, and reinstated by British arms. A large 
 British military force was still in occupation of 
 the capital, and Her Majesty's Government had 
 become to all intents and purposes the para- 
 mount rulers of Egypt in much the same sense 
 and to the same extent as the Viceroy of India 
 is the ruler of a protected Indian State under the 
 nominal sovereignty of a Feudatory Prince. Sir 
 Evelyn Baring's formal title of Agent and 
 Consul-General has already been given ; his true 
 title, if he had realized his position, which at that 
 moment perhaps he did not, or if it had been 
 consistent with diplomatic etiquette to employ it, 
 would have been that of "Resident" at the 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 87 
 
 Court of His Highness Tewfik Pasha, Khedive 
 of Egypt. 
 
 Even this, however, is but a partial account 
 of the immense change which had taken place 
 in the situation since Sir Evelyn Baring ex- 
 changed Cairo for Calcutta. The rulers of Egypt 
 were rulers in spite of themselves. It was their 
 poverty of resource and not their will that 
 consented to their assuming the government 
 of Egypt at all. If they could have got out 
 of it on the morrow of Tel-el- Kebir they would 
 gladly have done so ; but being there, with the 
 ruins of what was once an Egyptian government 
 all around them, and nothing in the world to take 
 its place except the military force which they had 
 with them, and the civil ability of which they had 
 any amount at command, they could not quite 
 bring themselves to walk straight out of the 
 country and to leave it first to anarchy, and 
 then to whatever other European Power should 
 prove the quickest to step into their place. 
 
 But if they had to admit even to themselves 
 that it was impossible for them to evacuate 
 Egypt at once and altogether, there was still 
 one thing always possible to them, and even, 
 to a Government of their way of thinking, 
 attractive. They could revise the definition of 
 the word " Egypt," and limit their responsibilities 
 accordingly. They must of course look after 
 
88 LORD CROMER 
 
 the capital ; and this involved protecting and ad- 
 ministering the delta which lay between it and the 
 sea. And for so far above Cairo as the country 
 could be protected and administered without 
 any very heavy cost to themselves, they were 
 willing to accept the same responsibilities. But 
 as to extending their authority some thousand 
 miles further towards the equator, beyond the 
 limit of this cheaply-guarded and easily-governed 
 region as to spending men and money in 
 re-establishing Egyptian authority over distant 
 regions, now the scene of fanatical revolt and 
 savage warfare, and this, too, to no better end than 
 that they might after all have a larger and more 
 troublesome Egypt to protect and administer- 
 to that they strongly objected. If the Soudan 
 was in insurrection, and if the weak and ill- 
 disciplined forces of the Khedive in those regions 
 were, as all the best authorities assured them, 
 utterly unable to cope with the insurgents, so 
 much the worse for the Khedive. 
 
 It is an interesting, though no doubt not a 
 very profitable subject of speculation, whether, 
 if the Gladstone Government had from the first 
 recognized the necessity of taking Egyptian 
 policy wholly under their control, they might 
 have preserved the Soudan to Egypt. No 
 doubt they could not have done so without 
 a certain expenditure of English blood and 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 89 
 
 treasure on the work ; but these sacrifices we 
 incurred as it was, and without avail. Would 
 it not have been possible for England, if her 
 rulers had acted with ordinary foresight and 
 promptitude, to have prevented Egyptian 
 authority and strength in the Soudan from 
 lapsing into that condition which ultimately 
 rendered the evacuation policy unavoidable ? 
 The question cannot now, of course, be answered 
 with confidence ; but there is this to be said 
 in favour of the affirmative reply to it, that it 
 was the destruction of Hicks Pasha's army which 
 sealed the fate of the Soudan, considered as an 
 integral portion of the Khedive's dominions; and 
 that if the British Government had from the 
 first controlled the policy of Egypt, it is in- 
 credible that such an army would ever have 
 been allowed to start from Khartoum. The 
 very irresolution, the mere timidity that swayed 
 the counsels of the then Administration would 
 have prevented their sanctioning any rash 
 expedition of re -conquest, or probably any 
 expedition at all ; while assuredly their military 
 advisers not to say the ill-fated commander 
 himself would have told them that the best, 
 if not the only, chance of retaining any of the 
 Soudan was temporarily to abandon its outlying 
 provinces, and concentrate at Khartoum for the 
 defence of the rest. 
 
90 LORD CROMER 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, however for we may assume 
 the exercise of his overruling voice in a matter 
 on which more than one of his colleagues 
 must assuredly have seen further ahead Mr. 
 Gladstone surveyed the situation with that 
 singular lack of imaginative faculty which 
 always characterized his dealings with foreign 
 affairs, and which led him, apparently, to judge 
 of the responsibilities of States and the claims 
 of peoples by analogies applicable only in 
 special circumstances to the pettiest concerns 
 of private individuals. To him no doubt it 
 seemed as easy a matter to divest himself and 
 his Government, by simple diplomatic " notice," 
 of all responsibility for what might happen 
 to Egypt in the Soudan, as it is for a 
 husband to escape liability for his wife's debts 
 by the usual method of an advertisement in 
 the newspapers. The venerable Statesman 
 actually imagined that- a Government which we 
 had taken under our tutelage at Cairo might, 
 outside a certain radius from the capital, have 
 its authority shattered and its armies annihilated 
 without our being thereby compelled to take 
 any action on our own account in the matter. 
 Comedy jostles tragedy as we read of the 
 despatches which General Hicks had been in 
 the habit of sending, through Sir Edward 
 Malet, to the Egyptian Government, and which 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 91 
 
 Sir Edward was strictly charged to deliver to 
 them with a careful disclaimer of any other 
 role in the affair save that of the postman. 
 The gallant English soldier who was about to 
 be sent forth to disaster and death, showed 
 pretty clearly in these despatches that he knew 
 what was in store for him, and that he thought 
 it desirable that the British Government should 
 know it likewise. But the British Government 
 did not share that opinion. They were appar- 
 ently not in the least interested in the question, 
 whether the forty thousand Egyptian troops 
 then in the Soudan were or were not capable 
 of re-establishing the authority of the Khedive 
 over the whole or any part of that region ; nor 
 yet in the further question, whether the better 
 way of attempting this was to concentrate all 
 the available strength of the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment on the defence of Khartoum and the 
 Central Soudan, or to despatch thence a scratch 
 expedition of hopelessly inferior soldiers into a 
 wilderness overrun by a brave, active, and 
 powerful enemy. 
 
 The latter course was adopted, and on 
 September gth, 1883, Hicks Pasha started 
 from Khartoum. On September 24th he 
 reached El Duem, a point about a hundred 
 miles higher up the river, which he then quitted 
 for the desert, striking off to the westward into 
 
92 LORD CROMER 
 
 Kordofan. After this no more was heard of 
 him and his doomed army. It was as though 
 the sands of the desert had opened and 
 swallowed them up. Even in that land of 
 mystery no adventure ever came to a more 
 tragically mysterious end. Hicks' objective was 
 known to be El Obeid, at that time the head- 
 quarters of the Mahdi : his force was about 
 10,000 strong. But it was of wretched material 
 a mere untrained and chicken-hearted mob of 
 fellaheen. It is probable that Hicks himself 
 foresaw disaster ; it is certain that it was 
 foreseen by one at least of the Englishmen of 
 experience around him. " I am writing," wrote 
 the special correspondent of an English journal, 
 "under circumstances which bring me almost 
 as near to death as it is possible to be without 
 being absolutely under sentence of execution 
 or in the throes of some deadly malady . . . 
 in company with cravens whom you expect to 
 see run at every moment and leave you behind 
 to face the worst." 
 
 They never completed their march to El Obeid. 
 Months after it was learnt from the few survivors 
 of the force that on November 5th, at Shekan, 
 about two days' journey from their goal, they 
 were surrounded by an overwhelming host of 
 Dervishes and annihilated. 
 
 But though it was long before the details of 
 
to 8 1 
 
 I 
 
 H *. 
 
 5 S 
 
 il 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 93 
 
 their destruction came to light, the fact of the 
 great disaster was known in Cairo by the end 
 of November. Sir Evelyn Baring had entered 
 upon his duties as Consul-General on September 
 iith, and had therefore been little more than 
 two months at his post. It was short notice at 
 which to decide so momentous a question as 
 that which the destruction of Hicks' army had 
 brought from an urgent to a positively acute 
 stage ; and it was hard to have to pronounce, 
 as a first decision, one so thoroughly distasteful 
 to Egyptian feeling as that which the question 
 demanded. But the new Consul-General has 
 never feared responsibility, and has never 
 wavered in the line of duty through solicitude 
 for his own popularity with any man or body 
 of men, from Khedive to fellaheen. His resolu- 
 tion was promptly taken and unflinchingly 
 adhered to. On the 26th of November he 
 telegraphed to Lord Granville as follows : 
 
 "In view of the recent intelligence from the Soudan, I 
 have thought it advisable to obtain the opinion of competent 
 military authorities on the military situation in that Province 
 for the information of Her Majesty's Government. 
 
 "Accordingly, General Stephenson, Sir Evelyn Wood, and 
 General Baker met unofficially at my house and fully discussed 
 the subject. 
 
 "They were unanimously of opinion that the Egyptian 
 Government will find it impossible, with the force at present 
 at their disposal, to hold the Soudan, and that it will 
 eventually be necessary, after withdrawing the garrisons, to 
 
94 LORD CROMER 
 
 fall back from Khartoum on to Egypt proper. They think 
 that Khartoum should, if possible, be held sufficiently long 
 to allow the more advanced posts and detached garrisons in 
 the Soudan to rejoin." 
 
 It is needless, of course, to say that no counsel 
 more acceptable to the nerveless Government 
 then holding power could possibly have been 
 given ; and this circumstance does no doubt at 
 first sight appear to constitute a grave pre- 
 sumption against its policy, and a still graver 
 one against its spirit. To the Second Gladstone 
 Administration no advice about Egypt com- 
 mended, or could commend itself, unless in 
 some form or other it spelt "scuttle." But the 
 particular advice given by Baring in this instance 
 ought not to be unduly prejudiced in -historical 
 estimation by the fact that it was acceptable to 
 the Gladstone Government. If we should not 
 refuse to serve God because the Devil bids 
 us, we are not justified in disobeying the 
 commands of discretion because they happen 
 to be echoed by cowardice. The Consul- 
 General's counsels were not, indeed, heroic, but 
 they were sound ; and there are cases, and 
 this was one, in which heroism is mere fool- 
 hardiness. If concentration at Khartoum had 
 become necessary even before the despatch ot 
 Hicks' force, the total annihilation of that 
 force the shattering, in fact, of the Khedive's 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 95 
 
 last weapon made even concentration im- 
 possible, and, unless the British Government 
 were to come to the military assistance of 
 Egypt, rendered complete evacuation its only 
 substitute. 
 
 Theoretically, indeed, it may be said that Sir 
 Evelyn Baring's responsibility was reduced to a 
 minimum. His military advisers at Cairo had 
 certified to the inability of Egypt to hold the 
 Soudan of her own strength ; his official superiors 
 at home had signified their fixed determination 
 not to reinforce that strength from English 
 resources. Nothing, therefore, remained but 
 the alternative of withdrawal from the Soudan, 
 and Baring's advice to that effect was (it might 
 be said) the mere irresponsible resultant of the 
 two factors above set forth. And no doubt 
 that was so in theory ; but not in practice. In 
 practice, a diplomatic agent "on the spot" is 
 intended by his Government at home and by 
 no Government was this intention more certain 
 to be entertained than by that Administration 
 with which he had to deal to be used as a 
 convenient screen for interposition between 
 themselves and the troublesome Parliamentary 
 querist. When, therefore, the Consul -General 
 acquiesced without protest in the announced 
 resolve of the Government to wash their hands 
 of the Soudan ; when he hinted, without 
 
96 LORD CROMER 
 
 favouring the suggestion, that it was not at all 
 improbable that the Egyptian Government 
 would request Her Majesty's Government to 
 send English or Indian troops ; when, in fine, 
 he wrote, even before the English Government 
 had officially declared for that course : " My 
 own opinion is, that once General Hicks' army 
 is defeated, it would be wiser for the Egyptian 
 Government to accept the fact and to withdraw 
 to whatever point on the Nile they can be sure 
 of defending, although a great impulse would 
 thus be given to the slave trade," he must 
 have been well aware that he personally would 
 be quoted by the then Government as the chief 
 adviser, if not the author of the retirement 
 policy, and that under subsequent Govern- 
 ments, and indeed for an indefinite future, he 
 might well be set down in public estimation as 
 an admirer of that policy, not merely as a 
 pis aller, but on its own merits and for its own 
 sake. " How otherwise," he would be asked, 
 " could you have refrained from pointing out at 
 this time to your Government the vital import- 
 ance to Egypt of the province which she was 
 at the moment too weak to hold, and urging 
 them to reconsider their resolve to deny her 
 that military assistance which would enable her 
 to maintain her grasp?" 
 
 Such questions, however, are a good deal 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 97 
 
 easier to ask to-day than they were in 1883. 
 They are indeed almost as much facilitated by 
 the event as prophecies. It was impossible for 
 Baring to foresee the future of the Soudan for 
 the next twelve years to come. Could he 
 have done so it would, of course, have supplied 
 him with one very powerful argument ; for he 
 would then have been in a position to inform 
 the Government that the territory which they 
 were compelling Egypt to abandon would have 
 to be regained for her by a future Administration. 
 Even that, however, would hardly have in- 
 fluenced Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues 
 unless it could have been accompanied by the 
 prophetic information (in this case the reverse 
 of the eventual fact) that the cost and responsi- 
 bility of regaining the Soudan would fall upon 
 a Government of their own and not of their 
 opponents' party. It is to be feared, indeed, 
 that the most certain foreknowledge of that 
 future which has now become the present, 
 would only, had it been attainable, have con- 
 firmed Mr. Gladstone in his resolve. 
 
 Sir Evelyn Baring had, in other words, to 
 leave English power and English policy out of 
 his calculations, and to advise that course which 
 was the fittest to be pursued by an unassisted 
 Egypt in the emergency before her. And as 
 has been said, he assumed, no doubt with full 
 
98 LORD CROMER 
 
 consciousness of the responsibility attached to 
 it, the position of an adviser behind whom the 
 then Government would shelter themselves and 
 their policy of surrender, and to whom as their 
 authority for maintaining that policy future 
 Governments would assuredly appeal. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues gladly, and 
 let us hope thankfully, accepted the self-sacrifice. 
 Baring was instructed to inform the Egyptian 
 Cabinet that the Soudan must be abandoned 
 with all promptitude, and that any Minister who 
 was not prepared to adopt this programme 
 must go. The Prime Minister, Sherif Pasha, 
 fell at once into this category and resigned 
 office. Riaz Pasha, who had been Minister of 
 the Interior under Sherif, but who had resigned 
 because he was not allowed to hang Arabi, 
 could not be prevailed upon to take the retiring 
 Minister's place, and it was only after prolonged 
 solicitation and it is said, a threat from Baring 
 that if no Egyptian Statesman would act he 
 would himself come down to the public depart- 
 ments and keep the machinery of State going, 
 provisionally, at any rate, with his own hands 
 that Nubar Pasha was induced to accept a 
 post to which so unpopular a task was attached. 
 It was a prompt and crucial application of the 
 eminently sound doctrine just laid down, no 
 doubt in reference to this very case, by Lord 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 99 
 
 Granville. " I hardly need point out," he wrote 
 to Baring on January 4th, 1884, "that in 
 important questions where the administration 
 and safety of Egypt are at stake, it is indis- 
 pensable that Her Majesty's Government should, 
 so long as the provisional occupation of the 
 country by English troops continues, be assured 
 that the advice which, after full consideration 
 of the views of the Egyptian Government, they 
 may feel it their duty to tender to the Khedive, 
 should be followed. It should be made clear 
 to the Egyptian Ministers and Governors of 
 Provinces that the responsibility which for the 
 time rests on England, obliges Her Majesty's 
 Government to insist on the policy which they 
 recommend ; and that it will be necessary that 
 those Ministers and Governors who do not 
 follow this course should cease to hold their 
 offices." This was undoubtedly and unwontedly 
 plain speaking ; but one cannot help won- 
 dering whether it would ever have been wrung 
 from them by anything but their passion 
 for retreat. Like him whose " honour rooted 
 in dishonour stood," Mr. Gladstone's Govern- 
 ment was firm only in flight. 
 
 The actual course of events, however, has been 
 somewhat anticipated in the foregoing paragraph. 
 The resolution to evacuate the Soudan was taken 
 by the Government in the latter days of 
 
ioo LORD CROMER 
 
 November, 1883. Sherif's resignation was not 
 handed in until January, 1884, an d between 
 these two dates a momentous step of policy 
 had been determined on by the Cabinet in 
 London ; for it was, in fact, at this critical 
 juncture that they arrived at the most fateful, 
 and, indeed, as it proved, the most fatal 
 decision of their career. " Some demon 
 whispered in the ear of their Chief," wrote a 
 political critic a few years after the event, "that 
 the real man for the situation was ' Chinese 
 Gordon,' and the venerable statesman accepted 
 the suggestion as an inspiration from on high. 
 Nothing ever assumed this divine semblance 
 for him so readily as any proposal which pro- 
 mised to save money and to shift responsibility. 
 Then, as always, the point on which his eye 
 fixed was not the situation at Khartoum but 
 the position in Downing Street ; and whether 
 Gordon was the man for the former or not, 
 there was no doubt in the Ministerial mind 
 about his being the man for the latter." 
 
 In more favourable circumstances he might 
 well have been the man for both. With full 
 power to choose his own agents and his own 
 methods, with carte blanche in the matter of 
 men, material, and, within limits, money, it is 
 possible though not, I think, probable at that 
 particular stage of Mahdism that Gordon 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 101 
 
 might have succeeded in pacifying the Soudan. 
 But it must be admitted, in justice to the 
 Gladstone Government, that had he accomplished 
 the feat, he could only have done so by a com- 
 plete abandonment of all the assumptions with 
 which he set out, and an entire reversal of the 
 policy which he contemplated on his acceptance 
 of his mission. In other words, there is no 
 doubt that when Gordon undertook to retire 
 the Egyptian garrisons from the Soudan, and 
 to rescue its civil population or such portion of 
 them as wished to quit the country, he imagined 
 that he would be able to effect his purpose by 
 means of negotiation. He fancied that the 
 influence of his name, and the prestige of the 
 authority formerly wielded by him in those 
 regions, would enable him to pacify them, at 
 any rate for the period necessary to complete 
 the operation of withdrawal. Hence the 
 language used by him before he reached his 
 destination and discovered the true conditions 
 of his undertaking, lends itself readily enough 
 to quotation by those who have contended at 
 a later date for the policy of leaving the Soudan 
 to "stew in its own juice." Indeed it was 
 actually quoted with that object by Mr. 
 Courtney, in a debate in the House of 
 Commons on the policy of the recent advance 
 into the Soudan. Strange as it may be that 
 
102 LORD CROMER 
 
 a man so familiar with Mahommedan barbarism 
 and its susceptibilities to fanatical impulse 
 should never have suspected the true state of 
 things until he came into actual contact with 
 it, such, nevertheless, appears to be indubitably 
 the fact. It was no doubt not wholly due to 
 such a misconception of racial temperament as we 
 could not ascribe, without extreme astonishment, 
 to a man of Gordon's antecedents and experi- 
 ence, but arose, in part at least, from a more 
 explicable misjudgment of individual character. 
 "I do not," he wrote, "believe in advance of 
 Mahdi, who is nephew to my old guide in 
 Darfur, who was a very good fellow." It is 
 singular that a man so apt to find scriptural 
 illustrations of contemporary phenomena should 
 not have noticed the ironical resemblance 
 between his own reasonings about the false 
 prophet and those of the Galileans about a 
 certain True Messiah. " Is not this . . . the 
 brother of James and of Juda and of Simon?" 
 Whether a prophet's credentials be genuine or 
 spurious, it is equally true that he is likely to 
 be without honour from those who have known 
 him " among his own kin and in his own 
 house." 
 
 Gordon apparently started in the full con- 
 fidence that he should find plenty of " very good 
 fellows " in the Soudan with whom he could 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 103 
 
 arrange for the peaceful execution of his mission. 
 Had he been right in his calculations it would 
 no doubt have been not only possible to carry 
 out the Ministerial policy of retirement without 
 serious cost or bloodshed, but even advisable, it 
 may be, to leave the Soudan severely alone for the 
 future. And as has been said, it is only fair to 
 remember this in justification of the English 
 Government's subsequently much criticized 
 choice of their agent. The gravamen of their 
 error lay not in sending Gordon on a quasi- 
 diplomatic mission into a distracted region 
 which could not possibly be dealt with by 
 diplomatic methods for they might well be 
 excused for erroneously believing what their 
 experienced emissary believed himself; it lay 
 in their obstinate refusal to recognize the rapid 
 development of that quasi-diplomatic mission 
 into a warlike operation; to acknowledge, what 
 was plain to all the world, that their ambassador 
 had become a mere beleaguered soldier fighting 
 for his life against an overwhelming swarm of 
 enemies ; and to undertake, until too late, those 
 plain duties of support and relief which this 
 change in the circumstances imposed upon them. 
 Yet they could not pretend that they had been 
 left long in ignorance of their new obligation. 
 It was on the 26th of January, 1884, that General 
 Gordon left Cairo for Khartoum, and it was little 
 
io 4 LORD CROMER 
 
 more than a fortnight later that he arrived, after 
 that picturesque camel ride of his across the 
 desert from Korosko to Abu Hamid, at Berber. 
 Another week saw him at the end of his journey. 
 He reached Khartoum on the i8th of February, 
 and before he had been there eight days his keen 
 eye had penetrated to the very heart of the situa- 
 tion. He had discovered that a new power of a 
 most formidable kind had arisen in the land over 
 which he had once ruled, and that it was no 
 longer possible for him to conjure with his name. 
 Thus on February 26 he writes to Sir Evelyn 
 Baring : " If Egypt is to be quiet, Mahdi must 
 be smashed up. Remember, that once Khartoum 
 belongs to Mahdi, the task will be far more 
 difficult ... I repeat that evacuation is possible, 
 but you will feel effect in Egypt, and will be 
 forced to enter into a far more serious affair in 
 order to guard Egypt." And again, two months 
 later he writes : " I shall leave you the indelible 
 disgrace of abandoning the garrisons of Sennaar, 
 Kassala, Berber, and Dongola, with the certainty 
 that you will eventually be forced to smash up 
 the Mahdi under great difficulties if you would 
 retain peace in Egypt." 
 
 On the very day, indeed, on which Gordon 
 arrived at Khartoum, he took a step which 
 eloquently testified to the rapidity of his awaken- 
 ing. He made a formal request upon the Cairo 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 105 
 
 Government that Zebehr Pasha a man infamous 
 as the largest dealer engaged in the Soudanese 
 slave traffic, and tragically associated with Gor- 
 don's past history as the father of the rebel 
 Suleiman, whom the then Governor-General 
 of the Soudan had caused to be executed five 
 years before might be released from the virtual 
 imprisonment in which he was then held at Cairo, 
 and sent to the Soudan to resume the position of 
 authority which he had lost, together with his 
 liberty, by an unwise visit to the Egyptian 
 capital in 1876. On the very day of his depar- 
 ture from Cairo, Gordon and Zebehr had had an 
 interview, arranged for them by Sir Evelyn 
 Baring at his own house, and the report of this 
 conference, as published in the Blue Book, does 
 undoubtedly show that Zebehr cherished animosity 
 against Gordon, on account not only of the execu- 
 tion of his son, but of the confiscation of his 
 own property as a consequence of his proved 
 complicity in Suleiman's revolt. 
 
 We cannot be surprised that in these circum- 
 stances the Government found Gordon's request 
 a little startling, and certainly they might have 
 been excused some hesitation to associate with 
 their emissary, even at his own instance, a man 
 whom it was reasonable to regard as his bitterest 
 enemy. Baring himself, in the despatch trans- 
 mitting Gordon's application, declared that he 
 
io6 LORD CROMER 
 
 would be altogether opposed to having General 
 Gordon and Zebehr Pasha at Khartoum together. 
 He suggested that as soon as the former had 
 arranged for the withdrawal of his garrison and 
 the rest of the Egyptian element he should leave 
 Khartoum, and the latter might shortly afterwards 
 start from Cairo. "One of my chief reasons," 
 he adds, " for allowing the interview between the 
 two men to take place was that I wished to 
 satisfy myself to some extent of the sentiment 
 entertained by Zebehr Pasha towards General 
 Gordon. I would not on any account run the 
 risk of putting General Gordon in his power." 
 But this full recognition of the prima facie 
 objections to the appointment lends additional 
 significance of course to the measured but un- 
 doubting approval afterwards given by the 
 Consul-General to the plan. As the point is 
 an important one in any view of it, even if it 
 were not, as Gordon believed, one of cardinal 
 relation to the success or failure of his mission, 
 it would be well to give in extenso the material 
 portions of Sir Evelyn Baring's despatch : 
 
 " As regards the choice of his successor, there is, as Colonel 
 Stewart says in his telegram, no necessity to decide at once ; 
 but I believe Zebehr Pasha to be the only possible man. He 
 undoubtedly possesses energy and ability, and has great local 
 influence. 
 
 " As regards the Slave Trade, I discussed the matter with 
 General Gordon when he was in Cairo, and he fully agreed 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 107 
 
 with me in thinking that Zebehr Pasha's presence or absence 
 would not affect the question in one way or the other. I am 
 also convinced, from many things that have come to my notice, 
 that General Gordon is quite right in thinking that Zebehr 
 Pasha's residence in Egypt has considerably modified his 
 character. He now understands what European power is ; and 
 it is much better to have to deal with a man of this sort than 
 with a man like the Madhi .... 
 
 "If Zebehr Pasha is nominated, it will be very necessary to 
 lay down in writing and in the plainest language what degree 
 of support he may expect from Her Majesty's Government. 
 I cannot recommend that he should be (as Gordon had 
 suggested) promised the moral support of Her Majesty's 
 Government. In the first place he would scarcely understand 
 the sense -of the phrase, and, moreover, I do not think he 
 would attach importance to any support which was not 
 material. It is for Her Majesty's Government to judge what 
 the effect of the appointment would be upon public opinion in 
 England ; but except for that, I can see no reason why Zebehr 
 Pasha should not be proclaimed ruler of the Soudan, with the 
 approbation of Her Majesty's Government. It should be 
 distinctly explained to him in writing that he must rely solely 
 upon his own resources to maintain the position. He might 
 receive a moderate sum of money from the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment to begin with. His communications with that Government 
 might be conducted through Her Majesty's Representative in 
 Cairo, as General Gordon suggests." 
 
 There was a world of significance in the 
 proviso contained in the words " except for 
 this," as no one probably knew better than the 
 Consul -General. He could not have been 
 unaware of the " effect upon public opinion in 
 England" which was certain to be produced 
 by Zebehr's appointment ; and no doubt he knew 
 
roS LORD CROMER 
 
 his correspondents in Downing Street well 
 enough to suspect that they were not the men 
 to brave it. On February 22 they replied to the 
 above-quoted despatch, that " the gravest ob- 
 jections exist to the appointment by their 
 authority of a successor to General Gordon, 
 and that in any case the public opinion of the 
 country would not tolerate the appointment of 
 Zebehr Pasha." Gordon, however, continued 
 to press for it, and eventually overcame Sir 
 Evelyn Baring's disinclination to allow the two 
 men to meet. On March 4 the latter telegraphed 
 to the Government that in the face of the strong 
 opinion expressed by General Gordon, he was 
 not " inclined to maintain his objection to Zebehr 
 Pasha's going at once to Khartoum." Lord 
 Granville telegraphed back with almost petulant 
 haste on the following day that "Her Majesty's 
 Government saw no reason at present to change 
 their impressions about Zebehr," formed on 
 various grounds, one of which the Foreign 
 Secretary proceeds to specify. He goes on to 
 add in a tone of mild rebuke that he would be 
 glad to learn how the Consul-General " reconciles 
 his proposal to acquiesce in such an appointment 
 with the prevention or discouragement of slave- 
 hunting and the Slave Trade, with the policy 
 of complete evacuation, and with the security 
 of Egypt." 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 109 
 
 Baring's reply, telegraphed on the Qth, was 
 tolerably effective. The policy of complete 
 evacuation does not, he gravely points out to 
 Downing Street, imply the abandonment of the 
 evacuated region to anarchy and disorder. " I 
 have always contemplated making some rearrange- 
 ments for the future government of the Soudan, 
 as will be seen from my despatch of the 22nd of 
 December, 1883, in which I said that it would be 
 ' necessary to send an English officer of high 
 authority to Khartoum with full powers to with- 
 draw all garrisons in the Soudan, and make the 
 best arrangements possible for the future govern- 
 ment of that country.' As regards slavery it 
 may receive a stimulus from the abandonment 
 of the Soudan by Egypt, but the despatch of 
 Zebehr Pasha to Khartoum will not affect the 
 question in one way or the other. No middle 
 course is possible as far as the Soudan is con- 
 cerned. We must either virtually annex the 
 country, which is out of the question, or else 
 we must accept the inevitable consequences of 
 the policy of abandonment." On the question 
 of the " security of Egypt," the Government 
 were referred to what General Gordon had 
 already said about it. " I believe," concluded 
 Baring, " that Zebehr Pasha may be made a 
 bulwark against the Mahdi. Of course there is 
 a risk that he will constitute a danger to Egypt, 
 
no LORD CROMER 
 
 but the risk is, I think, a small one, and it is 
 in any case preferable to incur it rather than 
 to face the certain disadvantages of withdrawing 
 without making any provision for the future 
 government of the country, which would then 
 be sure to fall under the power of the Mahdi." 
 
 There is only one point which this otherwise 
 convincing argument overlooks, and that is that 
 the absence of any " middle course " is a matter 
 of no importance to men of the disposition of 
 those whom the writer was addressing, or indeed 
 to anyone who prefers staggering rhythmically 
 from one side of the road to the other. Such an 
 one may be said to make his o,wn middle course 
 of a zigzag delineation for himself. In logical 
 theory no doubt you must either retain a country, 
 and with it the responsibilities attached to reten- 
 tion, or abandon it and accept the responsibilities 
 arising from withdrawal. But in practical policy 
 it is quite possible to accept alternately each of 
 these two alternatives, and to decline the respon- 
 sibilities of either. It was in pursuance of 
 one of these lines of conduct that the Govern- 
 ment sent Gordon to Khartoum, and in pursuance 
 of the other that they refused him the means of 
 fulfilling his mission. If the Government had 
 still had a mind to make up about Zebehr on the 
 day when Sir Evelyn Baring penned the despatch 
 above quoted, it would have been made up for 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO in 
 
 them the day after by Mr. Edmund Sturge and 
 the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. 
 On March 10 Lord Granville received a com- 
 munication from that estimable body protesting 
 against the appointment of Zebehr, and, while 
 expressing " no opinion on the policy of a 
 permanent maintenance of British authority at 
 Khartoum," intimating at the same time their 
 earnest hope " that in the event of Her Majesty's 
 Government making an arrangement for its 
 independent rule, the conditions will be such 
 as shall secure the country alike from a reign of 
 anarchy and barbarism and from that of the slave 
 trader." In other words, they were willing to 
 leave it an open question whether the omelette 
 should be made or not, and would content them- 
 selves with entering a solemn caveat against the 
 breaking of eggs. The Government, on their 
 part, were as firmly resolved as ever to make the 
 omelette, but were quite willing to give the 
 required undertaking that no eggs should be 
 broken in the process. They definitively refused 
 to sanction Zebehr's appointment, and the matter 
 fell to the ground. That was on the 5th of 
 March, and from that moment events moved 
 rapidly onward to the last act of the sombre 
 drama. The expedition from Suakin, which, in 
 his Life of General Gordon, Sir William Butler 
 holds to have sealed Gordon's fate, had been 
 
ii2 LORD CROMER 
 
 despatched some time before. General Graham 
 had already, on February 29, defeated the 
 Dervishes at El Teb, and on March 13, 1884, 
 " the door of peace," to quote the same vigorous 
 writer, " was slammed " at the battle of Tamai. 
 From that, if from no earlier moment, all possi- 
 bility of extricating the Egyptian garrisons and 
 population from the Soudan by the method of 
 negotiation was extinguished. 
 
 It was still, however, open to the Government 
 to afford effective military support to their 
 emissary ; and it was not till, after having 
 goaded Mahdism to madness by the slaughter 
 at El Teb and Tamai, they refused to 
 co-operate with the man against whom they 
 had let loose these furies of their own raising, 
 that his position became really desperate. The 
 refusal was definitively given in a too famous 
 despatch from- Lord Granville to Sir Evelyn 
 Baring, under date of March 28th. It should 
 be read in connection with Sir Evelyn's tele- 
 graphic communication of one day's earlier 
 date, to which, indeed, it is a reply, and which 
 once for all relieves the British Consul-General 
 of all responsibility for this the most disastrous 
 of all the decisions at which the Government 
 arrived. The material parts of this despatch 
 must, in justice to the writer, be textually 
 quoted : 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO . 113 
 
 "The question now is how to get General Gordon and 
 Colonel Stewart away from Khartoum . . . Unless any 
 unforeseen circumstances should occur to change the situa- 
 tion, only two solutions seem to be possible. The first is 
 to trust to General Gordon being able to maintain himself 
 at Khartoum till the autumn, when by reason of the greater 
 quantity of water it would be less difficult to conduct 
 operations on the Suakin-Berber Road than it is at present. 
 This he . might perhaps be able to do, but it of course 
 involves running a great risk. The only other plan is to 
 send a portion of General Graham's army to Berber with 
 instructions to open up communication with Khartoum. 
 There would be very great difficulty in getting to Berber; 
 but if the road were once open it might be done by sending 
 small detachments at a time. General Gordon is evidently 
 expecting help from Suakin, and he has ordered messengers 
 to be sent along the road from Berber to ascertain whether 
 any English force is advancing. Under present circumstances 
 I think that an effort should be made to help General Gordon 
 from Suakin, if it is at all' a possible military operation. General 
 Stephenson and Sir Evelyn Wood, while admitting the very great 
 risk to the health of the troops, besides the extraordinary military 
 risks, are of the opinion that the undertaking is possible. They 
 think that General Graham should be further consulted. We 
 all consider that however difficult the operations from Suakin may 
 be, they are more practicable than any operations from Korosko 
 and along the Nile" 
 
 To this Lord Granville replied in an elaborate 
 despatch covering several pages of Blue Book. 
 The Government had taken steps to fortify 
 themselves, as it is always easy enough to do, 
 with expert opinions adverse to those on which 
 their "agent on the spot" had relied. They 
 had "very carefully considered the demand for 
 a military demonstration by a British force at 
 
 H 
 
ii4 LORD CROMER 
 
 Berber" ; they "would not have willingly refused 
 it, coming from General Gordon with the ad- 
 ditional weight of your concurrence," but and 
 here follows the "regulation" objections which 
 had been fully considered by our responsible 
 military advisers in Egypt and, with full recog- 
 nition of their gravity, overruled. " The distance, 
 the nature of the country to be traversed, and 
 above all the climate, render the march of a 
 British force to Berber at the present season 
 an undertaking so difficult as to be almost 
 impracticable. For a large body of European 
 troops of all arms the military authorities regard 
 the expedition as impossible, while for a small 
 force of cavalry to undertake the expedition 
 without support or communications, in the face 
 of possible opposition by largely superior 
 numbers, would be an extremely hazardous 
 venture, and might in the end prove useless." 
 The difficulties as regards climate might be 
 thought to suggest the appointment of Indian 
 troops. But no : there were objections, no less 
 considerable, to that objections of that sort 
 that weigh so heavily against anything that 
 one does not wish to do, and that inclination 
 on the other hand so promptly overrules. But 
 the real, the fatal reason for the Government's 
 refusal of their assistance, is to be gathered from 
 the too pregnant sentences that follow : 
 
CONSUL-GENERAL AT CAIRO 115 
 
 "The condition of affairs does not appear to be such as 
 to call for measures attended by so much risk, and entailing 
 possibly a great loss of life, and certainly large expenditure. 
 There is reason to hope that the successful operations of 
 General Graham in the neighbourhood of Suakin may have 
 wiped away the unfortunate impression produced by the 
 defeat of the Egyptian troops, and may enable the road 
 from Suakin to Berber to be opened by the friendly action 
 of the tribes, without the necessity of further military 
 measures. It is understood that Khartoum is provisioned 
 for six months, and that its present garrison is sufficient 
 for its security during that period from any attack by the 
 Arab tribes, who are without artillery." 
 
 Events now moved rapidly to the final isola- 
 tion of our deserted emissary. On the Qth of 
 April the Bahr el Ghazal Province fell into the 
 power of the Dervishes, and on the iQth all 
 communication with Khartoum was cut off. 
 Three days before Gordon had written that 
 indignant despatch above quoted, declaring his 
 intention, as he had been refused both the 
 appointment of Zebehr Pasha and military 
 co-operation at Berber, " to hold on at Khartoum 
 as long as he could, and if he failed to suppress 
 the rebellion, to retire to the Equator and 
 leave you the indelible disgrace of abandoning 
 the garrisons of Sennaar, Kassala, Berber, and 
 Dongola, with the certainty that you will event- 
 ually be forced to smash up the Mahdi under 
 great difficulties, if you would retain peace in 
 Egypt." On May igth Berber fell, and a veil of 
 darkness and silence, never to be lifted during 
 Gordon's lifetime, descended over Khartoum. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 Gordon and the Government 
 
 heroic and tragic elements were so 
 JL predominant in the memorable drama 
 which was enacted in the year 1884, that it 
 was at the time impossible, and is still difficult, 
 for Englishmen to contemplate it with any 
 other feelings than those of pity, admiration, 
 and anger. Their hearts were full of sorrow 
 for the loss of their noble countryman, and of 
 pride in his devotion, and of indignation against 
 those who sacrificed him ; and there was no 
 room for other emotion of any kind. Now, 
 however, when thirteen years have passed away, 
 and one reads again the history of these events 
 in the unimpassioned pages of the Blue Book, 
 it is easy enough to see on what a warp of the 
 grimly humorous the woof of this most moving 
 tragedy was wrought. The very scheme of 
 the dramatis persona, with the characters which 
 it brought together, might seem to have been 
 arranged by the Fates in the most ironical of 
 their moods, and with a direct eye to those 
 
 116 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 117 
 
 collisions of the incongruous to which humour 
 owes its mysterious birth. And there is this 
 amount of truth in the Tout comprendre cest 
 tout pardonner of French proverbial wisdom, 
 that that fuller comprehension of conduct which 
 we gain from humorous appreciation of character 
 and circumstances does in this case enable us 
 to distinguish roughly between wilful eye- 
 shutting and constitutional blindness. That 
 the delays and hesitations which led to the 
 death of Gordon were, in some measure, the 
 result of a voluntary closure of the Ministerial 
 eyelids is no doubt the fact ; as it is also, of 
 course, the fact that such deliberate refusals to 
 look at objects of vision which duty and 
 honour plainly enjoin one not for a moment to 
 lose sight of, are among the gravest offences 
 which men or Ministries can commit, and are 
 certainly of those to the commission of which the 
 heaviest responsibility attaches. Nevertheless 
 it would be uncandid to deny that there was 
 that in Gordon's own character, in his peculiar 
 relations with the then Government, and above 
 all in the ludicrously antipodean contrast 
 between them and him in respect of tempera- 
 ment, motives, and ideals, which specially 
 exposed them to the temptation to commit the 
 offence in question. Had the principals better 
 understood the agent he would not have fared 
 
n8 LORD CROMER 
 
 so ill at their hands. An ordinary man 
 accidentally entrapped into Gordon's position 
 might very likely have received from them far 
 more efficient support. He suffered, in fact, for 
 his very virtues. It was the unique nobility of 
 his character which, by rendering him unin- 
 telligible to them, confounded the policy of 
 these fourteen absolutely unimaginative gentle- 
 men, and left them shilly-shallying till it was 
 too late. 
 
 This of course but very slightly diminishes the 
 weight of their responsibility. It was they who 
 selected Gordon for his mission to the Soudan, 
 a mission which they and he at the time believed 
 that he was capable of executing unassisted ; and 
 it was their own fault that they selected a man of 
 so fantastic a chivalry that, once having pledged 
 himself to others to perform a task which turned 
 out to be an impossibility, he held himself bound 
 to persevere in the hopeless attempt at the cost 
 of his own life. Possibly they had persuaded 
 themselves that in the last resort he could be 
 persuaded to look at the situation from their own 
 " reasonable " point of view, and to do what they 
 themselves were prepared to do without any 
 persuasion at all : that is to say, to inform such 
 of the former subjects of the Khedive, civil or 
 military, as were still left in the Soudan, that 
 though the British Government and their 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 119 
 
 emissary would have rejoiced to find it possible 
 to secure their safe transfer from the Soudan to 
 within the new Egyptian frontier, it had become 
 necessary to inform them with sincere regret 
 that this was not possible, and that they would, 
 therefore, have to shift for themselves. And it 
 was from the fact that this Government, the 
 readiest to retreat at the cost of honour of all 
 Governments that ever ruled in England, had 
 selected the one man who was the most absolutely 
 certain of all Englishmen to repudiate such a 
 course with indignation, that the grim humour 
 of the situation arose. It was as though Sancho 
 Panza should in a moment of rashness have 
 commissioned Don Quixote to undertake some 
 costly quest of knight-errantry in one of the 
 remote possessions of the Island of Barataria, 
 and had then proceeded to discuss its prospects 
 with him in a long diplomatic correspondence. 
 Honest Sancho would no doubt have dealt more 
 largely in proverbs than Lord Granville did ; but 
 the game of cross purposes could hardly have 
 been more complete, or the respective points of 
 view of the two correspondents removed from each 
 other by more miles of moral distance in the case 
 of the knight-errant of fiction than it was in that 
 of the knight-errant of fact. 
 
 The writer in Downing Street and the writer 
 in Khartoum sometimes seem almost to be using 
 
120 LORD CROMER 
 
 two different languages. Here, for instance, is 
 a telegraphic despatch from the Foreign Office : 
 
 " Gordon should be at once informed in cypher by several 
 messengers at some intervals between each, through Dongola 
 as well as Berber, or in such other way as may on the spot be 
 deemed most prompt and certain, that he should keep us 
 informed to the best of his ability, not only as to immediate 
 but as to any prospective danger at Khartoum ; that to be 
 prepared for any such danger, he advise us as to the force 
 necessary in order to secure his removal; its amount, 
 character, route for access to Khartoum, and time of opera- 
 tion ; that we do not propose to supply him with Turkish 
 or other force for the purpose of undertaking military expedi- 
 tions, such being beyond the scope of the commission he 
 holds, and at variance with the pacific policy which was the 
 purpose of his mission to the Soudan ; and that if with this 
 knowledge he continues at Khartoum, he should state to us 
 the cause and the intention with which he so continues." 
 
 This was written on April 23 ; but a fortnight 
 earlier Gordon, in a quite different dialect, had 
 already informed Sir Evelyn Baring of the " cause 
 of his continuing" at Khartoum. He admits 
 that he "does not see the fun of being caught 
 here to walk about the streets as a dervish 
 for years with sandalled feet; not that (D.V.) I 
 will ever be taken alive; but," he adds: 
 
 " It would be the climax of meanness, after I had borrowed 
 money from the people here, had called on them to sell their 
 grain at a low price, &c., to go and abandon them without 
 using any effort to relieve them ; and I feel sure that whatever 
 you may feel diplomatically I have your support and that of 
 every man professing himself a gentleman in private." 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 121 
 
 What was a Government to do with a man 
 like this? What are "practical politicians" to 
 make of an emissary who drags into a question 
 of official policy such irrelevant considerations 
 as these ? One can fancy the painful embarrass- 
 ment with which this telegram was read at the 
 Foreign Office. The " climax of meanness ! " 
 " Every man professing himself a gentleman ! " 
 What could it all mean ? We almost expect to 
 find in the next page of the Blue Book, 
 " Message unintelligible. Please repeat." No 
 wonder that this communication, transmitted 
 over the wire to Downing Street by April i8th, 
 did not in the least affect the terms of the 
 Ministerial message, above quoted, of April 
 23rd. "Look here!" that message would have 
 run, if expressed in Gordon's own uncon- 
 ventional style, " there is no use in our talking 
 any more about removing the garrisons and 
 population from the Soudan. The only question 
 now is about your removal as soon as things 
 begin to look ugly at Khartoum. How are 
 we to manage that ? Can you suggest any- 
 thing ? Just turn it over in your mind, and, 
 indeed, you may give your whole mind to it 
 without troubling your head about the rescue 
 of the population by military measures. We 
 have not the least intention of adopting military 
 measures of any sort. You can't have any 
 
122 LORD CROMER 
 
 British troops, nor Indian troops, nor Turkish 
 troops nor, in fact, troops of any kind. And, 
 if now you are sure that you wish to continue 
 at Khartoum, please be good enough to tell us 
 why. We have read your last despatch, in 
 which you say it would be the 'height of mean- 
 ness ' to abandon certain people to whom you 
 refer, and that * every man professing himself a 
 gentleman ' will agree with you. But you can't 
 really have meant to put this seriously forward 
 as an official reason for not quitting Khartoum. 
 Kindly provide us with some reason which we 
 can understand and recognize as one which 
 should have weight with practical politicians." 
 An interchange of communications of this 
 sort and this is what they virtually amount to 
 when translated into unofficial language argues 
 a certain incompatibility of temperament between 
 the parties to it. Let us add in fairness, that 
 had the Government understood Gordon better 
 than they did, he would still have proved a 
 trying person to work with. His rapid changes 
 of mind and advice are a little bewildering 
 even to the most friendly disposed student of 
 the Blue Books. It is the fact that during the 
 twelve or thirteen weeks which elapsed between 
 Gordon's arrival in Egypt and the final inter- 
 ruption of communications, he proposed no 
 fewer than five different methods of dealing 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 123 
 
 with the situation in the Soudan. Only a few 
 days after his departure from Cairo, Sir Evelyn 
 Baring learnt, with something like consternation, 
 that he had left behind him a message for 
 Mr. Clifford Lloyd to the following effect : 
 " Tell Lloyd no panics. It is possible that I 
 may go to the Mahdi and not be heard of for 
 two months, for he might keep me as a hostage 
 for Zebehr." The Consul-General telegraphed 
 at once to him for an assurance that he would 
 on no account put himself voluntarily in the 
 power of the Mahdi. ''The question," Sir 
 Evelyn added, "is not a personal one. There 
 would, in my opinion, be the strongest political 
 objections to your risking a visit to the Mahdi." 
 At the same time he telegraphed to the Govern- 
 ment for authority to forbid the step. This, 
 of course, was granted ; but before it could 
 arrive, General Gordon had sent Baring a 
 despatch from Korosko enclosing a draft of a 
 letter which he had written to the King of the 
 Belgians to urge him to occupy the Bahr Gazelle 
 and the Equatorial Provinces, and to appoint 
 Gordon " Governor of all that country " ; and 
 in forwarding this to Downing Street, the 
 Consul-General observed upon it that Gordon 
 seemed " to intend to go straight on " from 
 Khartoum in the direction of these Provinces, 
 an advance which not unnaturally seemed to 
 
124 LORD CROMER 
 
 Baring to be unadvisable. " I do not think," 
 he concludes, "that General Gordon should be 
 allowed, at all events for the present, to go 
 anywhere south of Khartoum." 
 
 Downing Street telegraphed its veto upon 
 this as upon the proposal to go to the Mahdi ; 
 but one would have thought that even these 
 early experiences would have put them upon 
 suspecting that the emissary they had chosen 
 was not easily manageable, and that both 
 judgment and firmness would be required in 
 handling him. It is true, of course, that 
 Gordon's somewhat light-hearted suggestion that 
 he might pay a personal visit to the Mahdi 
 was thrown out under the mistaken impression 
 that he still retained his former influence over 
 the Soudanese populations ; that immediately 
 upon the discovery of his mistake, he begged 
 for the despatch of Zebehr as a man influential 
 enough in the Soudan to act as a counterpoise 
 to the Mahdi ; and that it was only on the 
 refusal of this request that he called for military 
 assistance in the work he had undertaken, such 
 assistance to be rendered according to his various 
 proposals, now by English, now by Indian, now 
 by Turkish troops. But to men not wilfully 
 blind, it must have been obvious from this 
 continual " feeling about " for some new mode 
 of dealing with the situation, that Gordon was 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 125 
 
 in reality at his wits' end ; that all his calculations 
 as to his ability to control or even to influence 
 events in the Soudan were disappointed ; and 
 that, being the man he was, he would, rather 
 than abandon those to whom, under the aforesaid 
 miscalculations, he had pledged himself, pay 
 the penalty with his life. 
 
 And perhaps the Government were not so 
 wilfully blind as to miss all these considerations. 
 It is possible that they appreciated them all 
 except the last. It is the Quixotism of Quixote, 
 not his illusions, that Sancho has a difficulty in 
 comprehending. The placemen could understand 
 their agent making a mistake ; it was a familiar 
 experience of their own. What they could not 
 comprehend was the determination of any sane 
 man to suffer death in the last resort for his 
 mistake in preference to evading its consequences 
 at the cost of honour. For the whole art and 
 mystery of the placeman consists in evading 
 the consequences of his mistakes at the cost 
 of anything ; and surely surely any sane man, 
 nay, even any man with only a middle-sized and 
 moderately active bee in his bonnet, would 
 ultimately recognize the supremacy of the great 
 law of self-preservation. 
 
 This, and the reliance on the chapter of 
 
 accidents that favourite " gamble" of the weak 
 
 will amply suffice to account for the inert 
 
126 LORD CROMER 
 
 attitude of Downing Street and its utter destitu- 
 tion of counsels during the first two months of 
 Gordon's sojourn at Khartoum. Why, indeed, 
 should it do anything, or advise anything, or, 
 indeed, forbid anything except what would make 
 trouble, like Zebehr's appointment, for Ministers 
 at home? Gordon had "taken the contract" 
 for securing the safe withdrawal of the Khedive's 
 civil and military subjects from the Soudan. 
 Either Gordon could execute that contract or 
 not. If yes, good; if no, why then as soon as he 
 satisfied himself of the impossibility of executing 
 it, he would come home like a sensible man. 
 The " rescue and retire " policy having proved 
 impracticable, his loyal though futile efforts to 
 perform the former half of that policy would 
 enable him with a quiet conscience to confine 
 himself to the latter. What! refuse to retire 
 without rescuing ? Die at his post rather ? Oh, 
 absurd ! " People don't do such things," as is 
 remarked by a notable character in Norwegian 
 drama. And indeed politicians do not do them as 
 a rule ; and it was by the nineteenth century 
 politician's standard that the Government habitu- 
 ally judged this stray knight-errant from the 
 middle ages. 
 
 It is, in fact, quite probable that before they 
 realized if indeed they ever did fully realize that 
 Gordon, being Gordon, would not quit Khartoum 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 127 
 
 if he could, they had arrived at the unwelcome 
 conclusion that he could not quit Khartoum if he 
 would. By what exact date they had thoroughly 
 mastered this most disagreeable fact we shall 
 probably never know ; but the Blue Book from 
 the middle of May onwards shows constantly 
 multiplying signs of Ministerial uneasiness. 
 Its very Index is eloquent in its testimony. 
 "May 15. Message to General Gordon. Can 
 delivery be assured by expenditure of money, 
 or communication to be made by means of 
 Zebehr or Hussan Pashas ? " " May 16. Messen- 
 ger to General Gordon. Terms proposed by 
 Zebehr Pasha." The terms as forwarded by 
 Mr. Egerton to Lord Granville were as follows : 
 
 " (Telegraphic). Zebehr will find a man to go to Khartoum 
 for ,50 down, and .400 for bringing answer within fifty days. 
 Shall I agree?" 
 
 And the answer ran : 
 
 " Her Majesty's Government agree to the proposal, and 
 would be prepared to double the amount offered if the man 
 returned within thirty days. They would, however, wish the 
 messenger to delay his departure until you have received 
 a further message for General Gordon, which will be tele- 
 graphed to you." 
 
 A further message, which is important, was 
 to this effect : 
 
 "Having regard to the time which has elapsed, Her 
 Majesty's Government desire to add to their communication 
 of 23rd April (the material parts of which have been given 
 
128 LORD CROMER 
 
 above) as follows : As the original plan for the evacuation of 
 the Soudan has been dropped, and as aggressive operations 
 cannot be undertaken with the countenance of Her Majesty's 
 Government, General Gordon is enjoined to consider and 
 either to report upon, or if possible, to adopt at the first 
 proper moment measures for his own removal and for that 
 of the Egyptians at Khartoum who have suffered for him, 
 or who have served him faithfully, including their wives and 
 children, by whatever route he may consider best, having 
 especial regard for his own safety and that of the other British 
 subjects. 
 
 " With regard to the Egyptians above referred to, General 
 Gordon is authorized to make free use of money rewards 
 or promises at his discretion. For example, he is at liberty to 
 assign to Egyptian soldiers at Khartoum sums for themselves 
 and for persons brought with them per head, contingent on 
 their safe arrival at Korosko or whatever point he may 
 consider a place of safety ; or he may employ and pay 
 the tribes in the neighbourhood to escort them. Her 
 Majesty's Government presume that the Soudanese at 
 Khartoum are not in danger In the event of General 
 Gordon having despatched any person or agents to other 
 points, he is authorized to spend any money required for 
 the purpose of recalling them or securing their safety." 
 
 There is something grimly comic in the 
 suggestion that Gordon, of all men in the 
 world, should " have special regard for his own 
 safety," as also in the presumption that " the 
 Soudanese at Khartoum," the very men whose 
 abandonment Gordon had six weeks before, 
 with an appeal to "every man professing him- 
 self a gentleman," pronounced "the climax of 
 meanness," were "not in danger." And, indeed, 
 the whole telegram appealed strongly to Gordon's 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 129 
 
 sardonic sense of humour, and extracted from 
 him one of those outbursts of irony which 
 render the "Journals" such lively reading. 
 Of the contents of the foregoing despatch as 
 conveyed to him through Mr. Egerton, he 
 writes : 
 
 "Egerton's telegram carefully written in cypher [and 
 equally carefully without date, but which we ascribe to June], 
 respecting the contracts to be entered into with the Bedouin 
 tribe to escort us down (' and be sure to look after yourself! '), 
 might as well have been written in Arabic ; it would have 
 produced hilarity with the Mahdi." 
 
 And again : 
 
 "The pomp of Egerton's telegram, informing me that 
 Her Majesty's Government would (really !) pay on delivery 
 so much a head for all refugees delivered on Egyptian frontier, 
 and would (positively r , it is incredible!) reward tribes, whom 
 I might contract with, to escort them down. It was too 
 generous for one to believe. Egerton's chivalrous nature 
 must have got the better of his diplomatic training when he 
 wrote it. The clerks in my divan to whom I disclosed it 
 are full of exclamations of wonder at this generosity ! 
 Egerton must have considered that I was a complete idiot 
 to have needed such a permission. I hope he will get 
 promoted, and will not be blamed for overstraining his 
 instructions . . . There is a tone in Egerton's telegram 
 which grates on me : it is, to me, as if he said, ' You have 
 got into a mess, and although you do not deserve it, I am 
 willing to stretch a point in your favour and authorize you, 
 &c.' And in the previous part (the author unknown) of 
 the telegram, it is as if I was enjoying this wretched fighting 
 up here. I declare it is Egerton and Co. who made the 
 mess, and would like to hang its fabrication and solution 
 on me : not that I mind the burden, if they did not send 
 such telegrams (the Co. are Malet and Colvin)." 
 
130 LORD CROMER 
 
 The last fling at the Cairo officials is one of 
 many on which a word or two will have to be 
 said presently, and all that need to be remarked 
 here and now is, that Gordon seems vastly to 
 overrate the independence and initiative of men 
 who were almost as much hampered as himself 
 by orders from Downing Street. It was the 
 Government at home with whose views his own 
 were so hopelessly at variance how hopelessly, 
 is nowhere brought out more clearly than in the 
 following passage of a despatch from Lord 
 Granville to Mr. Egerton : 
 
 "It appears, moreover, from your telegram of the i2th 
 instant, that you had received an official communication 
 from the Egyptian Government to the effect that the Council 
 of Ministers considering Her Majesty's Government, since 
 the mission of General Gordon, to have taken in hand the 
 retreat of the population and garrison of the Soudan, thought 
 it advisable to ask what course Her Majesty's Government 
 considered should be taken with reference to the population 
 and garrison of Dongola." 
 
 Nervously eager to repudiate the suggestion 
 that they had incurred any sort of moral re- 
 sponsibility to these people, Lord Granville goes 
 on to comment on the above official communi- 
 cation from the Egyptian Government in the 
 following terms : 
 
 " Her Majesty's Government have been at all times ready to 
 assist the Government of the Khedive with their advice as 
 to the best means of withdrawing from the Soudan the 
 Egyptian garrisons, and such of the civil population as might 
 desire to retire from these provinces, and for that purpose 
 they consented to the mission of General Gordon." 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 131 
 
 (" Consented " is good. Even so does a 
 drowning man " consent " to avail himself of the 
 help of the straw at which he desperately catches.) 
 
 " But the Egyptian Government must bear in mind that the 
 presence of Egyptian garrisons in the Soudan, Equatorial, 
 and Bahr Gazelle Provinces, is in no way due to any act 
 of Her Majesty's Government, and that they cannot hold 
 themselves responsible for the measures which those on the 
 spot may think fit to take with a view to facilitate their 
 withdrawal, or for the consequences of their possible failure to 
 effect that object." 
 
 Anything more opposed to Gordon's view of 
 the situation and the duties arising from it, it 
 would be impossible to imagine. He certainly 
 "held himself responsible for the measures" 
 which were to be taken "with a view to facilitate 
 the withdrawal " of the population and garrisons, 
 and among " the consequences of their possible 
 failure " he deliberately contemplated his own 
 death at his post. 
 
 Not yet, however, had the Government 
 realized the lengths to which their emissary's 
 devotion would carry them. They were vaguely 
 uneasy about him and his position, but that was 
 all. Throughout the months of May and June 
 their anxiety to communicate with him continued 
 to increase, and on the loth of the latter month 
 it was greatly intensified by the news of the fall 
 of Berber, which had taken place some weeks 
 before on the iQth of May. On the i8th of 
 
132 LORD CROMER 
 
 June they are, privately at any rate, no longer 
 exercised by the question so congenial to the 
 subtle mind of the Prime Minister as to whether 
 General Gordon could be more properly de- 
 scribed as ''surrounded" or as "hemmed in." At 
 all events the Foreign Secretary appears to be 
 clear that a man in either situation is in need 
 of " release." For this word appears for the first 
 time in the Blue Book in a despatch from Lord 
 Granville requesting Mr. Egerton to put himself 
 into communication with Major Kitchener with 
 reference to the employment of the Kabbabish 
 tribe for "the release" of General Gordon. 
 " You will inform him," adds the Foreign 
 Secretary, " that he has authority to offer a large 
 sum of money to their Chief conditionally on his 
 raising the siege of Khartoum or taking such 
 measures as shall enable General Gordon to 
 effect his retreat." 
 
 It is unnecessary, however, to proceed further 
 in illustration of this grotesque contrast of 
 characters, this desperate game of cross purposes. 
 So grotesque, indeed, was the one, so desperate 
 the other, that the whole story seemed less like 
 an actual passage of contemporary history than 
 a piece of tragi-comic fairy tale of symbolic 
 legend, which had somehow or other gathered 
 round the half-idealized figures of the Antique 
 Hero and the very " modern " Politician. 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 133 
 
 That, at least, was how the matter naturally 
 presented itself to the mind of the political 
 reviewers of this momentous incident while it 
 was yet comparatively recent history ; but the 
 subsequent lapse of years enables one to supple- 
 ment, to modify, and in some degree to rationalize 
 the mythical or even magical element in this 
 account of its coming about. Official secrets are 
 better kept in this country than in any other 
 popularly-governed nation in the world. The 
 immensely powerful restraint of long tradition 
 keeps the main stream of indiscreet loquacity 
 as effectually pent as are the waters of a river 
 behind the massive gates of a lock. But no 
 lock-gates are ever completely water-tight, and 
 through the barrier of secrecy trickle threads 
 of disclosure, which form in the course of years 
 a noticeable addition to public knowledge. The 
 inner history of Gordon's appointment can now 
 be pieced together into a tolerably continuous 
 narrative. 
 
 It loses something, as has been said, of the 
 magical, one may almost call it the quasi- 
 diabolical element, which the popular imagination 
 assigned to it. We no longer see the shadow 
 of an evil genius luring a doomed Government 
 to its ruin ; but are merely confronted with a 
 half-drowned Minister catching desperately at 
 any straw of expedient by which to extricate 
 
134 LORD CROMER 
 
 himself. There was no evil genius in the affair 
 at all, and the only " demon " who whispered in 
 the ear of Mr. Gladstone was the amiable, the 
 accomplished, the not too energetic, and in this 
 instance, the acutely worried Lord Granville. 
 And his demon and here, let me hasten to say, 
 the word is to be understood in its strictly 
 Socratic sense was the editor of an evening 
 paper. Lord Granville's " happy thought " was 
 in reality Mr. Stead's bright idea. " Why not 
 send out Chinese Gordon to settle the Soudan 
 business ? " asked the enterprising journalist, and 
 " Why not, indeed ? " echoed the perplexed 
 statesman, with a sigh of profound relief. Prob- 
 ably in the whole career of a political Micawber, 
 nothing ever " turned up " so precisely in the nick 
 of time. 
 
 The realization of the " happy thought " was 
 in itself a beautiful illustration of the method of 
 " go-as-you-please " applied to national policy. 
 Lord Granville's next step was to call together 
 a Committee of the Cabinet, consisting of such 
 of its members as happened to be in town. Lord 
 Wolseley telegraphed to Gordon (who was then 
 in Brussels conferring with the King of the 
 Belgians on the subject of his proposed mission 
 to the Congo) to come to England at once ; 
 which he did, arriving in London at 6 a.m. on 
 January i8th, and after a prolonged interview 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 135 
 
 with Lord Wolseley, he attended this Committee 
 of the Cabinet, consisting, it is understood, of 
 Lord Hartington and Lord Northbrook, together 
 with the Secretary of State and Under-Secretary 
 for Foreign Affairs. General Gordon himself 
 has, in a letter to the Rev. J. Barnes, concisely 
 summarised what passed at this interview : 
 
 "At noon, he, Wolseley, came to me and took me to the 
 Ministers. He went in and talked to the Ministers and came 
 back and said, ' Her Majesty's Government want you to 
 undertake this ; Government are determined to evacuate 
 the Soudan, for they will not guarantee future government. 
 Will you go and do it ? ' I said ' Yes.' He said ' Go in.' I 
 went in and saw them. They said ' Did Wolseley tell you our 
 orders?' I said 'Yes.' I said ' You will not guarantee future 
 government of Soudan, and you wish me to go up to evacuate 
 now?' They said 'Yes,' and it was over, and I left at 8 p.m. 
 for Calais." 
 
 The colloquy must, of course, have been a little 
 longer than this. Probably some reference was 
 made to the practicability or otherwise of the task 
 which the Government desired to impose upon 
 him. But Gordon, I have no doubt, brushed 
 aside any objections which might have been urged 
 on that score, and pooh-poohed all difficulties. He 
 was at that time, as we know, profoundly con- 
 vinced of his own influence over the Soudanese 
 tribes, and believed that on his reappearance 
 among them they would desert the Mahdi's 
 standard to rally round him. That was not the 
 opinion at Cairo, and since, as it turned out, the 
 
136 LORD CROMER 
 
 opinion at Cairo was right and Gordon's wrong, 
 the question which has been put by a biographer 
 of Gordon, and which indirectly reflects on the 
 British representative in Egypt, appears to have 
 a pretty obvious answer. "We see," says Sir 
 William Butler, " a desire on the part of the 
 English Government to send Gordon at once to 
 the Soudan when the news of Hicks Pasha's 
 destruction was received. We see the desire 
 repeatedly put forward from home during the 
 ensuing seven weeks, and as repeatedly declined 
 by our Minister in Cairo. Why? Who shall 
 answer?" Well, the Egyptian Government. 
 Their answer was, in fact, given in Sir Evelyn 
 Baring's telegram of December 2, wherein, in 
 reply to a message of the previous day from 
 Lord Granville, inquiring whether, if General 
 Charles Gordon were willing to go to Egypt, 
 he would be of any use, and, if so, in what 
 capacity, the British agent reports that the 
 Egyptian Government were "very much averse 
 to employing General Gordon, mainly on the 
 ground that the movement in the Soudan being 
 religious, the appointment of a Christian in high 
 command would probably alienate the tribes who 
 remain faithful." He added that " he thought 
 it wise to leave the whole responsibility of 
 Soudan affairs to them and not to press them 
 on the subject." It is difficult to see what other 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 137 
 
 course he could properly have taken at that 
 juncture of affairs. If pressure was to be put 
 on the Egyptian Ministers at all in such a matter, 
 it was certainly for the British Government 
 themselves, and not for their representative in 
 Egypt, to apply it. 
 
 Applied, however, it was, and from Downing 
 Street. On January 10 Lord Granville again 
 proffered the services of General Charles Gordon 
 this time with the alternative of those of Sir 
 Charles Wilson and they were again declined ; 
 nor was it till nearly a week later that the 
 objections of the Egyptian Government were 
 overcome. On January 15 the Foreign Secre- 
 tary telegraphed that he had heard " indirectly " 
 that Gordon was ''ready to go straight to 
 Suakin without passing through Cairo." This 
 telegram was (apparently) crossed by another 
 from Baring, to the effect that " the Egyptian 
 Government would feel greatly obliged if Her 
 Majesty's Government would select a well- 
 qualified British officer to go to Khartoum 
 instead of the War Minister." And this tele- 
 gram was immediately followed by another, 
 replying to Lord Granville's of the previous day, 
 and stating simply that " General Gordon would 
 be the best man." It was immediately on receipt 
 of this that Lord Wolseley's message was 
 despatched to Gordon in Brussels, and that on 
 
138 LORD CROMER 
 
 his arrival in England the interview with the 
 Ministerial Committee took place. 
 
 In spite, however, of the hand-to-mouth 
 appearance which the whole of this transaction 
 presents, it is only just to Lord Granville and his 
 colleagues to admit that the mission on which 
 they despatched Gordon was not quite the 
 desperate enterprise into which by his own 
 change of plans it was converted. He left 
 England with instructions to proceed not to 
 Cairo, but to Suakin. There is reason for 
 believing that although he had expressly stipu- 
 lated against being sent through Cairo, he 
 himself changed his own destination on the 
 voyage ; but in any case he would have found 
 it altered for him, though not by the English 
 Government, on his arrival in Egypt. The 
 change, in fact, had been made some days before 
 by the British agent, either of his own motion 
 (that is, of course, after consulting his military 
 advisers), or at the instance of the Egyptian 
 Government. On January 19, the day after 
 receipt of the intelligence of Gordon's appoint- 
 ment, Sir Evelyn Baring telegraphed, expressing 
 his satisfaction at being informed of it ; but 
 adding, " I am of opinion that it would be 
 useless for these officers to proceed to Suakin, 
 as General Baker is doing all that can be 
 done in that quarter with the means at his 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 139 
 
 disposal. They should first come to Cairo, and 
 after discussing matters with myself and others, 
 proceed to Khartoum." On receipt of this 
 communication Lord Granville immediately de- 
 spatched the following telegram to Gordon to be 
 delivered to him by the British Consul at Port 
 Said : " Sir E. Baring gives strong reasons why 
 you should go to Cairo, in which we hope you 
 will concur." At the next Council the Foreign 
 Secretary submitted the new plan to the Cabinet ; 
 and mainly, no doubt, on the strength of Sir 
 Evelyn Baring's recommendation, it was approved. 
 Having regard to the momentous and ulti- 
 mately tragic consequences of this change in 
 Gordon's destination, it seems right that its true 
 history should be given, and that the British 
 Government of that day should be relieved of all 
 but the just burden of responsibility heavy 
 enough in all conscience that rests upon them. 
 The idea of despatching Gordon to Khartoum 
 by the Nile route was not theirs, and their 
 moral as distinct from their technical and official 
 responsibility does not begin with the first 
 step in the deplorable transaction. But it begins 
 immediately afterwards. For it is not as though 
 the plan which they accepted from others was 
 foredoomed to failure and necessarily fraught 
 with the fate of their emissary. Had that been 
 the case, they might have sheltered themselves to 
 
140 LORD CROMER 
 
 some extent behind the military and other experts 
 in Egypt from whom they took, and, in the 
 circumstances, could hardly have helped taking, 
 their cue. But this was not the case. It was 
 well within their power to have made the 
 Khartoum enterprise, if not successful, at any 
 rate fairly safe ; and to the extent to which they 
 neglected or rejected the dispositions by which 
 this was to be effected, they became as re- 
 sponsible for the tragic issue of the adventure 
 as though it was their original suggestion. 
 
 On this point it is impossible for any impartial 
 mind to refuse assent to the reasoning of Sir 
 William Butler. This accomplished military 
 critic is a convinced advocate of the Suakin 
 route ; and though he admits it to be doubtful 
 whether it was at that moment possible to 
 penetrate from any point on the Red Sea to 
 the valley of the Nile above Abu Hamid, he 
 holds that it would have been better if Gordon 
 had not been deflected from his first purpose, 
 and permitted to make his way as best he pleased 
 without visiting Cairo. But he continues : 
 
 "Granted, however, that the route from Suakin to Berber 
 was closed by the Arab revolt, and that it was necessary for 
 Gordon to proceed to Khartoum by the valley of the Nile 
 and the Korosko desert, what was then the right course for 
 the English and Egyptian Governments to pursue? Simply 
 to keep open this route across the desert from Korosko to 
 Abu Hamid at all and every cost. That was the one thing 
 to do, and that was the one thing that was not done. Nothing 
 
GORDON AND THE GOVERNMENT 141 
 
 was easier. We held the Nile to Dongola ; Korosko was but 
 
 a day's steaming above the first cataract ; from thence to 
 
 Abu Hamid the track lay across a desert which even the Arab 
 
 cannot permanently live in. Put a post of troops at Abu 
 
 Hamid ; hold the intervening single well of Murat with a 
 
 small party of loyal Bedouins, and your line of communication 
 
 is perfect. Assemble one thousand camels at Korosko to 
 
 follow Gordon with troops and supplies to Abu Hamid ; 
 
 reinforce Berber with another battalion of infantry ; hold 
 
 Abu Hamid with two hundred men, and your work will be 
 
 done. He will then do the rest. No operation was more 
 
 feasible than this one, none would have cost so little, none 
 
 could possibly have been so important. As soon as Gordon 
 
 reached Khartoum, he began to send away the most helpless 
 
 portion of the garrison, and in the seven or eight weeks during 
 
 which communications remained open, not less than two 
 
 thousand five hundred widows, children, and employes reached 
 
 Korosko from Khartoum, arriving, according to the statement 
 
 of the officer receiving them at Korosko, * in an almost perfect 
 
 state of comfort.' If thus some two thousand four hundred 
 
 helpless refugees could come down in an almost perfect state 
 
 of comfort, how easily might half that number of soldiers 
 
 have been sent to Abu Hamid and Berber by the return 
 
 camels which had conveyed the refugees from these places. 
 
 As a military operation, this despatch of a few hundred men 
 
 to Abu Hamid was at this time as simple as to send them 
 
 from Malta to Alexandria. The Ababdih Arabs were our 
 
 firm friends. Hussein Pasha Khalifa, the Egyptian officer 
 
 in command of Berber, was the sheikh of that tribe ; his 
 
 men would have gone with alacrity on any service which was 
 
 in aid of their chief. Abu Hamid was the doorway of the 
 
 Soudan, the gate of Berber and Khartoum, the one golden 
 
 key whose possession locked or unlocked the vast prison 
 
 of that hopeless land. It is really terrible to think that this 
 
 one cheap, easy, feasible, and absolutely essential precaution 
 
 should not have been taken, and that the rival authorities 
 
 in Cairo should during these precious months of grace that 
 
142 LORD CROMER 
 
 were still left to us have been wildly building earthworks at 
 Assouan, sending soldiers to Luxor and Esneh, squandering 
 tens of thousands of pounds in subsidizing Bedouins in the 
 deserts close to Lower Egypt, who are to this day as separated 
 from the Soudan as if they had dwelt in Syria, and that no 
 thought of the real thing to be done appears ever to have 
 entered the head of Minister or General, Pasha, Mudir, or 
 Miralai." 
 
 It would be impossible to put more lucidly, 
 concisely, and convincingly the whole case against 
 the Government as it arose and developed 
 between the date of the change in Gordon's 
 destination and the final catastrophe. This is 
 what they might have done, but neglected to 
 do, to protect the life of their emissary, if not to 
 make his mission a success ; and this therefore 
 gives the measure of their condemnation. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 Gordon and Baring 
 
 CUT off as he was from all regular communi- 
 cation with the Government at home, and 
 indeed almost wholly so with their representatives 
 at Cairo, it is natural enough that a man of 
 Gordon's impetuous temperament should have 
 chafed too sorely at his enforced impotence and 
 inaction to have been able even if the 
 information at his disposal had favoured the 
 effort to distribute the responsibility for his 
 position with perfectly equal justice among the 
 various persons upon whom it rested. It would 
 be unfair, not merely to Sir Evelyn Baring, 
 Mr. Egerton, Sir Edward Malet, and others, but 
 to Gordon himself, to lay any stress on the 
 numerous sallies of impatient sarcasm which are 
 to be met with in the pages of the famous Journal 
 at Khartoum. One instance among many will 
 suffice. On October 24 he writes : " I declare 
 that if my telegrams to Baring are made known 
 it will be proved that Baring knew up to the 
 1 2th March the exact position of affairs up here; 
 
 143 
 
144 LORD CROMER 
 
 and therefore if there was an impression that I 
 did not say * Send troops (200) to Berber, or 
 you will lose it,' he must have suppressed my 
 telegrams." To this passage Mr. Egmont Hake, 
 the editor of the Journals, appends a footnote, 
 setting out two despatches from Baring to Lord 
 Granville, in one of which the Consul-General, 
 after reporting Gordon's request for 200 British 
 troops to be sent to Wady Haifa, adds : " I agree 
 with the military authorities in thinking that it 
 would not be desirable to comply with this 
 request " ; while in the other he expresses his 
 disagreement with the proposal mentioned in 
 Colonel Stewart's telegram, that " a force of 
 British or Indian cavalry should be sent through 
 from Suakin to Berber." It is to be regretted 
 that Mr. Hake should have printed these two 
 extracts alone, because, as Sir Henry Gordon 
 points out in his introduction to the Journals, 
 Sir Evelyn Baring's objection to the latter of 
 these two proposals (the only really practical one 
 of the two) was not by any means intended to 
 apply to all relief operations by the Suakin- 
 Berber route. On the 24th March, less than 
 three weeks later, and but ten days after the 
 situation had been modified by General Graham's 
 victory at Tamai, Baring writes : 
 
 " I believe that the success gained by General Graham in the 
 neighbourhood of Suakin will result in the opening of the 
 
From a Photograph by Hubert Henry, of Southampton. 
 
GORDON AND BARING 145 
 
 road to Berber ; but I should not think that any action he can 
 take at or near Suakin would exert much influence over the 
 tribes between Berber and Khartoum. Unless any unforeseen 
 circumstances should occur to change the situation, only two 
 solutions appear to be possible." 
 
 The first was to trust to Gordon's being able 
 to maintain himself at Khartoum till the autumn, 
 after briefly discussing which the writer continues : 
 
 "The only other plan is to send a portion of General 
 Graham's army to Berber, with instructions to open up com- 
 munications with Khartoum. There would be very great 
 difficulty in getting to Berber, but if that road were once open 
 it might be done by sending small detachments at a 
 time. . . . Under present circumstances I think that an 
 effort should be made to help General Gordon from Suakin, 
 if it is at all a possible military operation. General 
 Stephenson and Sir Evelyn Wood, while admitting the very 
 great risk to the health of the troops, besides the extraordinary 
 military risks, are of the opinion that the undertaking is 
 possible. They think that General Graham should be further 
 consulted. We all consider that however difficult the 
 operations from Suakin may be, they are more practicable 
 than any operations from Korosko and along the Nile." 
 
 On the 25th of March Lord Granville replied 
 to this despatch, definitively declining in the name 
 of the Government to send British troops to 
 Berber by the route suggested ; and three days 
 later (on the 28th) the Foreign Secretary wrote 
 an elaborate two-page exposition of his reasons 
 for not entertaining a request which Her Majesty's 
 Government would not willingly have refused, 
 coming as it did from General Gordon "with 
 
146 LORD CROMER 
 
 the additional weight of your concurrence, if the 
 military and other objections to it had not 
 appeared conclusive." 
 
 Surely this despatch puts the saddle of respon- 
 sibility on the right horse ; and another, and 
 still longer one, of even date with the above, is 
 yet more instructive on the question of Zebehr 
 Pasha, with regard to which the Journals clearly 
 indicate something more than a suspicion on 
 Gordon's part that Baring had not, or not with 
 sufficient energy, supported his application. Had 
 this been the true state of the case, it certainly 
 would not have been necessary for the Foreign 
 Secretary to fill more than three pages of a Blue 
 Book with a laboured apology for overruling his 
 subordinate. Throughout this lengthy plaidoyer 
 Lord Granville treats Sir Evelyn Baring as 
 advocating Gordon's proposals in this particular 
 matter in question without any reserve. " The 
 arguments in favour of employing Zebehr were 
 stated with great force and ability," he writes, 
 "by yourself and General Gordon," and it 
 was with reluctance that the Government put 
 them aside. u The observations," concludes the 
 Foreign Secretary, in the well-known tone of a 
 Minister who is uneasily conscious of having 
 rejected the advice of experts far better informed 
 than himself, " which I have made in this despatch 
 are not intended to imply the slightest blame 
 
GORDON AND BARING 147 
 
 upon the manner in which you have discharged 
 the arduous and responsible task of advising Her 
 Majesty's Government under circumstances of 
 extraordinary difficulty. It was your obvious 
 duty to communicate your opinions to them in 
 the plainest manner. You have discharged that 
 duty faithfully and well. Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment are deeply sensible of the courage, 
 patriotism, self-sacrifice, and devotion to duty, 
 which actuate General Gordon. They have felt 
 no disposition to criticise in any narrow spirit 
 the suggestions which, with his characteristic 
 frankness, he has made from day to day" (no 
 doubt there is here a touch of veiled satire) " as to 
 the most effectual way of meeting difficulties as 
 they presented themselves to him ; but Her 
 Majesty's Government had to decide upon these 
 suggestions to the best of their ability. They 
 are fully sensible of the difficulty of the task, 
 and while they have been unable to agree with 
 General Gordon and yourself upon the question, 
 they are satisfied that the interests of Egypt and 
 of Great Britain could not be entrusted to abler 
 hands." 
 
 This is not the language in which they would 
 naturally have addressed an official who had 
 been playing the part which Gordon so often 
 imputes to Baring in the Journals. But in truth 
 one need not seek to go behind the wise and 
 
148 LORD CROMER 
 
 generous words in which the hero's distinguished 
 brother has summed up the matter in the 
 Introduction above referred to. "If General 
 Gordon had known," writes Sir Henry, " how 
 much in unison Sir Evelyn Baring's advice had 
 been with his own, and what support he had 
 received at Sir Evelyn's hands, he would have 
 been eager had his life been spared to acknow- 
 ledge that co-operation." This surely ought to 
 silence all further injurious talk about Gordon's 
 having been ill-supported at Cairo. 
 
 And it must be added that highly as everyone 
 must honour the heroic spirit of devotion which 
 led Gordon to his death, it would argue an utter 
 misapprehension of his character to lay much 
 stress on his judgments of men. His was 
 essentially an impulsive nature ; and in his 
 Journals he responds with perfect naivett to the 
 impulse of the moment. Hence the many 
 bewildering changes in his plans ; hence that 
 multitude of suggestions which, "with character- 
 istic frankness," to quote Lord Granville's words, 
 " he made from day to day " ; and hence too 
 the conflicting criticisms on the men around him, 
 which could be so easily collected from his 
 Journal. 
 
 Sir Henry Gordon, for instance, has to 
 put in a word for Major Kitchener and the 
 Intelligence Department in mitigation of the 
 
GORDON AND BARING 149 
 
 severe comments which occur in places through- 
 out the Diaries. With respect to that able 
 officer, now Sirdar of the Egyptian army, and 
 on the high road to yet more distinguished 
 honours, " I am persuaded," writes Sir Henry, 
 " that he did all in his power to get messengers 
 into Khartoum, for just in the same way 
 General Gordon fancied he got them out, and 
 yet how few succeeded in reaching their 
 destination. . . . It is due to Major Kitchener 
 to say that from the time he went to Dongola 
 he certainly kept us acquainted with the position 
 of affairs at Khartoum in a manner most reliable 
 and deserving of much credit." 
 
 But Gordon himself supplies, in various other 
 parts of his Journal, the best answer to his own 
 "severe comments." " I like Baker's description 
 of Kitchener," he writes on November 26th. 
 " The man whom I have always placed my hopes 
 upon, Major Kitchener, R.E., who is one of the 
 few very superior British officers, with a cool and 
 good head and a hard constitution combined with 
 untiring energy, has now pushed up to Dongola, 
 and has proved that the Mudir is dependable." 
 And again on the same day, "Whoever comes 
 up here had better appoint Major Kitchener 
 Governor-General, for it is certain after what 
 has passed that / am impossible. (What a 
 comfort!)" And on the following day, "If 
 
150 LORD CROMER 
 
 Kitchener would take the place, he would be 
 the best man to put in as Governor-General." 
 
 It must, however, be clear to any candid 
 reader of these remarkable self-communings of 
 one of the most remarkable of men, that the very 
 last thing which one should seek in them is 
 anything in the nature of a deliberate and final 
 pronouncement either upon the plot and incidents 
 of the strange and tragic drama in which the 
 writer was playing protagonist, or upon the 
 doings, the motives, or the characters of his 
 fellow actors. The chief charm of the Journal 
 and what makes it, having regard to the 
 circumstances in which it was written, unique 
 among memoirs is its absolute spontaneity and 
 its utter absence of self-consciousness. It not 
 only records every thought which occurs to the 
 diarist, but reflects every mood through which 
 he passes, whether grave or gay ; and it adds 
 to one's admiration of this heroic soul to see 
 how continually the gloom around him is 
 illumined by the flashes of his characteristic 
 humour. Indeed, it is the comic aspect of any 
 incident or communication which is frequently 
 the first to present itself, and, as with many 
 another man possessing a strong sense of the 
 humorous, the sally which it provokes from him 
 is often more amusing than just. An excellent 
 example of this is to be found in his comment 
 
GORDON AND BARING 151 
 
 on Mr. Egerton's inquiry, through Major 
 Kitchener, as to "exactly when Gordon expects 
 to be in difficulties as to provisions and 
 ammunition." 
 
 " I am sure," he enters in his Journal, " I should like that 
 fellow Egerton. There is a light-hearted jocularity about his 
 communications, and I should think the cares of life sat 
 easily on him. ... He wishes to know exactly ', ' day, hour, 
 and minute,' when he (Gordon) expects to be in difficulties 
 as to provisions and ammunition. Now I really think that 
 if Egerton was to turn over the 'archives' (a delicious word) 
 of his office, he would see we had been in difficulties for 
 provisions for some months. It is as if a man on the bank, 
 who, having seen his friend in the river already bobbed down 
 two or three times, hails, ' I say, old fellow, let us know when 
 we are to throw you the life-buoy. I know you have bobbed 
 down two or three times, but it is a pity to throw you the 
 buoy until you really are in extremis ; and I want to know 
 exactly, for I am a man brought up in a school of 
 exactitude.' " 
 
 There is, of course, nothing unusual in asking 
 the commander of a besieged city how long he 
 expects to be able to hold out, nor does the 
 inquiry imply an intention to withhold relief 
 until the latest possible moment. Nor, again, 
 is "day, hour, and minute" quite a fair gloss 
 upon "exactly," which unlucky word, of course, 
 it was that struck the quickly responsive chord 
 of humour in Gordon's mind. But the apt 
 comicality of the parallel which he draws is 
 irresistible ; as also is the remark on the next 
 
152 LORD CROMER 
 
 page that " Egerton is a statistician ; he evidently 
 is collecting material for some great work." 
 For "what earthly use," he continues, "can it 
 be to us for Egerton to know exactly our want 
 of provisions when he is 1500 miles away?" 
 
 It is in the same ironical spirit that he 
 " wonders what the telegrams about the Soudan 
 have cost Her Majesty's Government. It has 
 been truly a horrid question. There is the town 
 El Obeyed and the sheikh El Obeyed ; there 
 is the Haleman of Cairo and the Haleman of 
 Khartoum. Sanderson must have a hard time 
 of it. 'The city moves about.' Why if Haleman 
 is attacked, Cairo must be in danger ! Send for 
 Wolseley ! Khartoum forces are defeated by 
 Sheikh El Obeyed ! Why the town must have 
 moved ! Is not El Obeyed the place Hicks 
 went to take ? Most extraordinary ! Send for 
 Wolseley ! . . . Eureka ! I have found it out ; 
 there is a man called El Obeyed and a town 
 called El Obeyed. When a movement occurs, 
 it is the man, not the town, that has moved." 
 
 Vastly amusing as this is, it can only have 
 been thrown out in pure lightness of heart and 
 as a wholly irrepressible joke. There is not 
 the least reason for supposing that the Foreign 
 Office officials or any of them did ever in fact 
 confound the city with the man. The piece of 
 chaff seems to have occurred to Gordon a propos 
 
GORDON AND BARING 153 
 
 of nothing, and down it went in his diary. He 
 does not spare himself when anything strikes 
 him. " I own to having been very insubordinate 
 to Her Majesty's Government and its officials," 
 he had written just before, "but it is my nature, 
 and I cannot help it. I fear I have not even 
 tried to play battledore and shuttlecock with 
 them. I know if / was chief I would never 
 employ myself, for I am incorrigible." Mr. 
 Egmont Hake, in his Introduction to the 
 Journals, dwells with indignant emphasis, and, 
 as I admit, with perfect justice, on the mean 
 falsity of the charge, industriously circulated by 
 the Radicals for party purposes, that Gordon 
 disobeyed the orders of his Government. But 
 it is clear from the above quotation that if every 
 entry in his Journal were to be taken ait grand 
 slrieux, he could be convicted of disobedience 
 out of his own mouth ; and a document cannot 
 be used as evidence for one purpose and rejected 
 for another. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the best and fairest way 
 of bringing this question of the responsibilities 
 to a final issue will be to set out in detail 
 Mr. Hake's careful summary of the various 
 points in which Gordon was thwarted in his 
 wishes by the Government ; and to ascertain 
 for which, if any, of these rejections of his 
 demands, or to what, if any, extent in respect 
 
154 LORD CROMER 
 
 of any of them, the British Consul-General can 
 be fairly held accountable. We may be pretty 
 sure that the list of Gordon's just complaints 
 against the Government, seeing by how ardent 
 a partisan it has been framed, is exhaustive, and 
 that we have in it, therefore, a statement of the 
 whole case of those who have sought to include 
 Baring in the condemnation so deservedly pro- 
 nounced by the country upon the dealings of 
 Mr. Gladstone's Administration with Gordon 
 during the spring and summer of 1884. Mr. 
 Hake thus formulates his charges : 
 
 (1) Gordon wished to visit the Mahdi if he thought fit, 
 but Sir E. Baring gave him a positive order from Her Majesty 's 
 Government that he was on no account to do so. 
 
 (2) Gordon proposed to go direct from Khartoum to the 
 Bahr Gazelle and Equatorial Provinces, but Her Majesty's 
 Government refused to sanction his proceeding beyond 
 Khartoum. 
 
 (3) Gordon desired 3000 Turkish troops in British pay 
 to be sent to Suakin, but Her Majesty's Government, advised 
 by Sir E. Baring, who disapproved of the measure, declined 
 to send these troops. 
 
 (4) Gordon, being convinced that some government was 
 essential for the safety of the Soudan, suggested the appoint- 
 ment of Zebehr as his successor, and gave the most cogent 
 reasons why it was absolutely necessary for the accomplish- 
 ment of his mission that the appointment should be made. 
 He reiterated his request over and over again from February 
 to December. Her Majesty's Government would not permit 
 the Khedive to make the appointment. 
 
 (5) Gordon requested that in the interests of England, 
 Egypt, and the Soudan, he should be provided with a Firman 
 
GORDON AND BARING 155 
 
 which recognized a moral control and suzerainty over the 
 Soudan. This was peremptorily refused. 
 
 (6) Gordon asked for Indian Moslem troops to be sent 
 to Wady Haifa. They were refused him. 
 
 (7) In March, Gordon desired 100 British troops to be 
 sent to Assouan or to Wady Haifa. In making known this 
 desire to Her Majesty's Government, Sir E. Baring said he 
 would not risk sending so small a body, and the principal 
 medical officer said the climate would exercise an injurious 
 effect on the troops. These troops were not sent. 
 
 (8) Gordon, for the sake of everything and everybody 
 concerned, showed that the Madhi's power must be smashed. 
 Her Majesty's Government declined to assist in or even to 
 countenance the process. 
 
 (9) Gordon, in a series of eleven telegrams, explained his 
 difficulties, and said that if Her Majesty's Government would 
 not send British troops to Wady Haifa, and adjutants to 
 inspect Dongola, and then open up the Berber-Suakin route by 
 Indian Moslem troops, they would probably have to decide 
 between Zebehr or the Madhi ; and he concluded these 
 telegrams by saying he would do his best to carry out his 
 instructions, but felt convinced he would be caught in 
 Khartoum. Sir Evelyn Baring, in his reply to these telegrams, 
 recommended Gordon to reconsider the whole question carefully, 
 and then to state in one telegram what he recommended. 
 
 (10) Gordon telegraphed, "The combination of Zebehr 
 and myself is an absolute necessity for success. To do any 
 good we must be together, and that without delay " ; and he 
 supplemented this by another telegram, saying, " Believe me, 
 I am right, and do not delay." The combination was not 
 permitted. 
 
 (n) Sir Evelyn Baring telegraphed to Lord Granville that 
 General Gordon had on several occasions pressed for 200 British 
 troops to be sent to Wady Haifa, but that he (Baring) did not 
 think it desirable to comply with the request. 
 
 (12) Gordon desired a British division at Berber, but 
 Sir Evelyn Baring replied that there was no intention to send 
 an English force to Berber. 
 
156 LORD CROMER 
 
 (13) Gordon, foiled on every point, telegraphed a graceful 
 adieu to Her Majesty's Government. Then came the fall 
 of Berber, upon which Sir Evelyn Baring at once telegraphed 
 to Lord Granville that it had now become of the utmost 
 importance not only to open the route between Suakin and 
 Berber, but " to come to terms with the tribes between Berber 
 and Khartoum " ; and Lord Granville telegraphed to Sir E. 
 Baring that "General Gordon had several times suggested a 
 movement on Wady Haifa, which might support him by 
 threatening an advance on Dongola, and under the present 
 circumstances at Berber this might be found advantageous." 
 
 A glance through the Blue Book in which 
 all these wishes and suggestions of Gordon stand 
 recorded will conclusively show that in none of 
 these instances, save perhaps the first two, was 
 Sir Evelyn Baring responsible for the rejection of 
 any one proposal. As to the first, it is difficult 
 to treat it seriously, and one rather wonders how 
 Mr. Hake could have brought himself, as he 
 apparently has done, to give it serious entertain- 
 ment. The facts which have been given above, 
 but which may here be more conveniently 
 recalled, were as follows : Gordon before 
 quitting Cairo on his southward journey left 
 a message for Clifford Lloyd in these terms, 
 "Tell Lloyd no panics. It is possible I may go 
 to the Mahdi and not be heard of for two 
 months, for he might keep me as a hostage for 
 Zebehr." Upon this (and no wonder) Baring 
 telegraphed, doubtless of his own motion, to 
 
GORDON AND BARING 157 
 
 Gordon : " I hope you will give me a positive 
 assurance that you will on no account put your- 
 self voluntarily in the power of the Mahdi. The 
 question is not a personal one. There would, in 
 my opinion, be the strongest political objections 
 to your risking a visit to the Mahdi." The 
 prohibition was approved from home, and no 
 doubt it may be said that what Mr. Hake calls 
 the " positive order from Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment " really emanated from the Consul- General. 
 But surely it cannot be gravely contended that 
 this sudden proposal on the part of the British 
 emissary to put himself into the hands of his 
 savage and fanatical enemy for two months, should 
 or could under the circumstances have met with 
 anything but an instant if provisional veto ; or 
 that its refusal in any degree affected the success 
 of his mission. 
 
 The same remark applies to (2), of which by 
 the way Mr. Hake does not give quite a 
 complete account. Gordon did not propose 
 simpliciter to "go direct from Khartoum to the 
 Bahr Gazelle and the Equatorial Provinces." 
 What he did was to write a letter to the King of 
 the Belgians, urging that sovereign to " occupy 
 the Bahr Gazelle and the Equatorial Provinces, 
 and to appoint him Governor-General of all that 
 country." This, it is evident, involved political 
 considerations, which clearly left a diplomatist in 
 
158 LORD CROMER 
 
 Baring's position with absolutely no alternative 
 but peremptorily to forbid the step. For political 
 reasons it was his duty to oppose Gordon's extra- 
 ordinary suggestion (3) with all the influence at 
 his command. 
 
 As to (4), the solicitation for the appointment of 
 Zebehr, it has already been fully dealt with in the 
 foregoing pages ; and the last-quoted despatch of 
 Lord Granville, showing as it does that he 
 regarded Gordon and Baring as solidaires on the 
 question of Zebehr's appointment, is conclusive. 
 The refusal of Zebehr to Gordon was the work 
 of Downing Street, and if, that is to say, we 
 exclude the unofficial influence of Exeter Hall 
 of Downing Street alone. 
 
 The refusal of the Firman (5) is obviously a 
 step which could not be taken by the Consul- 
 General on his own authority. There is no 
 evidence to my knowledge that he either sup- 
 ported or opposed Gordon's application ; nor any 
 proof that, if it had been entertained, it would 
 in the slightest degree have influenced results. 
 
 Mr. Hake does not allege that Baring was 
 responsible in respect of (6). 
 
 Similarly we may dismiss (8) from considera- 
 tion. Nobody clearly can be responsible for not 
 "smashing the power of the Mahdi," still less 
 for " declining to assist in, or even to countenance 
 the process,*' but Her Majesty's Government. 
 
GORDON AND BARING 159 
 
 (10) This has already been disposed of under 
 
 (4). 
 
 (12) and (13) refer to the fall of Berber, the 
 responsibility for which has been discussed 
 already. It has, moreover, been already pointed 
 out that Sir Evelyn Baring on March 24 pressed 
 the Government to send a portion of General 
 Graham's force to Berber, to open up communica- 
 tion between that city and Khartoum. 
 
 There remain (7), (9), and (n), which may 
 conveniently be considered together. Mr. Hake 
 makes much of Gordon's "eleven telegrams" 
 there were, in fact, twelve and prints his 
 summary of Baring's reply in contemptuous 
 italics, followed by a scornful note of admira- 
 tion. But really all our respect for Gordon's 
 nobility of character and faculty of command 
 must not deter us from admitting that this fire of 
 messages to Cairo the whole round dozen 
 despatched within four days, and the series com- 
 mencing little more than a week after his arrival 
 show what seem to be unmistakable indications 
 that Gordon had temporarily lost his head. " I 
 cannot," he says, in substance, on February 27, 
 " remove the Egyptian employes from Khartoum 
 without leaving the population helpless, and with 
 no course open to them but to submit to the 
 Mahdi. The removal of the sick, etc., might be 
 managed easily enough, and in fact this may 
 
160 LORD CROMER 
 
 be considered to have been already effected ; but 
 unless you are satisfied with the 'partial 
 evacuation' you must act by Indian Moslem 
 troops from Wady Haifa, and do so at once by 
 sending detachments of troops to Wady Haifa." 
 On the next day he telegraphs : " There is just a 
 chance of enticing the Mahdi's troops over to 
 me by money. Shall I try it? Will you find 
 the extra funds?" His next telegram, sent the 
 following day, begins : " Should you wish to 
 intervene send 200 British, 'not Indian Moslem,' 
 troops to Wady Haifa, and Adjutants to inspect 
 Dongola, and then open up Suakin- Berber route 
 by Indian Moslem troops. This will cause an 
 immediate collapse of the revolt. Whether you 
 think it worth while to do this or not you are 
 of course the best judge." The last telegram 
 runs: "Re policy. I maintain firmly policy of 
 eventual evacuation, but I tell you plainly it is 
 impossible to get Cairo employes unless the 
 Government helps in the way I told you." 
 
 Baring's reply, which Mr. Hake has so 
 contemptuously summarized, but which seems to 
 me a model of patience and loyal solicitude 
 for Gordon's safety and success in his mission, 
 is as follows : 
 
 " I have received your eleven telegrams of the last four 
 days on matters of general policy. I am most anxious to help 
 and support you in every way, but I find it very difficult to 
 
GORDON AND BARING 161 
 
 understand exactly what it is you want. I think your best 
 plan will be to reconsider the whole question carefully, and 
 then to state to me in one telegram what it is you recommend." 
 
 I cannot see anything in the last sentence to 
 justify Mr. Hake's note of admiration. It was 
 quite possible to state all these recommendations 
 in one telegram, for Baring proceeds to do so 
 tentatively himself. 
 
 " If I understand rightly, your main ideas are as follows : 
 First, you wish the policy of eventually evacuating the Soudan, 
 including Khartoum, to be formally maintained ; secondly, you 
 see clearly that anarchy may ensue on the withdrawal of 
 the Egyptian Government, which may affect Egypt proper; 
 thirdly, you see special objections to the immediate with- 
 drawal of the Egyptian employes. The remedy which you 
 recommend to prevent anarchy, so far as is possible, is to 
 hand over the government to Zebehr as your successor, who 
 would receive for a time at least a subsidy from the Egyptian 
 Government, in order to enable him to maintain an armed 
 force. Have I correctly interpreted your views? I have 
 again pressed on Her Majesty's Government the desirability of 
 allowing Zebehr to succeed you with a temporary subsidy, and 
 have to-day received an answer asking me whether it is urgent 
 to make an arrangement for your successor at once. I should 
 be glad of your opinion on this point. . . . You may, I think, 
 regard the question of Zebehr as still under discussion, and 
 not finally settled. As to the Egyptian employes, I am not 
 sure that I understand what you propose. In your written 
 report of the 8th February you speak of the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment nominating Mudirs ; but in all other documents, 
 especially your telegram of the i8th, you condemn any 
 interference from Cairo, and such interference is obviously 
 inconsistent with the policy of eventual evacuation. There 
 can, of course, be no objection to any Egyptian employes 
 remaining if they wish to do so, or if Zebehr, or whoever 
 takes over the government, wishes to retain their services. 
 
i6 2 LORD CROMER 
 
 As regards some other points mentioned in your recent tele- 
 grams, you asked me on the 28th whether you should endeavour 
 to entice the Mahdi's troops over by money. I cannot give 
 instructions on such a point as this. You are in a much 
 better position to judge than I am. In your telegrams of the 
 26th and 29th you recommend sending 200 British troops to 
 Wady Haifa. I should not be prepared to send so small a 
 body so far from supports; but I have authority, if I think 
 necessary, to send British troops to Upper Egypt, and am 
 about to consult with authorities here as to what should be 
 done. The consideration of the question has been allowed to 
 stand over until the result of Graham's operations was known. 
 British troops will probably not go south of Assouan. Two 
 battalions of Woods' army have already been sent there. As 
 regards the proposal made in your telegram of the 26th to 
 send an officer to Dongola under pretence of looking out 
 quarters for troops, I cannot say I like it, as there is no real 
 intention of sending troops to that place. As regards your 
 proposal to open out Berber-Suakin road by Indian Moslem 
 troops, I am not at present prepared to recommend such a 
 measure. Now that Graham has gained a victory, could not 
 Hassan Khalifa open the road? As regards money, I 
 explained to you in Cairo that your ^100,000 was only on 
 account. It is of course desirable to spend as little as 
 possible. The financial difficulties here are very great, and one 
 of the objects of an evacuation is to relieve the overtaxed 
 people of the country, to whom the Soudan by reason of bad 
 government has been a constant drain ; but if you really want 
 more money when the ; 100,000 is spent you can have it." 
 
 Sir Evelyn Baring might well afford, I think, to 
 risk his case on this despatch alone, for a more 
 complete answer to the charge of having failed 
 to support any reasonable demands of Gordon, so 
 soon as it could be ascertained what they were 
 which, as is shown by the above, was not always 
 an easy task it would be impossible to imagine. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Last Act of the Tragedy 
 
 IT is unnecessary, and within the limits of this 
 volume it would be impossible, to rewrite 
 the sombre history of those nine months which 
 elapsed between the final investment of Khar- 
 toum and the death of Gordon. On the other 
 hand, a recapitulation of what may be called the 
 official incidents of that period is unavoidable. 
 The fatal tragedy which was advancing step by 
 step towards its climax during those months has 
 left so deep an impression on the minds of the 
 English people, their grief at the loss of their 
 national hero was so intense, and their shame 
 at the national failure to support and rescue him 
 has been so lasting, that no English public 
 servant in any way connected with that melan- 
 choly drama can afford to neglect the duty of 
 clearing himself, if that be possible, of any 
 responsibility for its tragic close. Thus, though 
 the sad but splendid story has been told again 
 and again in more or less worthy and adequate 
 forms, and though it is scarcely possible to do 
 
 163 
 
164 LORD CROMER 
 
 more here than to give a dry and bald recital of 
 the facts, it is necessary once again to set them 
 forth. For though such a narrative may well show 
 that "someone had blundered," or even that there 
 were more blunderers than one, it will never- 
 theless appear, even from the briefest exposition 
 of them, that no efforts which zeal, goodwill, and 
 forethought could suggest for promoting the 
 success of the rescue expedition was wanting 
 on the part of Her Majesty's representative at 
 Cairo. 
 
 Let us for a moment recall one or two inci- 
 dents and dates. It was on the iQth of April, 
 1884, that communication with Khartoum was 
 finally cut off, and it was precisely on the same 
 day a month later that the fall of Berber 
 extinguished the last possibility of adopting 
 what all the most competent authorities agreed 
 in pronouncing the most hopeful scheme of relief. 
 The position of Gordon had already given rise 
 to anxiety in the House of Commons, a feeling 
 which it is not unfair to say was sensibly 
 reinforced by the eagerness of Lord Randolph 
 Churchill and his little party of frondeurs to 
 give effect to their views as to the duty of an 
 Opposition. As early as March i6th, the 
 member for Woodstock endeavoured to induce 
 the House to refuse its assent to the Third 
 Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill before 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 165 
 
 " receiving further information as to the military 
 operations in the Eastern Soudan, the position 
 of General Gordon at Khartoum, and the 
 policy of Her Majesty's Government in Egypt 
 Proper." In the course of his speech on the 
 matter, the noble lord asked which "of the 
 two policies were the Government going to 
 adopt the ' rescue ' or the ' retire ' ? " and added 
 the following!" significant words : " There was one 
 
 o o 
 
 rescue which the Government, if they did not 
 adopt it very soon, would be compelled to adopt, 
 or they would have to make way for other people 
 the rescue of General Gordon. He did not 
 believe that hon. members who were in favour 
 of a pacific policy carried to an extravagant 
 degree, would object to strong measures being 
 taken without delay for the rescue of General 
 Gordon. If the matter were left to chance, and 
 General Gordon were sacrificed owing to the 
 neglect and indifference and callousness and 
 heartlessness of the Government, then they 
 would not keep their seats for twenty-four hours 
 after the news were known in England." 
 
 For the next five or six weeks the Govern- 
 ment were plied almost nightly with questions 
 as to the position of Gordon and the nature 
 of the advices which they received ; and on 
 the 2ist of April, two days after communica- 
 tion with Khartoum had been finally cut off, 
 
166 LORD CROMER 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in answering a question from 
 Mr. Bourke, drew one of those distinctions for 
 the surpassing subtlety of which he is so justly 
 famous. 
 
 After describing the condition of Shendy 
 and Berber, as reported to him in the latest 
 despatches from Cairo, the Prime Minister said 
 that with regard to Khartoum itself the in- 
 formation contained in their last telegram from 
 General Gordon was, so far as the question of 
 Gordon's position was concerned, in complete 
 concurrence with what had reached them from 
 Sir Evelyn Baring, " the general effect being, 
 according to the expression used, that he is 
 hemmed in ; that is to say, that there are bodies 
 of hostile troops in the neighbourhood, forming 
 more or less a complete chain around it. I 
 draw a distinction between that and the town 
 being surrounded, which would bear technically 
 a very different meaning." Whether, however, 
 there was much practical difference in the 
 meaning would depend (though I need not say 
 I am not quoting Mr. Gladstone's words) upon 
 whether the "more or less complete chain" of 
 hostile forces round Khartoum was, as a matter 
 of fact, a " more " or a " less " complete one. 
 And as such matter of fact, we know now at 
 any rate that it was complete enough to prevent 
 any effective communication with Gordon for 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 167 
 
 the next nine months, and indeed until the eve 
 of his death at his post. 
 
 On the following night, and again a week later, 
 the Government were interrogated as to their 
 adhesion to their opinion that the position of 
 " General Gordon is one of security at Khar- 
 toum," and with the same unsatisfactory result. 
 On May i, the Prime Minister was asked in 
 so many words whether he was able to state 
 to the House when the Government intended 
 to send an expedition to the relief of General 
 Gordon. Mr. Gladstone replied that he had 
 no statement to make on the subject. On the 
 following day Sir Michael Hicks -Beach gave 
 notice of a motion expressive of the regret of 
 the House to find that "the course pursued by 
 Her Majesty's Government has not tended to 
 promote the success of General Gordon's mission, 
 and that even such steps as may be necessary 
 to secure his personal safety are still delayed." 
 The debate upon it opened on March 12, 
 and it was in the course of Mr. Gladstone's 
 reply to the speech of the mover that he uttered 
 the memorable and often-quoted declaration, that 
 an attempt to put down the Mahdist movement 
 in the Soudan would be a " war of conquest 
 against a people rightly struggling to be free." 
 Here also he referred to the "well-known case 
 of Cambyses " as illustrating the difficulty of 
 
1 68 LORD CROMER 
 
 carrying on military operations in the Soudan, 
 and finally pleaded for delay. It was the duty 
 of the Government to ask Gordon's " advice 
 and opinions " (the advice and opinion of a man 
 who had been nearly two months cut off from 
 all communications) " as to the best mode and 
 circumstance and form and time of affording 
 him succour should the necessity arise." The 
 motion was defeated by the comparatively small 
 majority of twenty - eight ; and it is probable 
 enough that from that moment ,the Government 
 recognized that whatever their own individual 
 prepossessions or collective differences on the 
 question might be, Parliamentary, supported by 
 national, pressure would eventually compel them 
 to take action, 
 
 Yet they still delayed even the definite 
 announcement of their willingness to do so. On 
 May 27 Mr. Gladstone parried with generalities 
 a question put to him as to whether any actual 
 preparations had been made up to that date to 
 organise an expedition for the relief of General 
 Gordon. Lord Harrington's contribution to the 
 discussion was a little more reassuring, but not 
 much. In answer to an ironical suggestion of 
 Lord Randolph Churchill's, that the Government 
 would begin in October to think what measures 
 of relief could be taken, the Secretary for War 
 said: "The Government are thinking now, and 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 169 
 
 have been long thinking, what measures they 
 could take for the relief of General Gordon." 
 
 On July 1 1 the Government were again 
 questioned; and on July 18 they were pressed 
 to say whether they "still considered it in- 
 expedient to take active steps for the relief of 
 General Gordon," but in each case without effect. 
 And up to the very last day of the session of 
 1884 their replies were in the same strain. They 
 contented themselves with taking a vote of credit 
 for the purpose, as Lord Hartington put it in 
 answer to a question addressed to him on 
 August n, of "putting themselves in a position 
 if necessary to adopt measures for the relief of 
 General Gordon," and at the present time, added 
 the Secretary for War, they were "taking active 
 measures in discharge of their responsibility." 
 Not till after Parliament had risen did it become 
 a matter of public knowledge and assurance that a 
 relief expedition was to be sent out, and the 
 second week in August had expired before the 
 precise nature and character of these active 
 measures was announced to the world. 
 
 For it was one thing to settle the question 
 whether Gordon was "surrounded," or merely 
 11 hemmed in," or even to reach the further 
 conclusion that in either case a military expedi- 
 tion would be required to extricate him, and quite 
 another thing to determine of what strength and 
 
i7o LORD CROMER 
 
 composition the expeditionary force should be, 
 and what route it should take. The last question 
 in particular was the most contentious of all, and 
 months were spent in debating it. It was by 
 railway from Suakin to Berber, said one set of 
 advisers, that Khartoum must be relieved. 
 " Impossible ! " cried another set ; " that route has 
 many mountains, and the passes are three 
 thousand and four thousand feet above sea-level, 
 and for distances of eighty miles there is not a 
 drop of water along the proposed line, and the 
 Arab enemy swarm at Suakin and at Berber. 
 It would take two campaigns and two years' 
 labour to complete such a line." " No," they 
 continued, "the true route of advance is the one 
 which nature points out. The Nile, in its long 
 reaches of open water, gives easy transport for 
 men and stores, and even in its worst cataract it 
 yields that first necessary of desert warfare- 
 water." 
 
 For many precious days and weeks the dispute 
 went on. The question of route was no doubt 
 one of high importance higher perhaps than 
 any other question save one, of which, however, 
 it was unfortunately allowed to take precedence. 
 A man may quite legitimately debate with him- 
 self whether he shall make his way to a railway 
 station by cab or omnibus, and he may indeed 
 debate the question at any length he chooses con- 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 171 
 
 sistently with his allowing himself sufficient time 
 to catch the train by which he desires to travel. 
 This condition Her Majesty's Government un- 
 happily neglected to observe. It was not until 
 August 1 2 that the plan of a boat expedition, put 
 forward by Lord Wolseley several months before, 
 and often urged by him in the intervening period, 
 was at last sanctioned. A vote of credit for the 
 expenses of the expedition had been obtained 
 a week earlier. On the 26th of the same month 
 Lord Wolseley was formally appointed to its 
 command. 
 
 It was not, however, till nearly a month later 
 that the boats destined to carry the men and food 
 over the cataracts were beginning to arrive at 
 Alexandria ; while the troops intended to form 
 the desert column, which was to cross from 
 Korti to Metemneh, had not yet left England. 
 On September 10, the very day when the ill- 
 fated Stewart and Power started up the Nile in 
 the Abbas with Gordon's despatches, the first 
 steamer of the relief expedition was setting out 
 from our shores. It was on the 2ist of the 
 month that Gordon first received authentic news 
 of a relief expedition being on the road, and on 
 the 3Oth he despatched his armed steamers to 
 Metemneh to await the arrival of the troops. 
 Three weeks later he received the news of the 
 loss of the Abbas, the slaughter of Stewart and 
 
172 LORD CROMER 
 
 Power, and the capture of his papers. Among 
 them unluckily were some which gave the fullest 
 details of all stores and food remaining in the 
 city up to September 9, with the exact strength 
 of the garrison and population still surviving. 
 It became possible for the Arabs to calculate to a 
 day how long the place could hold out, and from 
 that time forth the siege, which had been slack of 
 late, was now closely pressed. 
 
 Meanwhile the expedition had got no further 
 than Wady Haifa. On the 2ist of October they 
 were still struggling with difficulties of transport, 
 lack of coal, and administrative "hitches." Two 
 hundred boats had reached that point, but were 
 still waiting at the foot of the Second Cataract ; 
 and it was not for another fortnight that the first 
 company of infantry was embarked for Khar- 
 toum. November passed amid prospects steadily 
 darkening for Gordon and the beleaguered 
 garrison. On the i2th the Dervishes opened 
 a resolute attack upon Omdurman, and one of 
 Gordon's two remaining steamers was hopelessly 
 disabled by shell-fire. He calculated his stores 
 of food at a thirty- days' supply ; but believing as 
 he then did that the expedition had already 
 arrived at or near Metemneh, he no doubt 
 counted them sufficient. The English forces, how- 
 ever, were still at Ambukol, two hundred miles 
 further off. December came and brought with it 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 173 
 
 no fresh news of the expedition. On the loth of 
 the month Gordon wrote in his diary, "Truly I 
 am worn to a shadow with the food question. It 
 is our continued demand." There was then not 
 fifteen days' food in the whole town. " During 
 this time," writes Sir William Butler, from whose 
 condensed but masterly narrative of the last days 
 of the siege I have selected most of the details 
 given above, " there is a daily lessening supply of 
 food given out, and then actual starvation begins ; 
 everything that can keep the light of life flicker- 
 ing a little longer in their wretched frames is 
 tried rats and mice, the leather of boots, the 
 straps and plaited strips of native bedsteads, gum 
 of mimosa, the inner fibre of the palm-tree, have 
 all been eagerly devoured. Fifteen thousand of 
 the townspeople have been sent out to the camp 
 of the Mahdi. Great numbers have died ; there 
 are only some fourteen thousand inhabitants now 
 remaining in the city. Daily and nightly the 
 enemy presses the attack. Omdurman has 
 fallen, the circle of the Arab leaguer is clasped 
 tighter around the famished garrison, and many 
 among the Egyptian officers and officials are 
 clamouring for surrender. These particulars we 
 know from the collected accounts of soldiers 
 and slaves who escaped the final catastrophe. 
 We learn too from the accounts of these men, 
 that through all the terrible time the heart of 
 
174 LORD CROMER 
 
 Charles Gordon never wavered, and that up to 
 the very brink of the last scene he stood the sole 
 stay of the defence, the head and front of the de- 
 fending, refusing all idea of surrender, still toiling 
 to the last, still * doing his best for the honour of 
 the country' which he thinks has forgotten him in 
 his agony, but which would now willingly give her 
 best blood and spend her last treasure to save him." 
 On December 14, the day when he was writing 
 the last entry in his Journal, the leading troops in 
 boats and on camels reached Korti, the point at 
 which the caravan route crosses the desert to 
 Metemneh. Here a halt of sixteen days was 
 necessary for the concentration of troops and 
 supplies ; and on December 30, just about the 
 time when the food supplies of the garrison were 
 exhausted, the march was resumed. But the rate 
 of advance was painfully slow. Short of bag- 
 gage animals as it was, the expedition was forced 
 to move forward its men and stores in detach- 
 ments, halting its first body of troops at Jakdul, 
 little more than half the way to Metemneh, and 
 forming a depot there, while the camels were sent 
 back to Korti to bring on another detachment of 
 men and stores. When at last the entire column 
 was concentrated at Jakdul on January 12, the 
 camels were exhausted by their triple journey, 
 and a rest of sixty hours was necessary before 
 the march could be resumed. 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 175 
 
 On the evening of the i4th the column moved 
 forward from Jakdul, and from that place onward 
 it had to make its way with the sword. On the 
 lyth it fought the Dervishes at the wells of 
 Abu Klea ; it engaged them a second time 
 near Metemneh on the iQth ; and on the evening 
 of the same day the Nile was reached at Gubat. 
 By the night of the 2Oth the entire column was 
 collected on the left shore of the river, about 
 three miles south of Metemneh ; and on the 
 morning of the 2ist Gordon's four steamers were 
 sighted, and communication was at last effected 
 between the expedition and the garrison. Three 
 days passed before the steamers left with the 
 relief force for Khartoum, and for this delay 
 Sir Charles Wilson, who had succeeded to the 
 command of the column on the death of Sir 
 Herbert Stewart, slain at Abu Klea, was at the 
 time severely criticised. In his published narra- 
 tive of the march from Korti to Khartoum he 
 defended his dispositions, and repelled the hostile 
 criticisms with much ability and to the satis- 
 faction, at any rate, of many competent and 
 impartial judges of the matter. With the merits, 
 however, of the controversy on its strictly military 
 side we are here in no way concerned. Whether 
 a tactical or strategical error was or was not 
 committed on a specific occasion is a question 
 which experts may reasonably enough insist on 
 
176 LORD CROMER 
 
 discussing, apart from the question of what or 
 whether any disastrous consequences resulted 
 from the alleged blunder. In other words, 
 Sir Charles Wilson and his supporters, even 
 though they may believe that the game was 
 lost on the 2ist of January, and that no move- 
 ments, however prompt, could have saved the 
 life of Gordon or averted the fall of Khartoum, 
 are yet quite justified in persistence with their 
 contention that no unnecessary delay occurred. 
 No military commander accused of negligence 
 or blundering could condescend to what lawyers 
 call a plea " in confession and avoidance " 
 could, in other words, admit expressly or by 
 implication that he was negligent or that he did 
 blunder, and merely urge that the result was 
 unaffected thereby. But to the purposes of an 
 endeavour, such as is here made, to trace the 
 causes of a tragic failure, the question of Sir 
 Charles Wilson's military conduct is irrelevant, 
 and the question of its results all - important. 
 We have simply to ask ourselves whether the 
 three days' delay, avoidable or unavoidable, 
 was the proximate cause of the death of Gordon 
 and the fall of Khartoum. 
 
 It is contended by Gordon's latest biographer, 
 Mr. D. C. Boulger, that it was. But his con- 
 tention was promptly challenged and searchingly 
 examined by a correspondent of the Times, who 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 177 
 
 showed a complete mastery of the facts ; and 
 Mr. Boulger's reply to his adversary appears to 
 me to be conspicuously inadequate. It would 
 have been possible, urged Gordon's biographer, 
 for Sir Charles Wilson by a desperate effort 
 " to have snatched the chestnuts out of the fire, 
 and converted the most ignominious failure in 
 the military annals of the country into a 
 creditable success." To this his opponent 
 replied by recalling the military situation to 
 which a series of blunders had committed the 
 desert column. " Round Khartoum there were 
 some 40,000 Mahdists. In Khartoum there 
 were some 30,000 people in the last stages of 
 starvation." He continues : 
 
 " I believe in enterprise as much as anyone. I also believe 
 implicitly in the righting qualities of the British soldier. But 
 I do not believe that the appearance of twenty heroes in red 
 coats and a handful of gallant bluejackets would have sufficed 
 to raise the siege of Khartoum. The relatively insignificant 
 Dervish forces which held Metemneh could not be dislodged 
 by the whole available fighting strength remaining to the 
 desert column, although they had been heavily defeated at 
 Abu Klea and Gubat. Yet we are actually asked to believe 
 that the appearance of a subaltern's guard before Omdurman 
 would have sufficed to cause the instant retreat of the whole 
 Mahdist army. Even in Mosaic times I cannot recall such 
 a remarkable achievement as this, the possibility of which, 
 we are coolly asked to accept. But even supposing that this 
 great miracle was worked, what would have become of the 
 starving people of Khartoum, and by what date could food 
 have been conveyed to them either from the desert column 
 
 M 
 
1 78 LORD CROMER 
 
 itself, in face of an undemoralized enemy, or from the river 
 column struggling amid unknown rapids hundreds of miles 
 to the rear? A second miracle would evidently have been 
 required." 
 
 He recalls another consideration, to the weight 
 of which not only many of Gordon's despatches, 
 but many entries in his since published Journal 
 abundantly testify : 
 
 " Gordon, we know, would never have left his post of duty. 
 Are we therefore to understand that Sir C. Wilson's party 
 had orders to kidnap him and bring him away by force ? And 
 if this feat had been accomplished, Gordon's hapless charges 
 at Khartoum being massacred, would history have recorded 
 a creditable success ? " 
 
 Mr. Boulger's rejoinder is not very forcible. 
 He had asked, he said, for neither the miraculous 
 nor the impossible. What he had stated was, 
 first, that Gordon had " begged three months 
 before the force reached Metemneh for ' 100 
 men, or even 50.' ' Three months before ! Had 
 there then been no change in the situation in that 
 time ? Three months before the attack on the 
 town was not being pressed ; the Mahdi was still 
 far away in Kordofan, and his lieutenants, the 
 Sheikh el Obeyed and Wad el Nejumi, kept 
 their investing forces some miles back from the 
 outworks. It was still easy to reach Shendy, one 
 hundred miles north, even by land. Desertions 
 were going on among the black troops of the 
 Dervishes ; the store of grain and provision in 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 179 
 
 the town was still ample ; the spirit of the 
 garrison was fairly good. Three months before 
 the hapless venture of Stewart and Power had 
 not been attempted ; the Abbas, with Gordon's 
 despatches, informing them of the condition of 
 Khartoum, had not fallen into the Mahdist's 
 hands ; the iron ring had not been drawn close 
 round the beleaguered city. " Considering 
 Gordon's position," says Mr. Boulger, " I think 
 the public will agree with me that every effort 
 should have been made to comply with his 
 demand." Assuredly they will, and they would 
 bitterly blame Sir Charles Wilson for not com- 
 plying with it, if it were possible for him to do 
 so. But again it must be said the question is not 
 whether Sir Charles Wilson is to be blamed for 
 what he failed to do, but whether the doing of 
 it would have saved Gordon's life. 
 
 On that point Mr. Boulger's contention is that 
 though the arrival at Khartoum of fifty men on 
 the 24th or 25th of January would not indeed 
 have "raised the siege," or "caused the instant 
 retreat of the whole Mahdist army," it would 
 have enabled the one solitary man, on whom the 
 whole burden of the protracted defence had 
 fallen, borne down by physical exhaustion and 
 constant watching, to hold out for the few days 
 or weeks longer until larger reinforcements could 
 arrive. In plain words, the fifty men would, 
 
i8o LORD CROMER 
 
 humanly speaking, have saved Gordon's life, and 
 fed the 30,000 people in Khartoum for the days 
 or weeks it would certainly have been weeks 
 until the river column could have come up ! 
 Surely Mr. Boulger must see that the two under- 
 takings between which he seeks to distinguish 
 as between the possible and the impossible were 
 in fact identical. To rescue Gordon and the 
 garrison meant to compel the Mahdists to raise 
 the siege of Khartoum straightway. The 
 feasibility of the one feat depended on the 
 feasibility of the other. 
 
 And there is no doubt that on the 24th or 25th, 
 if not on the 2ist of January, and probably by a 
 much earlier day than any of the three, the feat 
 had become impracticable. " By an extraordinary 
 chance," says Mr. Boulger's critic, "it became 
 possible to persuade the large portion of the 
 public which does not trouble itself with facts, 
 that an expedition which was more than two 
 months too late had missed success by a few 
 hours. It is surely time that this precious fiction 
 was dealt with as it deserves." 
 
 It is impossible, I think, for any unprejudiced 
 student of these events to withhold his assent 
 from this judgment. Not at Gubat in January, 
 1885, but at Westminster in the summer of 1884 
 was the doom of Gordon sealed. The unwilling- 
 ness of the Government to admit that any relief 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 181 
 
 expedition was needed, their doubts and hesita- 
 tions as to its character and route, their long and 
 disastrous delay in equipping and despatching it 
 to these causes and to no other was the 
 final tragedy due ; and its sad and shameful 
 cttnotiment was already written in the book of 
 fate before a single camel knelt on the desert 
 sands to receive its burden, or a single boat 
 was launched on the waters of the Nile. 
 
 Let us hasten to the conclusion of the 
 miserable tale. On the morning of the 24th of 
 January two of the steamers started for 
 Khartoum, carrying Sir Charles Wilson and a 
 small detachment of English soldiers of the 
 Sussex Regiment. The distance to be traversed 
 was about one hundred miles, but about midway 
 in that interval the Sixth Cataract begins, and the 
 Nile flows for twelve miles through narrow, rock- 
 beset channels. To continue in the words of 
 Sir William Butler's spirited narrative : 
 
 " It was nearly midday on January 28 before the boats, 
 having cleared the cataract, approached the north end of the 
 Isle of Tuti, from whence Khartoum can first be seen on the 
 level point of land between the Blue and White Niles. As 
 the steamers drew slowly on into the broad water, which still 
 shows the unmixed current of the two rivers, every glass was 
 fixed upon the palace that large square building, whose flat 
 roof raised high above other houses was conspicuous over 
 all. There was no flag flying. Another half-hour passes ; the 
 boats are now abreast of the centre of the island ; the city is 
 in full view. Still no flag waves on the palace roof; no sign 
 
i82 LORD CROMER 
 
 of welcome comes from a long-expected garrison ; but hostile 
 guns are opening fire upon the steamers, and the crackle of 
 musketry is spreading further along the shores until, reaching 
 the houses of the city that are nearest the water, it completes 
 the circle of the enemy's shot around the approaching boats. 
 On the shores of the mainland, and over the sandy point 
 below the town, crowds of men wearing the strange uniform 
 and waving the battle-flags of the Mahdi are visible ; and 
 between the roar of cannon and the rattle of small-arms ten 
 thousand shrill shouts of Arab triumph tell that all is over 
 in Khartoum. 
 
 " This is what had happened. Three hours before daybreak 
 on January 26 the Arabs made a final assault upon the lines. 
 Of the details of the attack we know very little. We know 
 that the sight of the wounded from the battle of Abu Klea, 
 who had been brought to the camp of the Mahdi, produced a 
 profound effect upon the Baggara and other fighting tribes of 
 the army. These men, inflamed at the appearance of their 
 stricken comrades, loudly demanded to be led at once against 
 the city. The attack, delivered under a chosen leader in the 
 darkest hour of the early morning, was directed against the 
 lines near the gates of Bourre and Mesalamieh. On this 
 morning of Monday, January 26, the moon, just past its first 
 quarter, set at one o'clock. From that hour until the earliest 
 dawn profound darkness wrapped the dying city and the 
 hostile camps. It is certain that the Arabs as they approached 
 the ramparts were met by the feeblest resistance. Hunger had 
 now brought to the lowest point the spirit of a garrison never 
 strong; but whether actual treachery added its black help to 
 famine, or whether the wretched soldiery fell back from the 
 parapets in panic before the first onset of the enemy, will 
 probably never be accurately known. Once the lines were 
 gained by the enemy the city lay at the mercy of its assailants. 
 Shortly before daybreak they appear to have advanced 
 cautiously into the town, and as the winter dawn was breaking 
 they reached the neighbourhood of the palace. Here, certain 
 that the entire city was now in their possession, they gave vent 
 to those shrill shouts of triumph with which the soldiers of 
 
THE LAST ACT OF THE TRAGEDY 183 
 
 Islam celebrate victory. It was at this hour just as day was 
 breaking that Gordon, roused from one of those short and 
 troubled slumbers which for months had been his only rest, 
 quitted the palace, and moved at the head of a small party of 
 soldiers and servants towards the church of the Austrian 
 Mission. This building lay to the east of the palace, from 
 which it was separated by an open space of ground. Some 
 months earlier the church had been made the reserve 
 magazine of the town ; the surrounding houses were cleared 
 from its vicinity, and it had been silently selected as the spot 
 where a last desperate resistance might be maintained if ever 
 the final moment of the defence of Khartoum should arrive. 
 
 That supreme moment had now indeed come. Walking a 
 few yards in advance of his party, which did not number more 
 than twenty men, Gordon drew near the church. The short 
 and mysterious dawn of the desert was passing into broader 
 day over the palm-trees on the edge of the Blue Nile the 
 eastern sky was flushed with the red of the coming sun. 
 From the lost town still lying in shadow to the right the 
 shouts of a victorious enemy, and the cries of a perishing 
 people, rose in deeper volume of sound. Ere yet the little 
 band of footmen had crossed the open space between palace 
 and church, a body of Arabs issued from a neighbouring 
 street. For a moment the two parties stood almost face to 
 face, then a volley of musketry flashed out at close range, and 
 the bravest and noblest soldier of our time was no more." 
 
 A few days afterwards his gory head was 
 thrown with fierce exultation by the Mahdists at 
 the feet of Slatin Pasha for ten long years 
 afterwards a prisoner in their camp to convince 
 him that the English hero had indeed been slain. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 The Financial Crisis 
 
 BEFORE quitting this too memorable epi- 
 sode in the history of British policy to 
 return to the main course of Anglo - Egyptian 
 affairs, a few, but only a few, words are necessary 
 to wind up the account of Baring's connection 
 with the drama of Khartoum. To all practical 
 interests and purposes it ceased at the time when 
 communications with Gordon were finally cut off. 
 For it was in that same month of April, 1884, 
 from which Gordon's isolation dates, that Baring- 
 was summoned to England for the consultation 
 on financial matters, which will be hereafter 
 referred to ; and in England for the next four 
 or five months he remained. 
 
 It was not till about the beginning of 
 September that he returned to Cairo ; and on 
 the 1 7th of that month he forwards one of those 
 messages from Gordon which show him in the 
 most incalculable of his moods, and upon all the 
 representations of which it would have been 
 impossible for anyone either in Cairo or in 
 
 184 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 185 
 
 London to take action. It contains nine para- 
 graphs which, summarized, are to the effect that 
 English troops must be at once sent to the 
 Soudan ; that Zebehr Pasha must be appointed, 
 with assistance and with a salary of ^8000 a 
 year ; that on the arrival of the English troops 
 the Egyptian troops should return to Egypt ; that 
 if the Sultan would send 200,000 of his troops 
 the Soudan would be handed over to him ; that 
 if no part of the scheme is carried out, and if 
 the rebels attack the people of the Soudan and 
 kill them, "you will be responsible for their lives 
 and all their salaries " ; that, reckoning expenses 
 and pay of the soldiers in the Soudan at 
 ,1500 a day, "you have already become 
 responsible to them for ,300,000 " ; that he 
 hoped shortly to take Berber, in which case his 
 troops would be ordered to remain in it fifteen 
 days, and then to burn it and return to Khar- 
 toum ; that if the Sultan's troops come, they 
 should come by Dongola and Kassala, and 
 should be given ,300,000 ; and lastly, that 
 " Mahommed Ali Pasha is the only person in 
 the Soudan on whom I can rely and who can 
 replace me." 
 
 But by this time Barings official concern 
 with the situation in the Soudan, if it cannot 
 be said to have been determined altogether, 
 had at any rate become of a far less intimate 
 
1 86 LORD CROMER 
 
 and responsible kind than before. The expe- 
 dition in relief of Khartoum had by that time 
 at last been resolved upon, and Lord Wolseley 
 had been appointed to its command. The affair, 
 in short, had passed out of diplomatic and into 
 military hands ; and Baring's role now became 
 virtually that of a mere intermediary between 
 the British Government and the commanders 
 of the expeditionary force. 
 
 With the fall of Khartoum, and the return 
 of our baffled troops from the scene of their 
 unmerited failure, the Consul-General's advisory 
 function revived ; and he was called upon, at 
 the instance of the Government, to consider the 
 following important question with regard to our 
 future policy in the Soudan : 
 
 " The question of establishing some administration for the 
 Province of Dongola being mainly a military one, I consulted 
 Lord Wolseley and General Buller on the point mentioned 
 in your Lordship's telegram of the gth instant. I have now 
 the honour to enclose a copy of the reply I have received 
 from Lord Wolseley, who thinks that if the railway were 
 completed to Hannek the province might be held by a small 
 force of good black soldiers with four armed steamers, until 
 the Mahdi can make an attack in force ; that when he does 
 so, Dongola will fall into his power ; the defence of Dongola 
 might be attempted with a British battalion at the end of the 
 railway at Hannek, supported by the Egyptian battalions, 
 to hold the railway and Wady Haifa. Lord Wolseley thinks 
 this experiment embraces dangers, but might be worth trying, 
 as preferable to handing over Dongola to the Mahdi and 
 anarchy." 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 187 
 
 Then followed an opinion of hardly less weight 
 than Lord Wolseley's : 
 
 "Sir R. Buller has sent me two telegrams on the subject, 
 copies of which I have the honour to forward herewith, the 
 first being a statement of the facts on which his opinion, as 
 given in the second, is formed. Your Lordship will see that 
 General Buller thinks the extension of the railway to Hannek 
 at this moment would be a waste of money ; that no force 
 of blacks which we can get would be sufficient to hold or 
 reconquer the Province of Dongola, and that no reliance 
 can be placed on them ; that the Mudir Emir Ezzam will 
 occupy Merawi the day after our troops leave ... In a 
 subsequent telegram (also enclosed) General Buller says his 
 opinions might be materially altered, and the whole condition 
 of things changed, by a great misfortune, such as a crushing 
 defeat at the hands of Sheikh Osman Merghani happening 
 to the Mahdi, an event which might occur at any moment." 
 
 It did not occur, however, and General Buller's 
 opinion may therefore be considered apart from 
 the unrealized contingency. Other authorities 
 were equally emphatic. 
 
 " I have also consulted General Stephenson, Nubar Pasha, 
 Abd El Kader Pasha, and Colonel Watson on this subject. 
 We are unanimous in the opinion that to endeavour to 
 establish any government at Dongola, if the English troops 
 were withdrawn at once, would be quite useless. In view 
 therefore of the decision of Her Majesty's Government, we 
 think that instructions should be given to General Buller to 
 send down all troops, arms, and ammunition, and as many 
 of the civil population as wish to leave, to Wady Haifa, and 
 that the English rear-guard should be the last to leave." 
 
 Then follows the most significant observation : 
 
 "Your Lordship will understand that we make this recom- 
 mendation only because we consider it to be the necessary 
 
1 88 LORD CROMER 
 
 consequence of the decision of Her Majesty's Government 
 to abandon the Province of Dongola at once ; but that it 
 must in no way be taken to imply our agreement in that 
 decision." 
 
 Their unanimous opinion the opinion in 
 which all the array of authorities, military and 
 civil, English and Egyptian - - was, in fact, 
 summed up in one pithy sentence of Sir 
 Redvers Buller's : " I have already said that I 
 believe we are withdrawing as the fruit is falling 
 into our hands ; possibly the fruit was not worth 
 remaining for. It has been so decided." Not 
 very pleasant reading this, at a time when we 
 have just had to despatch an expedition, with 
 infinite labour and at no little cost, to gather up 
 again the lost fruit which thirteen years ago 
 was falling into our hands. 
 
 "Anyhow," continued Sir Redvers Duller, 
 " I do not believe that when we leave Dongola 
 anyone else here can keep the Mahdi out." No 
 one could or did keep out the Mahdi's successor. 
 Dongola, city and province, fell early into the 
 hands of the Khalifa and his marauding hosts, 
 and the results of their twelve years' master- 
 ship of it were only too miserably apparent 
 last autumn, to our re-entering forces, in the 
 ruined bazaars and deserted streets of what was 
 formerly one of the most flourishing and pros- 
 perous of the cities of the Upper Nile. 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 189 
 
 It is time, however, to have done with this 
 ill-starred military enterprise and its immediate 
 sequel, and to resume the thread of our diplo- 
 matic history in Egypt. To do so we must go 
 back some months to the anxious summer of 
 1884, when the summons of the home Govern- 
 ment withdrew Sir Evelyn Baring from his post 
 at Cairo. For some years past it had become 
 apparent that the finances of Egypt must again 
 be taken in hand by the Powers. The country 
 had to meet the heavy liability of the Alexandrian 
 Indemnities, as well as to clear off the debts 
 due to the rebellion and the war in the Soudan. 
 The arrangements, moreover, as to the distribu- 
 tion of the revenue between the Government 
 and the bondholders were crying aloud for a 
 readjustment. Wise as it was confessed to be 
 by all well-wishers of Egypt to give her solvency 
 the foremost place in their consideration, it was 
 possible to carry that provident policy beyond 
 its legitimate limits ; and when it appeared that 
 the administration was being starved in order 
 to provide the public creditor with superfluous 
 security for his dividends, it was felt that that 
 limit had been overpassed. During the year 
 1883 the revenues assigned to the Debt pro- 
 duced so large a surplus, that after full payment 
 of the interest it was found possible to redeem 
 ,800,000 of the capital. Yet in this very year 
 
1 90 LORD CROMER 
 
 the revenue assigned to administration fell short 
 of the expenditure by more than ^E 1,600,000. 
 To cover the deficit Egypt was obliged to 
 borrow on short loans at high rates, while at 
 the same time she was paying off debts bearing 
 no higher interest than four or five per cent. 
 
 Such a state of things was clearly intolerable. 
 It was the finance of an Irish squire of the days 
 before the Encumbered Estates Court, raising 
 loans at fifty or sixty per cent, on personal 
 security to pay the interest on old mortgages 
 contracted in days when the borrowing power 
 of the land was not only unexhausted, but fresh. 
 Yet neither of these two necessities neither the 
 need for more money, nor the need of a more 
 provident application of existing funds could 
 be met by Egypt of her own mere motion. The 
 Law of Liquidation, under which the public 
 creditor starved the Government, could not be 
 modified without the consent of the Great 
 Powers. To raise a new loan required the 
 consent not only of the Great Powers, but of 
 Turkey. As a first step towards procuring these 
 consents the British Government appointed a 
 Committee, consisting of Sir Evelyn Baring, Sir 
 Rivers Wilson, Sir Reginald Welby, and Sir 
 James Carmichael, to examine and report upon 
 the finances of Egypt, and the Consul-General 
 left Egypt towards the end of April in order to 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 191 
 
 serve upon it. The inquiry of this singularly 
 strong body of financial and administrative 
 experts was conducted with great ability, and 
 extended over several weeks. In their report, 
 which was presented on the 28th of June, they 
 estimated the total expenditure of Egypt at 
 ,4,667,000 for administrative purposes and 
 ,3,920,000 for debt, or a total of "8,587,000, 
 and the revenue at "8,855,000. To this ex- 
 penditure, however, it was necessary to add the 
 interest and sinking fund on a loan of 
 "8,000,000, which it was sought to raise with 
 the permission of the Powers, for the payment of 
 the Alexandrian Indemnities and the extinction of 
 the floating debt ; and further, the costs of the 
 army of occupation. By these additions the 
 expenditure would be raised to the sum of 
 9,231,000, thus converting the surplus into a 
 deficit of 371,000. 
 
 The Committee thus conclude their report : 
 "Our task is now completed. It only remains 
 for Her Majesty's Government, in consultation 
 with the other Powers interested in the subject, to 
 decide on the measures which are to be taken to 
 restore the financial equilibrium. There are, how- 
 ever, a few points to which before we conclude 
 we wish to draw attention. 
 
 u The fact is that it must be especially borne 
 in mind in considering our figures that we have 
 
192 LORD CROMER 
 
 made no difference between assigned and non- 
 assigned revenues. We have assumed that the 
 surplus on the assigned revenues will be devoted 
 to administrative expenditure and not, as hereto- 
 fore, to the purchase of Unified Stock in the 
 market"; i.e., to the redemption of debt. "If 
 this be not assumed the result would be to 
 increase heavily the normal deficit, and also the 
 floating debt, to the end of 1884. 
 
 " Secondly, we wish to state that in our opinion 
 no financial settlement will be satisfactory which, 
 upon the estimates which we have framed, does 
 not leave an excess of revenue over expenditure 
 amounting to about ^3,150,000. 
 
 " Thirdly, we are of opinion that measures 
 should be desired to exercise such a check over 
 the Egyptian Government as will for the future 
 effectually restrain them from exceeding the 
 limits assigned to their expenditure." 
 
 The most important of these recommendations 
 was the first. Indeed, the main object of the 
 efforts then being made for the rehabilitation 
 of Egyptian finance was to free the revenue 
 from the undue pressure placed upon it by the 
 bondholders, and to enable its progressive 
 increments to be devoted not to the reduction 
 of the Debt, but to the development of the 
 resources of Egypt. 
 
 This report, together with a counter proposal 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 193 
 
 drafted by M. de Blignieres, were discussed in 
 detail by a Conference of the Powers which 
 met in London in the early autumn of 1884, 
 and the sittings of which Sir Evelyn Baring 
 and his colleagues were invited to attend for 
 the purpose of explaining and justifying their 
 scheme. The mere fact, however, that France, 
 our former partner in the Condominium, had 
 put forward through her former representa- 
 tive in the Dual Control a rival scheme, 
 sufficed of course to defeat the hopes of any 
 definitive result. The Conference broke up 
 without coming to any agreement ; and Egypt 
 was left face to face with the gathering 
 difficulties of her position under the Law of 
 Liquidation. 
 
 Before any further step could be taken for 
 the remedy of these evils by regular diplomatic 
 methods, the course of events brought the 
 Powers into the field in an unforeseen and far 
 from agreeable way. Upon the failure of the 
 Conference of London to agree then and there 
 to any readjustment of the finances and financial 
 system of Egypt, the Government despatched 
 Lord Northbrook in September, 1884, as High 
 Commissioner to examine into and report upon 
 the situation. The starvation of the Egyptian 
 administration had by that time reached an 
 acute stage. Money was wanted on all hands 
 
 N 
 
i 9 4 LORD CROMER 
 
 for the public service of the country ; yet, 
 though the coffers of the Caisse de la Dette 
 were overflowing with the surplus which re- 
 mained to them after meeting the engagements 
 of the country to the national creditor, the 
 hard-pressed administrative departments were 
 unable, under the Law of Liquidation, to touch 
 a single piastre. Never had a Treasury so 
 undeniably earned for itself the description of 
 magnas inter opes inops. Nothing short of a 
 financial coup d'ttat could meet the desperate 
 urgency of the case ; and Lord Northbrook 
 had the courage to recommend one. Acting 
 on his advice, the Egyptian Government 
 instructed the heads of the Customs and 
 Railway Administration and the Mudirs of the 
 Provinces, whose revenues were allocated to 
 the service of the Debt, to pay the balance of 
 their receipts for the current half-year direct 
 to the Treasury instead of to the Caisse de 
 la Dette. This step, it is hardly necessary to 
 say, was a direct infringement of the Law of 
 Liquidation, which had been passed with the 
 assent of the Powers, and could only be 
 justified, if justifiable at all, on the plea of 
 necessity. Still, apart from the technical 
 illegality of the proceeding, it was perfectly 
 defensible as a financial, and indeed, it may be 
 said, as a political, expedient. The Caisse, as 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 195 
 
 has been said, had already money enough and 
 to spare for the payment of the then maturing 
 coupons of the Debt, and the sums intercepted 
 by the Treasury would simply have gone to 
 swell the Sinking Fund ; and, from the financial 
 point of view, it would have been absurdly 
 improvident on the part of Egypt to devote 
 large amounts to the reduction of her Funded 
 Debt when she was at the same time obliged 
 to borrow on short loans at a much higher rate 
 of interest, and even with such borrowing could 
 not meet her current expenses. Politically, again, 
 it was undoubtedly preferable to the alternative 
 of suspending payment of the tribute to the 
 Sultan, which would have caused grave political 
 complications, or to that of stopping the pay 
 of the Government officials, which would of 
 course have thrown the whole mechanism of 
 administration out of gear. Moreover and this 
 is a point of high importance in its bearing 
 on the moral as distinguished from the technical 
 justification of the act the Powers had been 
 unanimous at the abortive Conference of London 
 in admitting the necessity of suspending the 
 Sinking Fund, although they had not been able 
 to agree to any definite scheme. 
 
 It was with arguments of this description that 
 the Egyptian Finance Minister endeavoured in 
 a letter to the Commissioners of the Caisse to 
 
196 LORD CROMER 
 
 defend his irregular action, and the British 
 Government did their best to support him in 
 their diplomatic communications with the other 
 Powers. But they failed to persuade. The 
 answer which they received was, that even 
 admitting a suspension of the Sinking Fund 
 to have been inevitable, the arbitrary manner 
 of carrying it out struck a blow at the faith of 
 international compacts, and was calculated to 
 destroy public credit in the integrity of the 
 Egyptian Government. Alike in Paris, Berlin, 
 Vienna, and St. Petersburg had the representa- 
 tives of the British Government to submit to 
 this rebuke, which was further embodied by the 
 Consuls - General of the four Powers in an 
 identic note addressed by them to the Egyptian 
 Government in the last week of September, 
 1884. 
 
 A worse indignity, however, was in store for 
 them and for us. On October 4 the Commis- 
 sioners of/^the Caisse applied to and obtained 
 from the Mixed Tribunal a writ of summons^ 
 calling on the Prime Minister and the Finance 
 Minister and the Mudirs of the provinces to 
 answer to the law, the former for having issued, 
 the latter for having obeyed, the illegal order. 
 There was nothing for it but submission. 
 
 o 
 
 The Egyptian Government "bared the neck 
 to the smiter, explained piteously that if it 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 197 
 
 had sinned it had done so only under the gravest 
 compulsion, and pointed out that the regular 
 payment of the assigned revenues to the Caisse 
 had already been resumed." The Commissioners, 
 however, proceeded implacably with their action, 
 and on December 18 the Court of First Instance 
 pronounced judgment against the Ministerial 
 and Official Departments. The Government 
 appealed, with the object probably of gaining 
 time rather than of reversing the decision ; for 
 time at this juncture had become important. 
 Though the recommendations of Sir Evelyn 
 Baring and the Committee had borne no fruit in 
 the Conference of London, yet, supplemented by 
 the suggestions of Lord Northbrook on his return 
 from Egypt, they had been embodied in a definite 
 scheme ; and the negotiations which were then 
 going on between the British Government and 
 the Powers, on the basis of these proposals, 
 bore fruit eventually in an International Con- 
 vention, which naturally deprived the dispute 
 between the Caisse and the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment of further practical importance. The 
 proceedings were accordingly allowed to lapse. 
 Not, however, that the result was reached 
 without much diplomatic difficulty and a pro- 
 traction of negotiations, which in itself was a 
 source of grave detriment to our position in 
 Egypt. At the beginning of the year 1885, 
 
198 LORD CROMER 
 
 Baring had to report to the British Government 
 that the delay which had taken place in arriving 
 at a settlement of the monetary claims had 
 exasperated public opinion, and shaken the con- 
 fidence of the Egyptian public in the power, if 
 not in the integrity, of England. " Intrigues," 
 wrote the Consul-General, " of all descriptions 
 are rife ; the suffering caused by the non-pay- 
 ment of the Alexandrian Indemnities is very 
 great ; trade is very slack ; and commercial 
 transactions, as far as they are based on credit, 
 are almost at a standstill." Lawsuits against the 
 Government on account of the recent deductions 
 from the coupon were still pending, and sooner 
 or later another financial crisis seemed inevitable. 
 The urgent necessity for a settlement was no 
 doubt appreciated by the British Government ; 
 but it found its proposals of the previous year 
 obstructed by the determined opposition of 
 France, while Prince Bismarck at the same time 
 made hardly any secret of his intention of avail- 
 ing himself of English difficulties in order to put 
 pressure upon her in favour of the objects of 
 German colonial policy in Africa. However, by 
 the middle of January, after a delay of seven weeks, 
 France submitted a series of counter proposals, 
 which opened the way for fresh negotiations. In 
 these proposals the view that the Egyptian 
 revenue was sufficient to cover the normal ex- 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 199 
 
 penditure was reaffirmed, and it was suggested 
 that a Commission of Inquiry should be appointed 
 to examine into the matter. But as inquiry 
 meant delay, the French Government expressed 
 themselves willing to assent to a tax of 5 per cent, 
 on the coupons of all the debts, to be repaid if the 
 revenues were found sufficient. As to the new 
 loan, it was suggested that it should be for 
 the sum of ,9,000,000, issued at the rate of 
 3^ per cent, under the collective guarantee of 
 the Powers, the amounts required for service 
 of the Debt being at the same time made a first 
 charge upon the Egyptian revenue. The 
 proposal of the English Government to tax 
 foreigners was agreed to ; but objection was taken 
 to our scheme with reference to its treatment of 
 the Daira and Domain lands and loans. 
 
 At the time these counter proposals were put 
 forward the British Government was also in- 
 directly made aware of the fact that during the 
 interval of delay France had been negotiating 
 with the other Powers, and had already obtained 
 the adhesion of Germany, Austria, and Russia. 
 In reply to this communication from the French 
 Government, Lord Granville signified his willing- 
 ness to accept the substitution of an international 
 guarantee for this new loan, and withdrew that 
 part of the scheme relating to the Daira and 
 , Domain lands and loans. He declined, however, 
 
200 LORD CROMER 
 
 to consent to the appointment of a Commission 
 of Inquiry, and suggested that the new arrange- 
 ments should have a two years' trial before any 
 step of the kind was resorted to. This counter 
 proposal was accepted by the French and other 
 Governments, and on February 8 M. Waddington 
 delivered a detailed statement as to the mode 
 of carrying out the scheme. After some weeks 
 further negotiation the Convention above referred 
 to was signed by the representatives of Great 
 Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, 
 Italy, Russia, and Turkey on March 18, 1885. 
 The financial arrangements embodied in it made 
 provision, through a somewhat complicated way, 
 for the application of the surplus revenue to 
 the expenses of administration ; and for the pay- 
 ment of the Alexandrian Indemnities and other 
 purposes it sanctioned the raising of a loan of 
 nine millions sterling. 
 
 It was in connection with this last transaction 
 that Baring rendered one of the most valuable of 
 his many important services to the prosperity of 
 Egypt. Eight millions of this new loan was 
 applied, as has been said, to the liquidation of the 
 Indemnities and to wiping out the deficits of the 
 three previous years ; it was the ninth million that 
 gave the Consul- General his opportunity. How 
 it did so is eloquently told by Sir Alfred Milner, 
 whose account of it is as follows : 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 201 
 
 "The history of that million is one of the most marvellous 
 chapters seen in the romantic history of Egyptian finance. 
 The old saw recommends ' a hair of the dog that bit you.' 
 The million in question was to all appearances a remedy quite 
 as illogical. That a country which had been ruined by 
 excessive expenditure and reckless borrowing should borrow 
 once more in the very moment of insolvency, and should do 
 so not merely to clear off existing liabilities, but actually to 
 plunge into fresh expenditure, seemed contrary to every 
 manner of financial prudence. There were not wanting 
 critics of the highest repute who were vehemently hostile to 
 the proposed new outlay. And in principle they were entirely 
 right. Not in one case out of a hundred would such a policy 
 have been justifiable. But Egypt, the land of exceptions, 
 supplied just that hundredth case. It was life and death to 
 her to put the great central works upon which the irrigation of 
 the Delta depended into proper working order. To do so 
 required a capital expenditure which was beyond the means of 
 the annual Budget of the Public Works Ministry. This extra 
 million just provided the necessary capital. It saved the 
 irrigation system, and with it the finances of Egypt. It has 
 brought in cent, per cent. Of all the extraordinary contrasts 
 of which the history, and especially the financial history, of 
 Egypt is so full, there is none more striking than that of the 
 countless millions borrowed by Ismail and this single million 
 for irrigation ; the former raised with ease in the heyday of 
 fortune, the latter only obtained after a hard struggle, when 
 Egypt's borrowing powers seemed almost extinct ; the former 
 squandered with so little benefit to the country; the latter 
 of such incalculable value in the re-establishment of her 
 prosperity." 
 
 There is scarcely any passage, I am able to 
 say, in the whole of his Egyptian career to which 
 the Lord Cromer of to-day looks back with such 
 pride and satisfaction as he does to this. And 
 
202 LORD CROMER 
 
 certainly with abundant reason ; for not only was 
 his work a beneficent one, but it was achieved 
 under circumstances of signal difficulty. It was, 
 indeed, ojie of those most difficult of all human 
 feats_whjrji__mpri have to accomplish in__the. face 
 not only of their opponents' criticisms, but^often 
 also of their own misgivings. To determine on 
 so bold a policy of expenditure at such a time, 
 anj_to_cjr\Mt_th rough against the opposition of 
 colleagues, required a rare combinationof nerve, 
 firmness, and foresight. The brilliant success^of 
 the policy, as entrusted to the master-hand of Sir 
 Colin Scott Moncrieff and his able staff of 
 Irrigation Inspectors to carry out, is a sufficient 
 proof of Baring's eminence in the last of these 
 three qualities. It is only in the privacy of 
 councils that the other has found its proper 
 field of display. But in that sphere they must 
 have been severely tested. We may take it as 
 pretty certain that butLJbiL_the^ Consul-General's 
 steady tenacity of purpose, and his courageou s 
 confidence in his own cool judgment, this^reat 
 and wise measure of financial and economic 
 policy would never or certainly not at_ that 
 critical moment have been resolved upon. 
 
 But Egypt was in other respects also beginning 
 to feel the benefits of the British occupation. It 
 was during his visit to London in connection 
 with the financial difficulty, and indeed on the 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 203 
 
 very clay on which he and his colleagues signed 
 their report on the subject, that Sir Evelyn 
 Baring addressed one of his most important des- 
 patches to the Foreign Office, with reference to 
 the progress of reforms in Egypt. The despatch 
 was not intended as a detailed review of all that 
 had been done in every branch of Egyptian 
 administration, but was written simply to combat 
 the view that British intervention had been 
 "barren of result so far as the welfare and 
 prosperity of the Egyptian people are con-/ 
 cerned." 
 
 "By far the most important reform effected since the British I 
 occupied Egypt has been the partial suppression of the use of | 
 the courbash. I say the 'partial suppression' because I am 
 not prepared to say that even now the courbash may not be 
 occasionally used ; but I am convinced that its use is now 
 comparatively rare. It used to be very frequently employed 
 for two main objects, viz. (i) the collection of taxes and (2) 
 the extortion of evidence. I think I may say with confidence 
 that the use of the courbash as a general practice in connec- 
 tion either with the collection of taxes or the extortion of 
 evidence has ceased. The use of the courbash was always 
 illegal, but the great change which has recently taken place 
 consists in this, that the people now know that it is illegal." 
 
 And in illustration of this Sir Evelyn goes on 
 to relate, on the authority of a very trustworthy 
 witness, an English officer, the following 
 anecdote : 
 
 " Shortly after the decree was published abolishing the use of 
 the courbash, a fellah was brought before a Mudir accused of 
 being implicated in a murder. On refusing to answer the 
 
204 LORD CROMER 
 
 questions which were addressed to him he was threatened with 
 the courbash, and the implements generally used for securing 
 the men when they are flogged, and for flogging them, were 
 brought into the room. The man, however, still refused 
 to speak, and told the Mudir that he was fully aware that he 
 could not be flogged. Moreover, as a matter of fact, he was 
 not flogged." 
 
 "To anyone, adds the writer," who is acquainted 
 with the submissive character of the people of 
 Egypt, the fact of a simple fellah daring a Mudir 
 to commit an illegal act is very eloquent." 
 
 Another reform of great importance was the 
 establishment of the new native tribunals ; and 
 in criticizing the organization of these bodies, 
 Baring lays an unerring finger on a defect 
 which was not destined till some time afterwards 
 to reveal its full gravity, and to necessitate a 
 modification of the original scheme. 
 
 " So far as I have been able to judge, the new tribunals have 
 worked quite as successfully as could with any degree of 
 reason have been anticipated. It may be an open question 
 whether it would not in the first instance have been wiser to 
 have adopted the English rather than the French system of 
 criminal procedure. Under the former the Mudir would have 
 taken the place of the English magistrate, and would have 
 been charged with the preliminary investigation of criminal 
 offences. Under the French system the duty is confided to 
 the Procureur-General and his deputies. A very powerful 
 check is thus exercised on any act of oppression and illegality 
 on the part of the Mudir. On the other hand, the transition 
 from the old state of things, under which the Mudir was 
 practically supreme, to the present system, under which all 
 judicial power has been taken away from him, involved a 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 205 
 
 change of the most radical description. It may be doubted 
 whether the English system, inasmuch as it involved a less 
 rapid transition, would not have been more suited to the 
 actual condition of society in Egypt. 
 
 "The subject is one on which a good deal of difference 
 of opinion exists. Nubar Pasha, who throughout his career 
 has advocated the substitution of judicial, as opposed to 
 arbitrary power in Egypt, is, nevertheless, of opinion that 
 under existing circumstances some well-considered measures 
 must be taken to maintain the authority of the executive 
 officers of the Government in the provinces by associating 
 them to some extent with the administration of justice .... 
 I will not, however, attempt to discuss this subject at length. 
 I will only say that the question of whether under proper safe- 
 guards some additional power may not be entrusted to the 
 Mudirs, is now under the consideration of the Egyptian 
 Government." 
 
 Later on it will be seen how fully these criti- 
 cisms were justified, and how imperative became 
 the necessity of correcting the error which was 
 committed when these provincial governors, 
 instead of being merely controlled, as they 
 should have been, in the exercise of their 
 authority, were deprived of it altogether. 
 
 No less acute was the prescience of another 
 subsequent reform of the judicial system which 
 Sir Evelyn Baring displayed in the following 
 remarks on the constitution of the new tri- 
 bunals : 
 
 " One of the main obstacles to the introduction of any 
 reJbrms_intO_JEgypt k. ha_^gre^L diSniiltyLJ3f, finding suitable 
 agents to carry them into effect. The Egyptian Government 
 almost invariably finds itself in this dilemma, that it must either 
 
206 LORD CROMER 
 
 employ a number of Europeans, a course to which there are 
 obvious financial and political objections, or that it must 
 employ Egyptians, whose training and experience of the 
 special subject concerned is generally defective. This 
 difficulty was brought prominently forward in connection 
 with the establishment of the new tribunals. The number of 
 Egyptians who have received any judicial training is very 
 limited. On the other hand, the Egyptian Government could 
 not bear the expense of employing a large number of 
 European judges. Moreover, Europeans are often ignorant of 
 the language and the customs of the country. Under these 
 circumstances, although the services of a limited number of 
 Europeans (principally Belgians) were secured, the majority of 
 judges are native Egyptians. Many of these latter have not 
 had any special legal training. Under these circumstances 
 it may readily be admitted that the composition of the 
 I tribunals is not everything that could be desired. As time 
 goes on it will no doubt improve. In the meanwhile it may be 
 >> said that the judicial system, as it now exists, is a great 
 J improvement on anything which has heretofore existed in 
 Egypt." 
 
 Six years after these words were written these 
 courts were still so far below any satisfactory 
 standard of efficiency that it was found absolutely 
 necessary to strengthen them by a larger infusion 
 of the European element, even though it cost 
 the resignation of an Egyptian Prime Minister 
 to get the indispensable changes carried into 
 effect. 
 
 After reviewing further the excellent work 
 done in the Public Works Department by 
 Colonel (now Sir Colin) Scott Moncrieff and his 
 able assistants, by whose efforts water had been 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 207 
 
 provided for the cultivator in greater quantity 
 than before, and much had been done to check 
 the notorious abuses which occurred in its 
 distribution ; and after a brief reference to the 
 improvements which had taken place in prison 
 discipline and in sanitation, Baring continues : 
 
 " Besides these and other minor reforms to which I might 
 allude, I maintain that a new life has been breathed into 
 the spirit of Egyptian administration and into the Egyptian 
 people. The people are beginning to learn that there is such 
 a thing as justice as between man and man." 
 
 For the first time in how many thousand 
 years ! 
 
 " I am very far from saying that mistakes may not have been 
 committed. It would, indeed, have been strange, considering 
 the difficulties of the situation, if this had not been the case. 
 These difficulties have been very great. The events of the last 
 fewjyears, beginning with the abdication of the late Khedive. 
 have profoundly shaken the authority of the Government 
 in Egypt. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the principal 
 reforms which were required in Egypt took the direction of 
 imposing some check on the abuse nf power hy foe governing 
 classes. The very difficult problem, therefore, presented 
 itself at every turn of imposing these checks, and at the 
 same time of maintaining to a sufficient extent the legitimate 
 influence and authority of the Executive Government over a 
 people long accustomed to purely arbitrary and personal rule. 
 It was naiiiraL-ettetfgrr that under these circumstances the 
 official classes should generally be opposed to reform. The 
 fact that reforms were advocated, and to some extent executed, 
 by an alien race tended to enhance the opposition; while 
 recent events in the Soudan, where the wild schemes of 
 territorial extension conceived by the late Khedive have 
 received a fatal blow at the hands of the Mahdi, have 
 
208 LORD CROMER 
 
 imported an element of religious fanaticism into the settlement 
 of Egyptian questions to a greater extent than might otherwise 
 have been the case. Simultaneously with this combination of 
 affairs the political position occupied by the British Govern- 
 ment in Egypt has led to a recrudescence of those inter- 
 national, jealous, and petty intrigues which have at all times 
 been rife in Egypt." 
 
 And he concludes with a plea for patience, 
 which at the time no doubt was urgently needed, 
 though the progress made during the next 
 decade was so rapid as to diminish to a very 
 considerable extent the original demands upon 
 that " magical " virtue. 
 
 " Under these circumstances it can be no matter for surprise 
 to those who, like myself, are exceedingly sceptical of the 
 possibility of affecting beneficial reform with rapidity in an 
 Eastern country, that no greater degree of progress has been 
 made. Rather is it a matter for congratulation that so much 
 has been done in so short a while. Englishmen have no 
 reason to be ashamed of the work which has been done in 
 Egypt. The present situation, with all its difficulties, is of 
 better augury for the future well-being of the Egyptian people 
 than the crushing despotism which existed when I first went 
 to Egypt seven years ago. . . . The abuses of the Egyptian 
 administration are of long standing, and cannot be reformed 
 in a few months or even years. Many of them, indeed, 
 cannot be wholly eradicated until by the slow progress of 
 education some impression has been made on the habits 
 of thought of the population. But if we are contented 
 with such slow progress as can alone, in my humble opinion, 
 produce really beneficial results ; and if we bear continually 
 in mind that we must_reform such customs as exist in the 
 past rather than endeavour to supplant them suddenly by the 
 importation of Western practices and habits of thought, I see 
 
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS 209 
 
 no reason to take a gloomy view of the future of internal 
 reform in Egypt. Some allowance must in fairness be made 
 for the very difficult position in which the Khedive and his 
 ministers are placed. I feel sure that both His Highness 
 and some at least of the leading Egyptians are really desirous 
 of availing themselves of European assistance to introduce 
 these reforms of which the country stands so much in need. 
 But many of these reforms are no doubt unpopular with the 
 influential classes, while the ignorant peasants, whom it is 
 intended to benefit, naturally fail in the first instance to 
 realise their significance. The European adviser, however 
 able and well-intentioned, is liable to error from want of local 
 knowledge and from ignorance of Oriental habits of thought. 
 Unless, moreover, he acts with great tact and judgment, the 
 result is that the native minister appears before his own 
 countrymen as a mere cypher, a position which the latter 
 naturally resents. Without European assistance, however, 
 very little progress will be made. This 1 believe is fully 
 recognized by the Khedive and the Egyptian Government. 
 
 "On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that the 
 progress of reform in Egypt depends quite as much on the 
 judgment and discretion which the Europeans employed in 
 the service of the Khedive bring to bear on their work as on 
 any particular systems of administration which they may 
 advocate." 
 
 I have thought it well to quote thus copiously 
 from the foregoing paper, not only because it 
 contains so comprehensive and informing a 
 survey of the progress made by Egypt under 
 English administration, but because I am dis- 
 posed to regard it as the last important official 
 document penned by Sir Evelyn Paring before 
 whatmay be described as the close of the purely 
 financial and administrative phas of his career. 
 
 o 
 
210 
 
 LORD CROMER 
 
 At this point, or so it seems to me, he takes 
 a new and more commanding position in the 
 listory of our empire a position which, bringing 
 with it even larger problems and higher responsi- 
 bilities, widened the imperial outlook of the man 
 upon whom they had devolved, and gave him a 
 clearer and loftier view of the mission and the 
 destiny of England in the land of the Pharaohs. 
 But this finaj merger of the financial expert and 
 ajmjnislratiy-e--j^efffler in the diplomatist and 
 statesman may be more conveniently described 
 in the ensuing chapter. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 The Consul-General as Financier 
 
 IT may at first sight seem presumptuous on 
 the part of a biographer to undertake to 
 indicate what is called a turning-point in a 
 public career which, being still incomplete, might 
 hereafter exhibit such phases or enter upon 
 such passages as would bring that biographer's 
 conclusions to nought and turn his forecasts 
 into foolishness. Yet, even at the risk of 
 such future discomfiture, I shall make bold to 
 affirm that the Baring who quitted the Council 
 Chamber at Calcutta for the British Agency at 
 Cairo brought with him a widely different con- 
 ception of his mission from that which animates 
 the Lord Cromer of to-day ; and that it was 
 during his first two years' tenure of his new 
 office that, whether consciously or unconsciously 
 to himself, this momentous change began. 
 
 Let us take a momentary retrospect of the new 
 Consul-General's past official history. He had 
 from 1877 to 1 ^ filled two posts of a financial 
 character in Egypt one of them, the Com- 
 
212 LORD CROMER 
 
 missionership of the Public Debt, exclusively 
 financial ; the other, the revived Controllership 
 (which, however, he held for less than a year), 
 associated with a certain undefined amount of 
 political authority. Since then he had served for 
 three years in an exclusively financial capacity in 
 India, and during his absence the Egypt of his 
 acquaintance and its relations with England had 
 been wholly transformed. When he left that 
 country it was under Anglo-French tutelage, 
 limited by a certain, or rather an uncertain, right 
 of European interference ; when he returned to 
 it, England was to all intents and purposes the 
 de facto ruler of Egypt. Our right of controlling 
 its policy and of directing its destinies, even 
 temporarily, might be and was questioned, but our 
 power of doing so was unquestionable. It could 
 be resisted only by warlike action on the part 
 of any objector, and was limited only by our 
 reluctance to provoke that action. No one, even 
 of those who had taken an active part in the 
 suppression of the Arabi rebellion, and had 
 more fully realized the utter collapse of native 
 authority in Egypt than could have been possible 
 to a spectator of these events from Calcutta, 
 was in those days able to form anything like a 
 correct estimate of the time it would take to re- 
 establish a strong and settled government in the 
 country. Most people estimated the period of 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 213 
 
 our occupation not by their knowledge of facts, 
 which was nowhere abundant, but by their wishes, 
 of which there is always a plentiful supply. 
 Those who, like the Radicals, had actively opposed 
 our intervention in Egypt, or, like the majority of 
 the Liberals, had viewed it with passive dislike 
 and distrust, were all convinced by the persuasion 
 of their preferences that our stay in the country 
 should not or need not be a long one ; and though 
 men of a military training are seldom political 
 partisans of a very pronounced type, it is not 
 unreasonable to presume that Sir Evelyn Baring, 
 who had received his first introduction to official 
 life from a kinsman who had been a Cabinet 
 Minister in a Liberal Administration, leaned 
 rather to the Liberal view than its opposite. 
 
 If this presumption be well founded he must 
 have entered upon his Consul-Generalship with 
 the expectation that the duties of that office 
 would bear a far closer resemblance to those which 
 he had discharged in 1878-80 than proved to be 
 the case. 
 
 In all probability he was then under the 
 impression that his work would be consultative 
 rather than constructive, and that it would consist 
 rather in keeping financial watch and ward over 
 the government of Egypt in the hands of native 
 administrators than, as it turned out to be, in 
 superintending the instruction of Egyptians by 
 
214 LORD CROMER 
 
 European officials in the very rudiments of the 
 administrative art. 
 
 Indeed it is pretty plain, from the elaborate 
 report on Egyptian affairs which he drew up at 
 the suggestion of the Government shortly after 
 his arrival in England in the summer of 1884, 
 that this was, in fact, his conception of the 
 situation. For the keynote of this interesting 
 and, for our present purpose, self-revealing paper 
 is the necessity of economy an excellent text 
 for a mere financial adviser, but not the last word 
 of a constructive statesman. He admits, of 
 course, that the Egyptian Government had been 
 called upon to perform impossible feats of 
 economical administration by the European 
 Powers, and that the Law of Liquidation must 
 be modified. As a member of a Committee then 
 sitting for the express purpose of determining 
 what amount of relief from the less stringent 
 terms of the law should be granted to the 
 Egyptian Government, Baring could hardly say 
 less than this. But he proceeds : 
 
 " While recognizing that certain exceptional and, it may be 
 hoped, temporary causes tend to render the position of the 
 Egyptian Treasury abnormally bad for the time being, at the 
 same time it is essential to bear in mind that in order to give 
 any hope of finality [to the projected financial resettlement], 
 it is important to guard against the acceptance of unduly 
 optimist estimates of revenue and expenditure. I am, more- 
 over, convinced that no confidence can be entertained in the 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 215 
 
 stability of any financial arrangement which may now be 
 framed unless a powerful check be exercised over the expendi- 
 ture of the Egyptian Government. I believe that the opinion 
 which I have thus expressed is shared by every authority who 
 has had actual experience of the working of the Egyptian 
 administration. Experience has proved the necessity of a 
 rjgid_financial supervision over expenditure, and that super- 
 vision must be mainly, if not entirely, exercised through the 
 agency of Europeans rather than through that of native 
 Egyptians." 
 
 His conception, it will be seen, of the duties of 
 the Europeans who are to assist in the work of 
 government is still __ jnainly _ a 
 
 When he thinks of European officials he clearly 
 thinks of them not as men associated with the 
 native heads of departments for the purpose of 
 instructing them in the principles of zealous, 
 upright, and orderly administration of the affairs 
 of an Oriental people, but rather as men sitting 
 by these departmental chiefs for the purpose, 
 not so much of directing into the channels of 
 efficiency their efforts at government, but simply 
 of taking care that they did not draw too heavily 
 upon the Treasury in their struggles. He con- 
 tinues : 
 
 " During the brief period of prosperity which ensued 
 immediately after the Law of Liquidation was passed, the 
 expenditure of the Egyptian Government was largely and 
 often very unnecessarily increased. Everyone who has been 
 concerned in the working of a financial department knows 
 how difficult it is to keep down expenditure, even under a 
 
216 LORD CROMER 
 
 thoroughly well-organized system of control. The difficulty of 
 enforcing economy in Egypt is exceptionally great. There are 
 indeed several zealous and able officials employed in the 
 Financial Department of the Egyptian Government, and I 
 can testify to the fact that they have done their utmost to 
 keep down expenditure. But the power possessed by the 
 Egyptian Financial Department is inadequate. It possesses 
 relatively to the Spending Department of the Government 
 far less power than that which is vested in the Treasury in 
 England, or in the Financial Department with which I was 
 associated in India. Again, Eastern Ministers submit with 
 great reluctance to the irksomeness of financial checks on 
 expenditure. They often fail to see the necessity of rules 
 which from the point of view of Western administration would 
 be considered essential to the enforcement of economy and to 
 the preservation of financial order. The temptation to which 
 every Oriental Minister is exposed to increase his establishment 
 in order to provide places for friends, relations, or adherents is 
 very great." 
 
 That there are legitimate demands upon some 
 at least of the Egyptian departments for addi- 
 tional expenditure, Baring goes on to admit ; 
 but the admission is hardly made in the tone of 
 one who was himself but a few months to make 
 the wise but daring demand upon a Government 
 " in liquidation " for an advance of no less than 
 a million of money to be expended under one 
 head that of public works. "It is to be borne 
 in mind," he says, "that although the tendencies 
 of Egyptian Ministers themselves are generally 
 the reverse of economical, they are by no means 
 wholly to blame for the increase of expenditure 
 which has taken place in the past." 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 217 
 
 " They are often subjected to great pressure from without to 
 spend money. The nature of this pressure has undergone 
 a considerable change since I was first connected with the 
 Egyptian Government some seven years ago. At that time 
 the Egyptian Treasury was exposed to frequent assaults from 
 Europeans who wished to obtain concessions, contracts, &c., 
 of different descriptions. The employment of a number of 
 high-class European officials, whose advice in such matters is 
 perfectly disinterested, has without doubt been very beneficial 
 to the Egyptian Government, in so far as it has enabled it to 
 offer an effective resistance to projects and claims of this sort, 
 which would have been detrimental to the interests of the 
 Egyptian Treasury. But in the place of this pressure to 
 which I have alluded another has sprung up which, if directed 
 to more laudable objects, is hardly less costly than that which 
 formerly existed. The Egyptian Government is being con- 
 stantly pressed to spend more money on public buildings, 
 prisons, sanitation, education, improved justice, &c. Very 
 valid arguments may be adduced in favour of expenditure of 
 this sort, and the Financial Department is not sufficiently 
 strong to enforce the lesson that however desirable administra- 
 tive reform may be, it must be carried out with due regard to 
 the fact that the first essential requisite to the well-being of 
 any State is that it should not spend more money than it 
 
 The main point, he again insists, the root of 
 the matter, is to establish an " effective check 
 upon Egyptian expenditure," though it is impor- 
 tant, he admits, to bear in mind that sufficient 
 elasticity should be given to whatever institutions 
 are created to enable the amount of expenditure 
 to be modified periodically with reference to the 
 financial situation, and to the requirements of the 
 country for the time being. Even here, how- 
 
218 LORD CROMER 
 
 ever, the " financial situation " came first and the 
 " requirements of the country " second ; and the 
 order in which they are placed meant more, we 
 may fairly suppose, than the mere truism that you 
 cannot lay out money if you have no money 
 to lay out. One can hardly doubt of its implicitly 
 containing the much wider proposition, that 
 even when an Egyptian Treasury has money to 
 the good its English advisers should not recom- 
 mend its outlay on the requirements of the 
 country, unless it was certain that this could be 
 done without committing the Government to 
 administrative engagements which could by any 
 possibility affect for the worse its financial future. 
 And this, it is needless to say, is not the principle 
 which Baring was to apply himself a few months 
 later, or upon which our work in Egypt has been 
 since carried out with such beneficent effect upon 
 the prosperity of the country. 
 
 But how far the Consul-General then was in 
 common, it may be admitted, with every other 
 English observer of Egyptian affairs from 
 realizing the extent of our undertakings in 
 connection with Egypt appears still more clearly 
 from the following instructive passage : 
 
 "Another important consideration with which we have to 
 deal is, that Her Majesty's Government is most wisely in my 
 opinion not prepared to assume the government of Egypt, 
 whether permanently in the form of annexing the country, or 
 temporarily in the form of establishing a Protectorate. 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 219 
 
 " The British interests in Egypt, over which Her Majesty's 
 Government are bound to watch, may, I conceive, be summed 
 up in a single phrase. They consist in keeping open the rngh- 
 wayjto the East, the freedom of which would be compromised^ 
 if Egyj^Jell into the hands of any other Power. At the 
 same time Her Majesty's Government have shown by the 
 proposals they have made in your Lordship's circular to the 
 Powers of the 3rd of January, 1883, that they desire to 
 arrange that the Suez Canal shall remain open in peace and 
 war to all ships, whether of war or commerce, of all nations. 
 Under these circumstances it is desirable in British interests 
 that Egypt should be so reasonably well governed as not to 
 afford any justification for the serious interference of any 
 foreign Power in its internal administration. Unless the 
 finances of Egypt are in fairly good order, Egyptian affairs 
 must always constitute a source of disquietude to Europe, 
 and of special anxiety to England." 
 
 Here, again, the insistence on the purely 
 financial character of our concern with and 
 control over Egyptian affairs is very marked. 
 And the next sentence is still more significant, 
 as showing Baring's leaning in those days to 
 the policy of " internationalizing " this exercise of 
 authority in Egypt a policy which, considering 
 how that authority was then supposed to be 
 limited, had much to say for itself. 
 
 " As Her Majesty's Government does not intend to assume 
 the government of Egypt, there can be no reason why the 
 insidious and unpopular task of checking expenditure should 
 be undertaken by the British Government exclusively. The 
 matter is one of international concern, and the check would 
 naturally be exercised by an international body. Moreover, 
 the attempt to exercise the check exclusively through British 
 
220 LORD CROMER 
 
 agency would excite the jealousy of foreign Powers without 
 any countervailing advantage. Actuated by these considera- 
 tions, I suggested to your Lordship before any communications 
 had passed between Her Majesty's Government and the French 
 Government, that the Commissioners of the Public Debt 
 should be entrusted with a certain degree of supervision over 
 the expenditure of the Egyptian Government. I now proceed 
 to examine the extent of supervision which may without 
 objection be confided to the Commissioners." 
 
 This examination starts from a retrospective 
 review of the arrangements subsisting at the time 
 of the Dual Control, and proceeds to the con- 
 sideration of the question to what if to any 
 extent it would be possible to revert to them. 
 The Controllers appointed with the enlarged 
 powers of 1879 had, by virtue of their right to be 
 present at all meetings of the Council of Ministers, 
 a genuine and effective power, not only over the 
 financial policy of the Egyptian Government, but 
 in other directions also. " M. de Blignieres and 
 myself," says Sir Evelyn Baring, " without any 
 attempt to usurp functions which did not belong 
 to us, were consulted, not only on financial 
 matters, but on almost all matters which came 
 before the Council. We kept carefully in the 
 background, but we took a part in the govern- 
 ment of the country to an extent of which the 
 public at the time were scarcely aware." There 
 would, however, be grave objections to a re- 
 establishment of this system on an international 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 221 
 
 scale, as, indeed, there would be to any modifica- 
 tion of it which should go the length of enabling 
 the Commissioners of the Public Debt to exercise 
 any such powerful check over the expenditure of 
 the Egyptian Government as would make them 
 actual rulers of the country. 
 
 The question remained whether it would be 
 possible to limit their powers to such an extent as 
 to avoid " the evils of an international govern- 
 ment." Baring thought it would be. The de- 
 sired object might, in his view, be attained, not, 
 indeed, by giving the Commissioners such powers 
 over the details of expenditure as are exercised 
 by the Treasury in England and by the Financial 
 Department in India, but by clothing them with 
 authority of a more general kind, which he then 
 proceeds to describe : 
 
 "It has been proposed that the Commissioners of the 
 Public Debt should have a " voix consultative" in the 
 preparation of the Budget; that is to say, that the Budget 
 before it is adopted by the Government should be submitted 
 to the Commissioners, who would have a right to make any 
 observations or suggestions upon it which they might consider 
 desirable. The Egyptian Government would without doubt 
 attach great weight to the views of the Commissioners, but I 
 do not understand that it is intended to place them under any 
 legal or diplomatic obligation to follow their advice. I think 
 that a power of advice in the preparation of the Budget 
 within the limits I have indicated may be conferred on the 
 Commissioners, not only without objection, but with great 
 advantage to the interests of all concerned." 
 
222 LORD CROMER 
 
 Moreover, except in cases of urgent con- 
 tingency, which should be explained and justified 
 to the Commissioners, no expenditure should be 
 incurred during the currency of the year in excess 
 of the Budget, unless with the previous sanction 
 of the Commissioners of Public Debt. This, of 
 course, was not to preclude the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment from making any change in estimates, but 
 only to prevent them from incurring an expendi- 
 ture in excess of the total figures of the Budget. 
 Then, after carefully providing for a certain 
 addition to the powers of the Commissioners 
 " when the British occupation ceases," and 
 remarking that they should of course be, in 
 the meantime, debarred from exercising any sort 
 of control over the cost of the British Army of 
 occupation, " the payments for which should be 
 regulated between the British and Egyptian 
 Governments," the despatch thus concludes : 
 
 " The plan which I have sketched above appears to me to 
 guard sufficiently against the danger of undue interference on 
 the part of the Commissioners of the Public Debt with the 
 details of the Egyptian administration, while at the same time 
 an institution will be created which cannot fail to exercise a 
 check on the expenditure of the Egyptian Government." 
 
 Qualis ab incepto. The despatch begins and 
 ends with the proposition that the first and last 
 word of English diplomacy in Egypt is " keep 
 atight hand on the purse-strings," and if the 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 223 
 
 tight enougiyto-invite 
 European Powers^agJwgH- 
 
 Strengthen the control of the Commissioners of 
 the Debt. How little could Baring have foreseen 
 when he wrote these words how obstructive an 
 agency this control would become, and how 
 vexatiously it would afterwards be employed to 
 thwart the policy which the Lord Cromer of the 
 future was to recognize afterwards as the only 
 one in true conformity with the administrative I 
 genius and mission of England, and in which he 
 was to throw himself heart and soul. 
 
 Let us look back a little at the history of the 
 Caisse de la Dette, as reviewed in the pages of a 
 writer whose account of this object of Baring's 
 solicitude in 1884 is all the more valuable 
 because he is an ardent admirer of the Consul- 
 General himself. 
 
 The Commissioners, to begin with, were little 
 more than receivers of certain revenues which 
 had been specially assigned to the service of the 
 Debt. They were representatives not so much 
 of the Powers as of the creditors, the British 
 Government refusing, as we have seen, in the 
 first instance even to go the length of proposing 
 a British Commissioner. It had consisted 
 originally of three members a Frenchman, an 
 Austrian, and an Italian, appointed as early as 
 1876, so that nearly a year elapsed before they 
 
224 LORD CROMER 
 
 were joined at the Board by an English colleague 
 in the person of Evelyn Baring. But though 
 their functions were originally as specialized 
 and limited as this, they have been so extended 
 by successive changes some of them, as appears 
 from the foregoing despatch, expressly approved 
 by Baring himself that these receivers of revenue 
 on behalf of creditors have acquired also the 
 position of guardians, commissioned by the 
 Powers to watch over the execution of the 
 complicated series of agreements, decrees, con- 
 ventions, declarations, protocols, which constitute 
 in their totality the international compact regulat- 
 ing the finances of Egypt. In that capacity they 
 even possess a certain legislative power, and 
 many decrees recite in their preamble the 
 adhesion of the Caisse to the provisions which 
 they contain. The Commissioners of the Caisse 
 are, it is true, appointed by the Khedive, and are 
 in theory Egyptian officials. But in reality they 
 are almost as much foreign representatives as the 
 Consuls-General themselves, while their influence 
 in the administrative work of the country is even 
 greater than the majority of these functionaries. 
 
 Thus the Egyptian Government cannot, for 
 instance, adopt any general measure for the relief 
 of taxation without the approval of the Caisse, 
 inasmuch as such reduction must necessarily 
 affect the receipts of the provinces specially 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 225 
 
 assigned to the bondholders, and those revenues 
 cannot be reduced without the consent of the 
 Commissioners. Again, it cannot raise a loan 
 even for the most legitimate purposes, such as the 
 construction of irrigation works, without their 
 consent ; and when the loan is approved and the 
 money raised, it is once more the Caisse which 
 will be charged with the disbursement of it, and 
 with the duty of seeing that it is applied to the 
 specified objects. 
 
 But the full extent of its authority is only 
 realized when we come to consider the singularly 
 commanding position which was assigned to it 
 under the Law of Liquidation of 1879, and 
 which Sir Alfred Milner thus lucidly de- 
 scribes : 
 
 "The Powers, as we have seen, stepped in to save Egypt 
 from bankruptcy [by their assent to the financial arrange- 
 ments embodied in that law], but in return they put her into 
 a strait waistcoat of the severest kind. The revenues of the 
 State were divided into two nearly equal parts, of which one 
 was to go to the Caisse for the benefit of the bondholders, and 
 the other to the Government to defray the expenses of admin- 
 istration. There were thus practically two Budgets, but the 
 principles applied to them were very different. If the Budget 
 of the Caisse showed a deficit the Government was bound to 
 make good that deficit, whereas if the Caisse had a surplus, 
 however large, the Government had no right to share it. On 
 the other hand, if the Government had a deficit the Caisse 
 could not be called upon to make up the deficiency, while if 
 the Government had a surplus the Caisse had certain 
 contingent claims thereon." 
 
 p 
 
226 LORD CROMER 
 
 The inequitable terms of the schoolboy's 
 wager, known as " Heads I win, tails you lose," 
 have never perhaps been illustrated before or 
 since on so dignified a scale. But though this 
 was bad enough, proceeds the writer quoted, 
 this was not all. 
 
 " For the Caisse might have a claim on an imaginary surplus 
 of the Government which did not exist at all. This sounds 
 nonsensical, but in matters Egyptian it would be rash indeed 
 to take no account of a thing because it sounded nonsensical. 
 That is rather a reason why it should exist. And as a matter 
 of fact this particular arrangement, though in my humble 
 opinion unwise, was not so absurd as it looks at first sight. 
 The explanation is that the Law of Liquidation fixed an ideal 
 figure for the national expenditure a sum which in the 
 opinion of the Powers Egypt ought not to go beyond. If the 
 revenues of the Government exceeded this sum then the 
 Government was to be regarded as having a surplus, no 
 matter what its real expenditure might have been ; and 
 in that surplus the Caisse might, under certain circumstances, 
 have a claim." 
 
 We have already seen how the intolerable 
 inconvenience of the arrangement actually drove 
 the Egyptian Government within a few weeks 
 of the perusing of Sir Evelyn Baring's despatch 
 into a technical breach of the law ; and it is a 
 curious illustration of the inability of even this 
 sagacious and farseeing observer to forecast the 
 future relations between that Government, under 
 his guidance, and the Commissioners of the 
 Caisse, that he should have shown himself at this 
 period so much more solicitous to strengthen the 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 227 
 
 controlling hands of the latter than to enlarge the 
 administrative freedom of the former. 
 
 But a brief recapitulation of the principal views 
 enunciated by him in the despatch above quoted 
 will better enable us to define the position which 
 he then occupied, and thus to measure the 
 distance to which he was soon to advance 
 beyond it. 
 
 (1) He was at that time evidently contem- 
 plating only a temporary and probably a not 
 very protracted prolongation of British military 
 occupation of Egypt and British direction of 
 her civil affairs. In this spirit he congratulates 
 Her Majesty's Government on their being most 
 wisely in his opinion " not prepared to assume 
 the government of Egypt, whether permanently 
 in the form of annexing the country, or tem- 
 porarily in the form of establishing a Pro- 
 tectorate " ; and he discusses the financial 
 arrangements that should be made against the 
 period " when the British occupation ceases." 
 
 (2) While admitting that "it is desirable in 
 British interests that Egypt should be so 
 reasonably well governed as not to afford 
 any justification for the serious interference of 
 any foreign Power in its internal administration," 
 he goes on in his next sentence to reveal his 
 implied assumption that this is only another way 
 of saying and means no more than that the 
 
228 LORD CROMER 
 
 finances of Egypt must by English supervision 
 " be kept in fairly good order." 
 
 (3) As a corollary of this assumption he insists 
 by implication that the principal, if not the sole 
 task of England in Egypt, would be to check the 
 tendency of the Egyptian Government to extra- 
 vagant expenditure, and he suggests as a means 
 to that end that it would be well to strengthen 
 the powers of an international body of officials 
 who were simply trustees for the public creditor, 
 and, except in so far as the interests of that 
 cestui que twist were involved, had no direct 
 concern either in promoting the just and equal 
 government, or even (save as aforesaid) in ad- 
 vancing the prosperity, of its people. 
 
 In other words, Sir Evelyn Baring had, it is 
 evident, by no means yet realized that over and 
 above the duty of maintaining the solvency of 
 Egypt, the work which then lay before her 
 English guardians included a thorough purifi- 
 cation of her judicial tribunals, a complete 
 reorganization of her central and local adminis- 
 trative system, a remodelling of her constabulary, 
 a radical reform of her methods of tax-collection, 
 and an unexampled development of her material 
 wealth and the comfort of her cultivators by a 
 liberal and well-directed outlay on irrigation. 
 
 In fine, he had not yet embraced the con- 
 ception that the enterprise to which events had 
 
THE CONSUL-GENERAL AS FINANCIER 229 
 
 called his country was not the mere patching, up 
 joLaa^olcU-Egypt, but the creation of a new one. 
 Still less one fancies did he foresee that in that 
 great achievement, one which for brilliancy and 
 rapidity deserves to rank beside the greatest of 
 our administrative triumphs in India, he was 
 himself destined to play so memorable a part. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Stritggle for Reforms 
 
 EVENTS were not long in convincing Baring 
 by their resistless logic that a great ex- 
 tension of the preconceived scope of his mission 
 was inevitable. The Egypt to which he returned 
 in September, 1884, was in the throes of the 
 severest crisis through which it had passed since 
 the rebellion of Arabi. The policy of the English 
 Protectorate was on its trial, and things, it must 
 be admitted, were looking rather black for it. 
 Had we only come into Egypt to make con- 
 fusion worse confounded ? Or had we at any 
 rate only put down military disorder to create 
 civil anarchy in its place ? 
 
 Such were the questions which were being 
 asked on all hands, and not in Egypt alone, 
 throughout the years 1883 and 1884, an d which 
 in the autumn of the latter year became clamorous 
 and importunate indeed. It is hardly an exagger- 
 ation to say that Great Britain at that moment 
 possessed neither the goodwill of any single 
 European Power as regards her Egyptian policy, 
 
 with the doubtful exception of Italy, nor the con- 
 
 230 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 231 
 
 fidence and support of any class of the Egyptian 
 community, unless it were the creditors of the 
 impoverished fellah. The official caste, the 
 Turkish pashas and Levantine adventurers, to 
 whom Egypt had long been the "happy hunting 
 ground" of bakshish, had of course no liking for 
 the intrusion of English probity and providence 
 into the administration of the country ; and even 
 the few statesmen that Egypt possessed, the half- 
 dozen or so of trained administrators who were 
 capable of ascent to the conception that the 
 government of a country means something more 
 than filling the pockets of its governors, had little 
 cause to be satisfied with their experiences of 
 these blessings. England had been willing 
 enough to employ their experience and local 
 knowledge as instruments for the direction of 
 Egyptian policy, but she had not stood by her 
 servants. Again and again she had counselled 
 measures which brought them into sharp collision 
 with the European Powers, and then when the 
 inevitable conflict occurred, instead of backing 
 them up in resistance, she had advised an 
 ignominious capitulation. She had induced, or 
 rather compelled, the Khedive to renounce the 
 sovereignty of the Soudan, yet at the same time 
 she had taken no effective steps to assist him in 
 carrying out that policy without a cruel and 
 disgraceful abandonment of military garrisons and 
 
232 LORD CROMER 
 
 civil populations (for whose plight their rulers at 
 Cairo were, of course, directly responsible) to a 
 barbarous foe. All these humiliations and rebuffs 
 rankled deeply in the minds of the leading men of 
 the Egyptian official class ; they were not unfelt, 
 as we know, by the ablest among them, and the 
 best disposed towards the English Protectorate, 
 Nubar Pasha; and the minor officials naturally 
 took their cue from their superiors. In any case 
 the working of the new system recommended by 
 Lord Dufferin must to a certain extent have 
 irritated and embittered them. The introduction 
 of Englishmen into high posts in the various 
 departments though an essential condition of all 
 effective reforms involved the further necessity 
 of bringing personal pressure to bear upon the 
 native officials. They had to be told that it was 
 no longer permissible to them either to neglect 
 their duties or to feather their nests, and the 
 information was most unwelcome. Nevertheless, 
 with the pliability of the Oriental they might 
 have adapted themselves more rapidly and easily 
 than was in fact the case, had it not been for the 
 diminished influence and prestige of the British 
 Government. Months before this, Lord Dufferin 
 had warned us at home that unless men like these 
 were convinced " that we intend to shield and 
 foster the system we have established, it will be 
 vain to expect the timid politicians of the East to 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 233 
 
 identify themselves with its existence." Why, 
 indeed, the harassed official may have asked, 
 should he work cordially, at the cost of his own 
 pocket and popularity, with the organizers of a 
 new-fangled regime who are here to-day and 
 gone to-morrow ? The power, and not only the \ 
 power but the popularity, of England in Egypt 
 has always varied directly with the degree of 
 general belief in the permanence of English 
 control. During the year 1883-84 that belief 7 
 had declined to its weakest point. " There was 
 no conviction of the permanence of anything. 
 There was no general feeling of tranquillity, but 
 on the contrary, perpetual unsettlement, incessant 
 alarms from without, incessant rumours of change 
 within all eagerly seized upon and exaggerated 
 by the European, and especially the French 
 Press," which, as within the "internationalized" 
 sphere of Egyptian life, lay entirely beyond the 
 control of the Government. 
 
 Nor were the "dim common populations" 
 re men for whose rescue and redemption, if for 
 anybody's, the English in Egypt were toiling at 
 their seemingly desperate undertaking any 
 better satisfied. They were suffering from the 
 reaction of disappointment from the failure of the 
 hopes excited in their breasts during the months 
 of revolution. For the cultivator of the Nile 
 valley the military rebellion of Arabi had no 
 
234 LORD CROMER 
 
 terrors. It threatened him with nothing in 
 his humble plot, but his creditors with much. 
 During the brief interregnum of anarchy in 1882, 
 the usurers to whom he was bound had mostly 
 taken to flight. But now they were all back 
 and insisting on the fulfilment of their legal 
 obligations, a demand against which the Govern- 
 ment could not have protected them even if it 
 would, for the restoration of order had restored 
 the authority of the Mixed Courts, and these 
 tribunals would insist on payment in full of the 
 fellahs' debts to these foreign creditors of his, even 
 if his Government might have been willing to 
 force them to accept a composition. Profound 
 then as was the discontent of the official classes, 
 it was not deeper while from the greater ease of 
 their position it was less vehement and acute 
 than the dissatisfaction of the fellaheen. I 
 
 Even the commercial classes, such/as the 
 European traders in Alexandria, much as they 
 owed the Power which had put down disorder 
 and restored the reign of law and the security 
 of property, were at this moment little better 
 affected towards English rule. Apart from their 
 special grievances the delays in the payment of 
 the Indemnities for the damages caused by the 
 bombardment and subsequent conflagration the 
 continuing depression of trade had bitterly dis- 
 appointed them. They had cherished the illusion 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 235 
 
 that the mere planting of the British flag in 
 Egypt would have given an instantaneous and 
 most powerful stimulus to commercial enter- 
 prise, and caused an immediate influx of capital 
 into the country. They had not realized the truth 
 of Sir Robert Peel's often quoted observation, 
 that " confidence is a plant of slow growth," and 
 that capital is only another name of timidity. 
 It did not occur to them that some time must 
 elapse before men of reasonable prudence would 
 be prepared to risk any large stake in a country 
 which had only just been rescued from anarchy 
 by the armed intervention of a European Power, 
 whose intentions, whether of continued occupation 
 or of more or less sudden departure, were from 
 year to year, if not from month to month, un- 
 certain. And without this large influx of fresh 
 capital which was not forthcoming, it was impos- 
 sible that a country which was already taxed to 
 the utmost of its taxable capacity, and whose 
 material wealth had so greatly declined through 
 the neglect by a long-embarrassed Government 
 of those great Public Works which are the 
 main factors in its fertility, should as a whole 
 be prosperous. 
 
 Such was the condition of the country over 
 which Sir Evelyn Baring was, not nominally 
 indeed or formally, but in a very real and prac- 
 tical sense, appointed to preside ; and such were 
 
236 LORD CROMER 
 
 the formidable difficulties with which at this very 
 outset of his consular career he had to grapple. 
 True to his instincts as a financier and to the 
 principles above laid down by him for the 
 guidance of our policy in Egypt, his first attack 
 was upon the problem of Egyptian finance; but in 
 this very process he found himself called upon, as 
 we have seen, to take a step which to any financier 
 would have been most distasteful, and which, to a 
 man who was a financier and nothing else, would 
 have been impossible. In the very act of pro- 
 posing the large loan which was necessary to 
 restore financial equilibrium to the bankrupt 
 country, he was confronted with, and he manfully 
 recognized, the necessity of drawing upon its 
 heavily-burdened Exchequer for that " irrigation 
 million," which was employed, as related in a 
 previous chapter, with such magically reviving 
 effects upon the prosperity of the country. 
 
 Nevertheless for some time to come the 
 principal part of Baring's work a part so great 
 indeed as almost to divert his energies exclusively 
 into that one channel consisted, as he had 
 virtually predicted, in the stern supervision of 
 Egyptian finance. Two or three annual Budgets 
 had to be framed, and the expenditure of two or 
 three years had to be provided for, before the 
 stability of Egyptian solvency could be regarded 
 as assured ; and it was only through the inflexible 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 237 
 
 firmness of the control exercised by Baring 
 during these years in the face of the most 
 powerful native opposition, and at the cost of the 
 sharpest diplomatic conflict, that the haunting 
 spectre of bankruptcy was finally laid. What 
 made his task in this respect so extraordinarily 
 difficult was the fact that every step in his pro- 
 gress with it generated continually increasing 
 friction between him and the ablest of Egyptian 
 statesmen Nubar Pasha. The abilities, and 
 indeed the patriotism of this eminent man if the 
 latter quality can be predicated of an Armenian 
 Christian administering an alien country of the 
 Mahommedan faith are admitted on all hands ; 
 but his temperament, his training, and the 
 peculiar bent of his political genius alike unfitted 
 him to acquiesce in the limitations which British 
 tutelage imposed upon the exercise of his power. 
 A reformer at heart, he was too sagacious not to 
 recognize the immense advantage which the 
 presence of the English gave to the cause of 
 reform. But though he was in sympathy with 
 our spirit, he could not bring himself to love 
 our methods. No financier himself, he chafed 
 against the restraints which the British Minister 
 of Finance Sir Edgar Vincent with the loyal 
 support of the Consul-General, was obliged to 
 impose upon his administrative projects. ''Fully 
 recognizing the necessity of British troops, he 
 
238 LORD CROMER 
 
 was doubtful about the utility of British officials. 
 ' I am in favour of the Occupation,' he was in the 
 habit of saying, ' but not of the Administrative 
 Occupation.' ' What he wanted, as Sir Alfred 
 Milner acutely remarks, "was our support with- 
 out our guidance." 
 
 Clearly, however, he could not have the one 
 without the other. The principle laid down in 
 the memorable despatch of Lord Granville still 
 held good. The responsibility which for the 
 time rested on England still " obliged Her 
 Majesty's Government to insist on the adoption 
 of the policy which they recommended " ; and in 
 the last resort it would still be "necessary that 
 those Ministers and Governors who do not follow 
 this course should cease to hold their offices." It 
 was or might have been foreseen from the first 
 that if Nubar Pasha, able and well-intentioned 
 as he was, was ever to change his attitude of 
 passive obstruction for one of active resistance to 
 British policy, this alternative of se soumettre ou se 
 ddmettre would at once arise. 
 
 It has been said that it was the methods rather 
 than the aims of British administration which 
 were distasteful to him, and one of his main 
 objections to these methods arose from the fact 
 that they occasionally scandalized him by their 
 irregularity. The objection may seem strange 
 enough in an Oriental statesman, but Nubar had 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 239 
 
 been brought up, in common indeed with many of 
 his subordinates, in the pedantic school of French 
 bureaucracy, and was imbued with its traditions. 
 It was this which brought him into collision with 
 the Director of the Irrigation System, Sir Colin 
 Scott Moncrieff. His Gallic leanings towards 
 excessive centralization were offended by the 
 large freedom of hand which had been allowed to 
 the English local inspectors of irrigation, and he 
 pressed for the imposition of greater Ministerial 
 restraint on their executive powers. Sir Colin 
 Scott Moncrieff, however, wisely refused to make 
 any concessions on this point to the Egyptian 
 Prime Minister. He saw that unless these 
 officers were allowed considerable liberty of 
 action, unless they were clothed with authority to 
 decide for themselves in urgent cases, and to give 
 prompt effect to their decisions, it would be 
 impossible for them to discharge their duties 
 efficiently. And, indeed, it must be clear even to 
 those not specially conversant with the matter, 
 that if every landholder threatened with the 
 deprivation of his unjust privileges in the 
 matter of water supply could have delayed 
 justice by an appeal to a Ministerial Depart- 
 ment in Cairo, the great end of equitable 
 distribution, which the inspectors were appointed 
 to secure, would in many cases never have been 
 attained at all. 
 
240 LORD CROMER 
 
 Nubar's differences, however, with Sir Colin 
 Scott Moncrieff were of a slight and transient 
 character as compared with the sharp and stand- 
 ing conflict in which he was involved with his 
 English Financial Adviser. And not with him 
 alone, but rather with the whole body of European 
 counsellors who were associated with him. This 
 body, the Committee of Finance, which was called 
 into existence early 'mj.SS^ consisted of, besides 
 the Finance Minister, two Englishmen, an Aus- 
 trian, and a Frenchman, and was a very potent 
 instrument for the restraint of arbitrary expendi- 
 ture. It contained the highest financial authori- 
 ties in the country, and was representative of aM 
 that was most respectable and influential in the 
 European official world. If the Finance Com- 
 mittee protested against any new item of expen- 
 diture as extravagant and unnecessary, it was 
 very difficult for the Council of Ministers to 
 overrule its decisions, and supported by it Sir 
 Edgar Vincent's recommendations became practi- 
 cally decrees. 
 
 The divergence of view between him and the 
 Prime Minister was radical and fundamental, and 
 went down to the very roots of financial policy. 
 It was indeed little less than a difference of 
 opinion as to whether the solvency of Egypt in 
 the years 1885 to 1887 was or was not assured. 
 Vincent held the affirmative of this proposition, 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 241 
 
 Nubar the negative. The former believed that 
 she could pay her way on the basis provided by 
 the Convention of London, the latter held that 
 she could not. The English Financial Adviser 
 was persuaded that when the two years relief 
 granted to the country by that Convention, 
 in the form of a slight reduction of interest 
 on her debt, expired, she^ -would be able to 
 resume and to continue payment in full to her 
 creditors. The Prime Minister was convinced 
 that this was impossible, and that at the close of 
 this period Egypt would once more have to 
 appeal to the Powers as a bankrupt, " on her 
 own petition," so to speak, and apply for a 
 revision of the arrangement. Neither of them, 
 it may be, deprecated this contingency less 
 earnestly than the other. It was simply that the 
 Egyptian Minister took a more desponding view 
 of the future than his English colleague, and 
 being more tenacious of his opinion on this point 
 than his judgment on financial matters warranted, 
 he thought himself justified in opposing economies 
 which could only operate to check the beneficent 
 work of administrative reform, without eventually 
 staving off the inevitable future of financial 
 collapse. Vincent, on the other hand, perceived 
 that the difficulties which caused Nubar to despair 
 were, though formidable in their dimensions, 
 essentially temporary in their character. For 
 
 Q 
 
242 LORD CROMER 
 
 the moment Egypt was still suffering from the 
 accumulated effects of a series of disasters the 
 rebellion, the destruction of Alexandria, the 
 cholera, the loss of the Soudan. But if she could 
 only tide over the effects of these calamities, her 
 great recuperative powers, and the large rein- 
 forcement of them which was to be expected 
 from Sir Evelyn Baring's judicious outlay on 
 Public Works, would render her future financial 
 position secure. 
 
 Animated by these convictions, the Financial 
 Adviser applied himself vigorously to the w r ork 
 of retrenchment, and by exercise of the severest 
 economy he succeeded in resuming the full 
 payment of interest in 1887. The sacrifices, how- 
 ever, which this policy compelled him to demand 
 from Nubar Pasha were felt by that Minister 
 as intolerably irksome. He resented being 
 compelled to refuse the money for which, in the 
 name of efficiency and improvement, the different 
 departments were clamouring. He had the 
 Oriental magnate's contempt for small savings 
 and his toleration for little jobs. On the other 
 hand, he was especially desirous of effecting an 
 immediate reduction of the land-tax, which not 
 only pressed heavily on the fellah, but cut deeply 
 into the income of his own the landowning- 
 class. 
 
 Moreover, it would have been a policy as 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 243 
 
 popular as Vincent's remorseless cheeseparing was 
 unpopular ; and popularity was a commodity with 
 which the Egyptian Premier, associated as he 
 was with the abandonment of the Soudan and the 
 ''bad times " which had followed it, could hardly 
 afford to dispense with. Why should his natural 
 wish to acquire it be thwarted by an English 
 financier's insistence on a policy which in Nubar's 
 opinion could only avail to postpone, and was 
 powerless to avert, the evil day ? Why should he 
 continue to make himself odious by pinching and 
 screwing on the expenditure of a nation which 
 after all would sooner or later have to make 
 another composition with its creditors ? Under 
 the influence of the irritation which these to him 
 unanswerable questions excited in his mind, he 
 drifted at last into an attitude of fixed hostility 
 to the Financial Adviser. And to assume this 
 attitude towards the Financial Adviser was to 
 assume it towards the Consul-General ; for 
 Baring had full confidence in Sir Edgar Vincent, 
 and the policy which Vincent was carrying out 
 was, as has been seen, identical with that which 
 Baring had represented to the English Govern- 
 ment as indispensable to the rescue of Egypt. 
 He accordingly supported Vincent in his struggle 
 with Nubar with that quiet firmness which is 
 part of his nature, and thereby came soon to be 
 regarded by the Prime Minister with the same 
 
244 LORD CROMER 
 
 feelings of bitter dislike which he cherished 
 towards the Financial Adviser. 
 
 In the year 1887 matters came to a crisis. 
 Nubar found his position no longer endurable, 
 and resolved upon a bold stroke for liberty. On 
 the ostensible plea that it was necessary for him 
 to obtain the assent of the Powers to certain 
 administrative reforms, he visited England in the 
 hope of inducing the English Government to free 
 Egypt from what he described as the intolerable 
 domination of the Financial Adviser and the 
 British Consul-General. Possibly he may have 
 hoped something from the recent change of 
 Government in the country. Baring's, it may 
 have occurred to him, was a Gladstonian appoint- 
 ment, and a Unionist Government which had just 
 been returned to power with an overwhelming 
 majority, might not be displeased at an oppor- 
 tunity for substituting " their own man." Such a 
 calculation would be eminently likely to commend 
 itself to an Oriental politician partially, but not 
 thoroughly, acquainted with the English party 
 system, and therefore unaware that there is still 
 one department of our policy which English 
 statesmen, and especially English Conservative 
 statesmen, have always striven to keep outside 
 the sphere of its pernicious influence. Nubar in 
 all probability did not fully realize the strength of 
 the obligation incumbent on any high-minded and 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 245 
 
 patriotic English Minister to extend his loyal 
 support to any public servant of the Crown, by 
 whatever Government appointed, who has faith- 
 fully and ably represented the nation and upheld 
 the national interests abroad. Or if he did realize 
 this, he overrated his own power of persuasion. 
 Lord Salisbury upheld the Consul-General, and 
 Nubar returned re infectd to Egypt. 
 
 When relations are thus strained to breaking- 
 point, the final rupture cannot be long delayed. 
 Early in the following year it happened. The 
 death of Baker Pasha had created a vacancy 
 in the office of Chief of the Police, and Nubar 
 seized the opportunity of proposing such a 
 reorganization of the force as would enable him 
 to get rid of the English officers. The police 
 were once more to be placed entirely under the 
 Mudirs, even for purposes of discipline, and 
 the central office at Cairo was to be abolished. 
 To this proposal, however, Sir Evelyn Baring 
 opposed an inflexible resistance. He insisted, 
 and rightly, that whatever changes might be 
 introduced into the organization of the police, an 
 Englishman should again be appointed to the 
 chief command. 
 
 The struggle between the Consul-General and 
 the Prime Minister was sharp but short. Nubar, 
 relying upon the Khedive's special need of his 
 services at a juncture when the intrigues of Ismail 
 
246 LORD CROMER 
 
 Pasha at Constantinople were causing no little 
 alarm and uneasiness to his son and successor, 
 threw himself upon Tewfik's support, and at first 
 found an ally in his master. The Khedive was 
 assured that, if only, the Egyptian Government 
 took up a firm enough attitude in the matter, the 
 British Government would throw over its repre- 
 sentative ; and the Prime Minister seconded these 
 assurances by despatching an agent to London on 
 his own account to make express complaint of 
 Baring's conduct as tending to reduce the Khedive 
 to a nonentity, and to render British influence 
 unpopular. The result of this singular but not un- 
 important little conflict is related by the author 
 of England in Egypt as follows : 
 
 " It was a last trump, boldly played, but it failed to win the 
 game. The British Government saw through the manoeuvre. 
 It knew its agent too well to suspect him of any leaning to 
 excessive meddlesomeness. It had too much reason to be 
 grateful for the skill and patience with which he had so far 
 steered his way through the maze of Egyptian politics to dream 
 of sacrificing him. Nubar's emissary met with no better 
 success at the Foreign Office than Nubar himself. A strong 
 hint was given to the ruler of Egypt that if he expected 
 England to support him against external enemies, he must 
 listen to English advice on vital questions of internal policy. 
 And the warning had its effect. The Khedive saw that in 
 siding with his Minister he was running into the very danger 
 from which he had looked to that Minister to protect him. 
 The fact once realized, the choice was made. The question 
 of the command of the police was without more delay decided 
 in accordance with the views of Sir Evelyn Baring." 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 247 
 
 More, however, was decided than the command 
 of the police. The incident had constituted, if 
 not the first, at any rate the most significant and 
 conspicuous application of the principle enunciated 
 by Lord Granville at the time of and with refer- 
 ence to the abandonment of the Soudan, namely, 
 that in all important matters the advice given by 
 the British Government must be followed. 
 
 Nubar's defeat was fatal to him. It did not, 
 indeed, destroy his official life at once, but it 
 wounded his authority to the death. Though he 
 remained in office yet another year, he never 
 recovered his position and prestige; and in June, 
 1888. on some minor and now forgotten question, 
 the Khedive dismissed him. He was succeeded 
 by Riaz Pasha, a man of not inconsiderable 
 ability, if oFsomewhat less than Nubar, but in 
 most respects his polar opposite. It will be 
 convenient, however, to delay the course of my 
 main narrative for a brief space in order to 
 recount the history of a highly important episode. 
 
 The years 1885-1887 are memorable in the 
 annals of the British occupation of Egypt as 
 constituting a period during which that occupation 
 came nearer to being determined than it has ever 
 been before or since, or possibly than it ever 
 will be again. In the summer of 1885 Lord 
 Salisbury, who had then recently acceded to 
 office, conceived the hope of arriving at such an 
 
248 LORD CROMER 
 
 understanding with Turkey as would allay the 
 intense and growing jealousy of the Porte at our 
 presence in Egypt, and diminish the hostility of 
 France. It might, he thought, be possible to 
 conclude an arrangement which, while providing 
 for the maintenance and development of the 
 reforms which we had set on foot, should at the 
 same time reduce the amount and duration of 
 British interference in the country. 
 
 In pursuance of this purpose, and also, it 
 should be added, with the object of acknowledging 
 the obligations of the Conservative party to one 
 of the most energetic of its members, Sir Henry 
 Drummond Wolff was despatched to Constanti- 
 nople as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister 
 Plenipotentiary to the Sultan, "on a special 
 mission having reference to the affairs of Egypt," 
 and in October, 1885, succeeded in conclud- 
 ing a preliminary Convention with the Turkish 
 Foreign Minister, which was ratified in the 
 following month by their respective Sovereigns. 
 This Convention provided that an Ottoman and 
 an English High Commissioner should be sent to 
 Egypt whose business it should be, in concert 
 with the Khedive, to reorganize the Egyptian 
 Army, and to consider what changes might be 
 necessary in the civil administration. The 
 Ottoman High Commissioner was also to take 
 counsel with the Khedive as to the best means of 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 249 
 
 tranquillizing the Soudan by pacific measures, the 
 English Commissioner being kept informed of 
 the course of the negotiations, while any steps 
 decided upon in this direction were to be adopted 
 and executed in agreement with him, u as forming 
 part of the general settlement of Egyptian affairs." 
 But by far the most important clause of the 
 Convention was that which stipulated that as 
 soon as the two High Commissioners should be 
 assured of "the security of the position, and the 
 good working order and stability of the Egyptian 
 Government," they should present reports to their 
 respective Governments, who would then "consult 
 as to the conclusion of a Convention regulating 
 the withdrawal of the British troops from Egypt 
 in a convenient period." 
 
 The two High Commissioners sent to Egypt 
 under the terms of this Convention were Mukhtar 
 Pasha on behalf of Turkey, and on behalf of 
 England Sir Henry Drummond Wolff himself. 
 Their joint inquiry lasted rather more than a year, 
 at the end of which time the Turkish High 
 Commissioner addressed a long report to his 
 Government, while his English colleague returned 
 home to render in person an account of his 
 mission. In the course of the twelve months 
 during which they had pursued their inquiries, two 
 changes of Government and two general elections 
 had taken place in England. Lord Salisbury's 
 
250 LORD CROMER 
 
 First Administration had been ousted by an 
 adverse vote on the Address in January, 1886; 
 Mr. Gladstone had succeeded, had introduced 
 and failed to carry his first Home Rule Bill, had 
 appealed to the country with a result of over- 
 whelming discomfiture, and Lord Salisbury was 
 once more at the Foreign Office, as desirous as 
 ever, apparently, for the success of the diplomatic 
 policy which he had launched the year before. 
 Not much had as yet been done towards its 
 realization. A special envoy had been despatched 
 by the Khedive to the Soudan to enter into com- 
 munication with the insurgent tribes, but nothing 
 had come of it ; and beyond this and the 
 formulation by Mukhtar Pasha of an unwork- 
 able scheme of military organization, which his 
 British colleague had been obliged to reject, the 
 two Commissioners had little or no fruit to show 
 for their labours. 
 
 Above all they were no nearer to a settlement 
 of the troublesome question as to the withdrawal 
 of British troops, and to this the Foreign 
 Secretary at once directed his attention. The 
 instructions with which he once more despatched 
 Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to Constantinople 
 form, as has been justly said, "a landmark in 
 our Egyptian policy no less important than 
 Lord Granville's despatch of January 3, 1883, of 
 which indeed they constitute the natural develop- 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 251 
 
 ment." "The Sultan," wrote Lord Salisbury on 
 January 15, 1887 
 
 "is pressing the Government of Great Britain to name a 
 day for the evacuation of Egypt, and on that demand he 
 is avowedly encouraged by one, or perhaps two, of the 
 European Powers. Her Majesty's Government have every 
 desire to give him satisfaction upon this point, but they 
 cannot fix even a distant date for evacuation until they are 
 able to make provision for securing beyond that date the 
 external and internal peace of Egypt. The object which the 
 Powers of Europe have had in view, and which it is not less 
 the desire of Her Majesty's Government to attain, may 
 be generally expressed by the phrase, 'the neutralization 
 of Egypt,' but it must be neutralization with an exception 
 designed to maintain the security and permanence of the 
 whole arrangement. The British Government must retain the 
 right to guard and uphold the condition of things which will 
 have been brought about by the military action and large 
 sacrifices of the country. So long as the Government of 
 Egypt maintains its position, and no disorders arise to interfere 
 with the administration of justice or the action by the Execu- 
 tive Power, it is highly desirable that no soldier belonging 
 to any foreign nation should remain upon the soil of Egypt, 
 except when it may be necessary to make use of the land 
 passage from one sea to another. Her Majesty's Government 
 would willingly agree that such a stipulation should, whenever 
 the evacuation had taken place, apply to English as much as to 
 any other troops ; but it will be necessary to restrict this provi- 
 sion as far as England is concerned to periods of tranquillity. 
 England, if she spontaneously and willingly evacuates the 
 country, must retain a treaty right of intervention if at 
 any time either internal peace or external security should be 
 seriously threatened. There is no danger that a privilege so 
 costly in its character will be used unless the circumstances 
 imperatively demand it." 
 
 This claim of a recognized right on the part of 
 Great Britain to defend the regime of her own 
 
252 LORD CROMER 
 
 creation does not seem a very unreasonable one, 
 nor was it regarded as inadmissible by the 
 Turkish Government. They consented, though 
 not of course without a struggle, to recognize a 
 British right of reoccupying Egypt in case of 
 internal disturbance or external dangers ; and 
 after four months of debate at Constantinople a 
 definite understanding was arrived at between 
 Sir Henry Drummond Wolff and the Turkish 
 representatives, and embodied in a Convention 
 signed by both parties on May 22, 1887. 
 
 According to this agreement the British troops 
 were to be withdrawn from Egypt at the end of 
 three years, unless at that date the appearance of 
 external or internal dangers should necessitate 
 the postponement of the evacuation, in which 
 case they were to be withdrawn as soon as the 
 danger had disappeared. Two years after their 
 withdrawal the general supervision exercised by 
 Great Britain over the Egyptian Army was to 
 cease. Thenceforward Egypt was to enjoy 
 sureU territoriale, or in other words, the inviola- 
 bility of Egyptian territory was to be recognized 
 and guaranteed. Nevertheless, the Convention 
 continued, the Imperial Ottoman Government 
 will make use of its right of occupying Egypt 
 militarily if there are reasons to fear an invasion 
 from without, or if order and security in the 
 interior were disturbed, or if the Khediviate of 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 253 
 
 Egypt refused to execute its duties towards 
 the Sovereign Court or its International obli- 
 gations. 
 
 On its side the Government of Her Britannic 
 Majesty was authorized by the Convention to send 
 in the above-mentioned cases troops into Egypt, 
 which will take the measures necessary to avert 
 these dangers. In taking such measures, the 
 commander of these troops will act with all the 
 regard due to the rights of the Sovereign 
 Power. 
 
 The Ottoman troops, as well as the British 
 troops, were to be withdrawn as soon as the causes 
 requiring their intervention should have ceased. 
 
 A further article provided that Great Britain 
 and Turkey should invite first the great Powers 
 and then all the others who had made or accepted 
 arrangement with the Khediviate of Egypt to 
 give their adhesion to the Convention ; and 
 annexed to the main document was an important 
 declaration by the English Plenipotentiary, that 
 in case during the three years allowed for the 
 withdrawal of the troops any of the great 
 Mediterranean Powers should not have accepted 
 the Convention, Great Britain would regard the 
 state of things as an "external danger," justify- 
 ing the postponement of the Convention. 
 
 To this Convention all the European Powers 
 save, perversely enough, that one which is most 
 
254 LORD CROMER 
 
 jealous of our position, were ready to agree. 
 France offered it a most strenuous resistance. 
 Her Ambassador was directed to expostulate in 
 strong and even threatening language with the 
 Porte, and he was backed as usual by his 
 Russian colleague. Together they worked with 
 such effect on the mind of the Sultan that in 
 spite of the counter advice of the representatives 
 of Austria, Germany, and Italy, he could not be 
 induced to ratify the Treaty which his Ministers 
 had signed. For nearly a month after the date 
 fixed for the ratification the British Plenipoten- 
 tiary in vain awaited the return of Abdul Hamid 
 to a wiser and more independent frame of mind ; 
 and at last, his continued stay in Constantinople 
 having ceased to consist with the dignity of the 
 Government by whom he was accredited, he was, 
 on July 15, 1887, recalled to England. 
 
 Few regrets of course were felt in this country 
 for the failure of the Convention. An evacuation 
 within three years would have been extremely 
 hazardous to the peace and security of Egypt, 
 and the further agreement that within two years 
 thereafter all British control over the Egyptian 
 Army should come to an end would have 
 added materially to dangers against which our 
 reserved power of re-entry would have but very 
 imperfectly provided. France, even from her own 
 suspicious and unfriendly point of view, would 
 
THE STRUGGLE FOR REFORMS 255 
 
 have done well or so it has always struck 
 foreign critics of her policy to accept the Con- 
 vention. But it suited her to attack and defeat 
 an arrangement by virtue of which if it had 
 been concluded we should have evacuated Egypt 
 nearly seven years ago; and in so doing she has 
 morally lost the right which, however, as a 
 matter of fact she is continually claiming to 
 exercise of protesting against the prolongation 
 of our stay in the country. It is as well to 
 remind those who are apt to lend too ready an 
 ear to French complaints on the subject, that 
 France, and France alone, is responsible for the 
 continuance of the British occupation. It is 
 nearly ten years since "perfidious Albion" 
 attempted to free herself from her entanglement 
 in Egyptian affairs by an effort so vigorous, not 
 to say violent, that its success would in the 
 opinion of many high authorities have en- 
 dangered the durability of her Egyptian work. 
 In our haste to conciliate those who objected to 
 the English scaffolding around the edifice of 
 reform, we were prepared to run no inconsider- 
 able risk of bringing the whole structure to the 
 ground. That may not have been good policy, 
 but it was certainly pretty strong evidence of 
 good faith. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 Reforms Accomplished 
 
 THE fate of Nubar Pasha may be said to 
 mark the close of the first and most urgent 
 stage of the great undertaking in which our repre- 
 sentative in Egypt was engaged. The country 
 was at last materially prospering. Its finances had 
 been reduced to permanent order ; the sources of 
 its industrial wealth had been reinvigorated ; its 
 executive departments had been purified and 
 rendered efficient ; its fiscal system had been 
 regularized and simplified, made humane and 
 equitable ; its Army had been set in the path of 
 improvement, and was steadily developing into a 
 trustworthy instrument of national defence ; its 
 police had been reorganized and redisciplined ; and 
 all this good work had, by Baring's firmness, been 
 secured against any attempt to undo it. One 
 thing more remained to be accomplished before 
 the English guardians of Egypt were entitled to 
 say that they had done all that could be done for 
 
 their ward, and that the rest must be left to 
 
 256 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 257 
 
 time. That one thing was the ^reform of the 
 judicial tribunal s . 
 
 This was also the one portion of the English 
 work which, owing to a variety of competing 
 circumstances the untoward quarrels of certain 
 English functionaries, the overwhelming pre- 
 occupation of Baring with other and even more 
 pressing duties, and the necessity of making some 
 concessions to the most powerful and capable of 
 Egyptian administrators had been turned over 
 to Nubar Pasha. As himself the creator of the 
 mixed tribunals he had just pretensions to high 
 authority, and it would have been hardly possible 
 in the troubled days of 1884 to dispute his claim 
 to superintend the working and determine the 
 composition of the native courts for himself. For 
 three years accordingly he retained the almost 
 undivided control of the Egyptian judiciary, 
 and the results of his management of the 
 business proved to be profoundly unsatisfactory. 
 At the moment which he unwisely selected to try 
 conclusions with the British Consul-General in a 
 pitched diplomatic battle, his failure to perform 
 the work which he had undertaken had become 
 conspicuous and notorious to the Egyptian, no 
 less than the European, community. The courts 
 were manned from top to bottom with his 
 nominees, and when, therefore, complaints of 
 the corruption and incapacity of the judges 
 
258 LORD CROMER 
 
 became general, when nothing was heard on all 
 hands but criticisms of the cumbrous procedure 
 of the courts, of the costliness and delay of 
 litigation, and of the doubtful nature of the 
 results, it was of course Nubar whom people 
 held responsible. 
 
 Ever since the last year of his ministry the 
 attention of the British representative and his 
 colleagues had had to be more and more closely 
 directed to the crying evils connected with the 
 administration of justice, evils which arose not 
 only from the incompetence of the native courts, 
 but from the arbitrary proceedings of the so- 
 called Commissions of Brigandage, which in 
 respect of a large class of crimes had been 
 substituted by Nubar Pasha for the regular 
 tribunals. It was the prevalence of brigand- 
 age which had broken down the new native courts 
 at the very outset of their career; and in 1884 
 and the following year first the investigation and 
 then the actual trial of crime of this description 
 had been taken out of the hands of these 
 tribunals, and entrusted to special Commissions 
 having the character and power of courts-martial. 
 These Commissions were originally appointed for 
 a few months only, but their powers were re- 
 newed by successive decrees, and for nearly five 
 years they dealt with the great mass of criminal 
 offences alike in Upper and Lower Egypt. They 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 259 
 
 were not without an infusion of the judicial 
 element, but their guiding spirit was adminis- 
 trative, and administrative of the Oriental type, 
 for they were presided over by a Mudir. More- 
 over they were placed under the control, not of 
 the Ministry of Justice, but of the Ministry of 
 the Interior of course a flagrant violation of the 
 fundamental principle of separating the judicial 
 from the executive power. 
 
 In October, 1887, M. Legrette, a Belgian, was 
 appointed Procureur-General, and was authorized 
 to institute an investigation of existing abuses. 
 In 1888, the year of Nubar's dismissal, his 
 inquiries bore fruit in a damning report, in which 
 the irregularities, the injustice, and the cruelties 
 of these tribunals were startlingly exposed. It 
 was discovered that they had freely employed 
 torture for obtaining evidence, that many persons 
 had been imprisoned for years without trial, and 
 that many others had been condemned to serve 
 punishment on the flimsiest evidence. In one 
 case nineteen people, all innocent, had been 
 condemned on the evidence of a single man, 
 who, as it subsequently turned out, had been 
 coerced into falsely accusing himself and his 
 associates. 
 
 Baring, of course, lost no time in pressing for 
 the abolition of these tribunals if tribunals they 
 -can be called ; and, the new Prime Minister, Riaz 
 
2 6o LORD CROMER 
 
 Pasha, who was at that time working fairly well 
 with his British advisers, having yielded with 
 some reluctance to the Consul-General's strenuous 
 representations, in the early summer of 1889 
 these Commissions were suppressed. 
 
 Much more than this, however, was required 
 to put the administration of justice in Egypt on 
 a satisfactory footing : how much more it will 
 need a fuller account of the Egyptian judicial 
 system, or rather systems, to explain. For, to 
 cite Sir Alfred Milner's admirable account of this 
 subject, there are as many as four : 
 
 (1) There is the old Koranic system, worked 
 by the Mehkemehs or Courts of the Religious 
 Law, which are now mainly confined to dealing 
 with the personal status of Mahomedans. 
 
 (2) There is the system of the Mixed Courts, 
 which deals with civil actions between foreigners 
 of different nationalities, or between foreigners 
 and natives, and in a small degree with the 
 criminal offences of foreigners. 
 
 (3) There are the Consular Courts, which deal 
 with the great body of foreign crime. 
 
 (4) There is the system of the new Native 
 Courts, which deals with civil actions between 
 natives, or with crimes committed by them. 
 
 It was practically with the Native Courts only 
 that the English reformer was in a position to 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 261 
 
 deal ; for the Religious Courts are rightly regarded 
 as institutions with which it is not advisable that 
 Christians should meddle ; the system of the 
 Mixed Tribunals can only be modified with 
 the unanimous consent of the fourteen Powers 
 by which they were established; and the Consular 
 Courts, unsatisfactory as in many respects they 
 are, discharge a function of which they could 
 not easily or indeed prudently be deprived, except 
 by extending the jurisdiction of the Mixed 
 Tribunals, or by so improving the quality of the 
 " justice" meted out by the new Native Courts 
 that Europeans could be fairly asked to submit 
 themselves and their cases to them. 
 
 There remained then only the Native Courts, 
 which had been left, as has been seen, to the 
 control of Nubar Pasha, and with such results as 
 have been recorded. Their signal failure to 
 fulfil the purpose for which they were designed 
 was only a new illustration of the very old truth 
 that men are of more importance than machinery. 
 Quid sine moribus leges proficiunt, asks the Latin 
 poet, and the question which he then raises as 
 to the efficacy of laws applies equally to the 
 efficiency of law courts. On paper the native 
 tribunals worked fairly well. Their codes and 
 procedure were with some unimportant alterations 
 borrowed from those of the Mixed Courts, which 
 in their turn had been borrowed from the codes 
 
262 LORD CROMER 
 
 and the procedure of France. Excellently, how- 
 ever, as such a system might be suited to the 
 case of a highly civilized country well equipped 
 with all the necessary appliances and personnel 
 of a complicated judicial mechanism, it was 
 extremely ill adapted both to the requirements 
 and to the capacities of Egypt, where the 
 majority of the cases justiciable in the Native 
 Courts are of a simple character, and where 
 cheapness and expedition, unattainable under the 
 too elaborate methods of French judicial admin- 
 istration, were objects of paramount importance. 
 In a word, the system adopted by the Native 
 Courts was at once too complex for the compre- 
 hension of the native community, and too costly 
 for their pockets. 
 
 And it was too ambitious for the public purse. 
 The numerical strength of the judicature was 
 fixed absurdly high at a moment when the state 
 of the finances was alarmingly low. It followed 
 that the scale of the judicial salaries had to be 
 adapted to the state of the finances, and even if the 
 judges had been uniformly competent they would 
 still have been exposed to the strongest tempta- 
 tion to become uniformly corrupt. But as a 
 matter of fact their competency was far from 
 uniform, as indeed may be readily imagined 
 when we recall the fact that Egypt was called 
 upon to man eight tribunals of First Instance with 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 263 
 
 about a dozen judges each, and provide nearly 
 twice that number for the Court of Appeal. It 
 was ridiculous to suppose that the country could 
 produce some six score of trained lawyers on 
 demand, and, as might have been expected, the 
 supply of functionaries thus qualified fell short of 
 the demand by something like seventy-five per 
 cent. Of the first occupants of the Native 
 Bench only about one in four had had a regular 
 legal training, and even of these a considerable 
 
 O O' 
 
 number were lawyers in name rather than fact. 
 Many of them had obtained their degrees from 
 the law schools of some too easy-going university, 
 and the smattering of jurisprudence which they 
 brought with it ill compensated for the process of 
 denationalization which they had undergone in 
 acquiring it. 
 
 Moreover it is extremely doubtful whether, if 
 there had been a sufficiency of judicial material 
 to select from, it would have been drawn upon 
 in fact. In the years 1883 and 1884 it was too 
 soon to expect that appointment should be made 
 by merit, especially in a branch of the public 
 service which we had deliberately left to the un- 
 controlled direction of native officials. Jobbery 
 and nepotism are hard to suppress in practice, 
 even in countries where they are disapproved of 
 in theory : and in Oriental communities they are 
 not even the objects of theoretical disapproval. 
 
264 LORD CROMER 
 
 There the state of public morality in these 
 matters finds expression, as Sir Alfred Milner 
 aptly puts it, in the question: "Why on earth, 
 if a man is a decent person whom you like and 
 to whom you wish well, should you not appoint 
 him to any vacant post ?" 
 
 The idea of special qualification as a necessary 
 condition of the efficient discharge of special 
 duties is of comparatively recent growth even in 
 the West. Neither the seed of it nor the soil for 
 it exists in the East. Hence, when the Native 
 Courts were first constituted, " the judgeships " 
 were simply regarded as so many opportunities 
 for giving worthy people whom it was desired to 
 benefit a modest income. 
 
 As a first step towards the reform of this 
 intolerable abuse, the Consul-General proposed 
 to strengthen the Native Courts by increasing the 
 number of the European judges. Here he found 
 himself confronted with more serious resistance 
 on the part of Riaz Pasha, but persevering in his 
 efforts with his usual calm tenacity he carried his 
 point, and in November, 1889, two additional 
 Englishmen were appointed to the Native Court 
 of Appeal, making in all three Englishmen and 
 three Belgians. It soon, however, became evident 
 that a more radical reform was needed, and Baring 
 then urged the temporary appointment of an 
 eminent Indian judge to examine the whole 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 265 
 
 system of native jurisprudence, and to make 
 proposals for its amendment. His recommen- 
 dation was adopted, and in the spring of 1890 
 Mr. (now Sir John) Scott, a judge of the High 
 Court of Bombay, came to Egypt to advise on 
 the question, his appointment being in the first 
 instance limited to one year. 
 
 At the end of 1890 Mr. Scott presented his 
 report, in which he suggested a number of 
 important changes in the constitution of the 
 Courts, insisting especially on the necessity of a 
 great improvement in their personnel. This 
 proposal had the effect of stimulating Riaz 
 Pasha's dissatisfaction to the fighting point. The 
 Minister of Justice was inspired by him to draft 
 a memorandum condemning Mr. Scott's recom- 
 mendations from beginning to end. This step 
 was obviously meant, and was promptly taken, as 
 a declaration of war. Baring at once perceived 
 that the whole question of reform or no reform 
 in the native administration of justice was at 
 issue, and, acting under instructions from home, 
 he pressed more energetically than ever for the 
 adoption of Mr. Scott's scheme, and for the 
 appointment of its author to direct its application. 
 
 Upon this, history repeated itself. Riaz, like 
 Nubar before him, turned at once to the Khedive 
 and endeavoured to enlist him on the side of 
 resistance. But Tewfik Pasha's attitude on this 
 
266 LORD CROMER 
 
 occasion was determined by the consideration 
 expressed in the homely formula, " Once bit, 
 twice shy." He had no mind to expose himself 
 to a second rebuff from Downing Street, and 
 as soon as he perceived that the consequence 
 threatened he drew back. Mr. Scott's recom- 
 mendations were accepted, and he himself 
 appointed to a permanent post ; and Riaz Pasha, 
 like his predecessor, had to submit to a defeat 
 which proved politically fatal. The relations 
 between him and the Khedive became strained, 
 and in May, 1891, on the plea of ill health, he 
 resigned his office. 
 
 The reforms which he had resisted were now 
 put in hand, and in the course of the few years 
 that have since elapsed have virtually transformed 
 the judicial system of Egypt. Had the matter 
 been res Integra the scheme of reorganization 
 would probably have followed the lines of the 
 Indian system, which has been proved by experi- 
 ence to be so well suited to the requirements of 
 needy litigants, and the trial of what are in most 
 instances simple causes. The Egyptian codes 
 and procedure were, however, in existence ; the 
 native judicial body knew how to work with 
 them, and with no other ; the people were accus- 
 tomed to them. It was wisely resolved, therefore, 
 to proceed by way of improvement only, and not 
 by way of demolition and reconstruction. Legal 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 267 
 
 procedure had been slow, dear, and, as regards 
 the redress of trifling injuries, inaccessible in a 
 great measure to the majority of the people. To 
 remedy these defects the number of judges which 
 once formed the quorum in a multitude of cases, 
 whether civil or criminal, has been reduced, and 
 the system of summary justice extended ; for 
 the five judges who were formerly necessary to 
 construct a Court, whether of Appeal or First 
 Instance, three have in almost all cases been now 
 substituted. On the other hand, instead of there 
 being only one judge of summary jurisdiction 
 attached to each tribunal, there are now more 
 than twenty employed throughout the country, 
 and these are ambulatory instead of stationary, 
 so that petty suits and offences can be dealt with 
 on the spot. Their jurisdiction extends to all 
 misdemeanours and to all civil actions not in- 
 volving a sum of more than 100. An appeal 
 lies from these single judges to a Three-judge 
 Court at the respective tribunals of First Instance, 
 where judgment on all misdemeanours and all the 
 civil suits triable by a single judge is final. The 
 general effect of these changes has been to 
 expedite the action of the law, to economize the 
 time of the judges and the money of the suitors, 
 and to reserve the full strength of the highest 
 Court for really important questions. 
 
 By extending the system of summary jurisdic- 
 
268 LORD CROMER 
 
 tion, however, and by reducing the number of 
 judges sitting in each Court, an increased weight 
 of responsibility is necessarily thrown on 
 individual judges, and concurrently, therefore, 
 with the reorganization of the Courts it became 
 essential to improve the personnel of the judicial 
 body. A considerable proportion of the old 
 judges were pensioned off, and their places filled 
 by men of upright character and of adequate legal 
 training. A Commission of Superintendence was 
 also established, consisting of three European 
 members, who with the aid of three native 
 inspectors examine the records of a certain 
 number of cases decided by the Summary Court 
 and Courts of First Instance. It does not usurp 
 the functions of a Court of Appeal, and has no 
 power to revise decisions. But to quote the most 
 accurate description of it, it " calls the attention 
 of individual judges to any flagrant errors which 
 they may have committed, and at the same time 
 it issues general circulars, containing explanations 
 and instructions on important points of law and 
 practice, on which from an examination of cases it 
 appears that the judges in general have a special 
 tendency to go wrong." 
 
 There is no denying that the very conception 
 of a Commission appointed to " instruct " and 
 keep in order a body of the judges is violently 
 repugnant to the mind of the Western lawyer, 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 269 
 
 and it is not surprising that the institution should 
 have been severely criticized on its first creation. 
 Nor is it quite successfully defended by its ablest 
 apologist, who describes its method of super- 
 vision as " analogous to the inspecting powers 
 possessed by the High Courts in India " ; for the 
 fact that in the latter case the inspectors are 
 themselves judicial officers of a higher grade than 
 the inspected, and are therefore only informally 
 exercising the corrective authority which belongs 
 to their regular jurisdiction, strikes at the very 
 root of the alleged analogy. It would be 
 better to seek the justification for the Commission 
 not in principle, but in practice. It is stated 
 to have proved a great success, not only in 
 ensuring uniformity of action on the part 
 of the Courts, but in promoting the zeal and 
 efficiency of the judicial staff. 
 
 Curiously enough, however, it is not so much 
 these Oriental tribunals as those latest products of 
 Occidental (or Occidentalized-Eastern) statesman- 
 ship the mixed tribunals which have most 
 recently attracted distrustful attention, and the 
 working of which gives ground in one respect at 
 least for somewhat grave anxiety. It is not, to 
 do them justice, that they have in any degree 
 disappointed expectations as to their judicial 
 efficiency for the disposal of ordinary litigious 
 business, involving no international jealousies. 
 
270 LORD CROMER 
 
 The serious question which has arisen in regard 
 to them is connected not with the legal but with 
 the political aspect of their jurisdiction, and has 
 indeed only illustrated the striking accuracy of 
 the final criticism with which Sir Alfred Milner 
 closes his account of them. The creation, he 
 remarks, " of the mixed tribunals certainly 
 tended to improve the administration of justice, 
 but it evidently did not simplify the political con- 
 stitution of Egypt. . . . They might nominally 
 be the Courts of the Khedive, who appointed 
 their foreign members, although on the proposal 
 of the Powers. But they were in reality foreign 
 Courts, deriving their authority from outside, and 
 they have not hesitated to exercise that authority 
 against the native Government whenever they 
 thought it right to do so. ... Judicially far 
 better, they are at the same time politically far 
 more formidable, than the authorities whom they 
 have supplanted." 
 
 The collision between the Egyptian Govern- 
 ment and the Caisse de la Dette has been noticed 
 in an earlier page of this volume, as well as the 
 method by which the quarrel was prevented 
 from being pushed to extremities. It may be 
 remembered that the Commissioners actually 
 obtained judgment against the Government from 
 the mixed tribunals through a Court of First 
 Instance, and that the appeal against that decision, 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 271 
 
 which would in all probability have been 
 sustained in a higher Court, was only not pro- 
 ceeded with because in the meantime the 
 Convention of London, concluded by the 
 Powers in March, 1885, deprived the dispute 
 between the Caisse and the Government of any 
 practical importance. By a singular revolution 
 of the wheel of fortune the successful plaintiff in 
 that case has since become an unsuccessful 
 defendant before the very same tribunals ; 
 and inasmuch as it has raised the question as 
 to the extent of their competency and juris- 
 diction in an acute form, and in a connection 
 with very grave issues of English and Egyptian 
 policy, a brief reference should be made to it 
 in this place. 
 
 When the recent advance upon Dongola had 
 been determined on, the British Government, 
 after taking the precaution of ascertaining that a 
 majority of the Commissioners regarded the 
 application as legitimate, and were prepared to 
 assent to it, applied to the Caisse for an advance 
 of , 500,000 from the Reserve Fund, in order to 
 meet the charges for the expedition. Four out 
 of the six of the representatives of the Great 
 Powers on this body gave their sanction, two 
 only, the French and Russian Commissioners, 
 withholding theirs. Nobody doubted then or 
 now that the refusal of their assent was dictated 
 
2 72 LORD CROMER 
 
 by political considerations, nor indeed would it 
 be easy to suggest any reason which would even 
 plausibly connect it with the interests of Egypt 
 herself. The Commission of the Caisse were 
 specially authorized to devote from time to time, 
 on the application of the Egyptian Government, 
 a portion of the Reserve Fund to meeting any 
 extraordinary expenditure which might be 
 required by that Government beyond the 
 ordinary expenses of the year. The majority of 
 the Commissioners held that the expedition to 
 Dongola was included among the purposes for 
 which such extraordinary expenditure might 
 properly be incurred ; and assuredly if there is 
 any form of undertaking in which a Government 
 may be said to have a legitimate interest, one 
 might suppose it to be that of recovering a 
 lost arid fertile province, together with the natural 
 wealth contained in its soil and the revenues 
 therefrom. One thing at any rate is clear, that 
 whether the expenditure in question was or was 
 not rightly included in this category, there was 
 not a human being in Cairo or elsewhere who 
 ever imagined that the decision of the majority 
 of the Caisse thereon was otherwise than final 
 Many other questions had before this been decided 
 by a majority and action taken on the decision ; 
 nor indeed was it less than preposterous to 
 suppose that when the Commission was estab- 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 273 
 
 lished by the decree of 1876 the Powers could 
 have intended that it should be absolutely in- 
 capable of doing anything unless the whole of its 
 members, representing in some instances the keen 
 rivalries of European States, were absolutely 
 unanimous. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was the operation of just one 
 of those rivalries which prompted the attempt 
 unfortunately successful to establish this in- 
 tolerable situation by judicial decree. Certain 
 Egyptian bondholders were moved to take 
 proceedings against the Commissioners of the 
 Caisse as for a breach of the Law of Liquidation 
 by diverting the funds entrusted to them from 
 the purposes to which they were confined, under 
 the terms of that arrangement ; and judgment 
 went against the defendants in the Court of First 
 Instance. An appeal was of course taken, but 
 in the Appellate Court of the mixed tribunals 
 the decision was confirmed. The preliminary 
 contention of the Commission of course was, that 
 a decision of the majority of their body was 
 binding upon the remainder ; but the Court 
 acted apparently upon the view that the terms 
 of the Law of Liquidation of 1880 differing in 
 this respect, and differing, as was alleged, by the 
 intention of the framers, from the decree of 1876 
 vested separate rights of action in each Com- 
 missioner. That this assumed intention did not 
 
274 LORD CROMER 
 
 exist has been placed beyond doubt by the 
 testimony of Lord Cromer himself, who himself 
 took part in drawing up the Law of Liquidation, 
 and who has stated that to his own knowledge 
 the difference of the terms in which the power 
 of the Commissioners are respectively described 
 in the two documents was a mere accidental 
 difference of drafting, and that it was not in 
 the least designed by the authors of the law of 
 1880 to give to individual Commissioners any 
 further or other powers than they possessed 
 under the decree of 1876. 
 
 The point, however, is not of capital import- 
 ance, since it is not clear from the decision of the 
 Appellate Courts that its judges would not in any 
 case have claimed to deal with the whole question 
 on the merits, and to determine whether the 
 advance of the money was or was not one made 
 for a legitimate purpose, and within the com- 
 petence of the Commissioners of the Debt to 
 sanction. And of course if this is the extent of 
 the tribunal's arrogation of jurisdiction, the 
 unanimity or otherwise of the Commission, and 
 the ability or inability of the majority to bind 
 the minority, become immaterial points. It is 
 enough that in the judgment as it stands the 
 mixed tribunals have asserted a right not merely 
 to decide questions of policy (for this it might 
 indirectly become their duty to do in the regular 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 275 
 
 discharge of their functions as for instance, in 
 their judgment in favour of the Caisse and against 
 the Government with reference to the Northbrook 
 financial coup d'ttaf], but to decide them in a 
 sense directly contrary to that of the body 
 specially entrusted with jurisdiction over them by 
 agreement of the Great Powers. The situation 
 was thus described by Sir Michael Hicks- Beach 
 in the House of Commons : " Here," he said, 
 " was a Reserve Fund which at the time of the 
 Dongola Expedition amounted to ,2,750,000. 
 A considerable part of it was not needed for any 
 other purpose. It had been accumulated by the 
 wise financial administration of the Egyptian 
 Government acting under our advice. Its very 
 existence was due to no other cause. The 
 Egyptian Government decided that it was neces- 
 sary that part of the fund should be applied to 
 the cost of the Dongola Expedition. We who 
 are responsible after all for the safety of Egypt 
 a responsibility which no other Power shares 
 with us in any measure at all we supported the 
 view of the Egyptian Government ; but the 
 whole thing is overturned and set aside by the 
 verdict of the Mixed Court of Appeal." 
 
 The Court, by the way, was not very well 
 " mixed," for it contained no representative either 
 of Austria or of Great Britain the last certainly 
 by no means an unimportant ingredient in that 
 
276 LORD CROMER 
 
 particular judicial salad and the decision, being 
 given by a Bench equally divided in opinion, only 
 operated in favour of the plaintiff by virtue of a 
 rule, admittedly only of custom and not of law, 
 whereby the opinion of the division which contains 
 a majority of European judges is allowed to 
 prevail. This very " prerogative," however, only 
 brings into stronger relief the absurdity of a 
 system which carefully provides for the repre- 
 sentation of every one of the six Powers in the 
 Commission appointed to determine questions of 
 financial policy, and then permits its decisions to 
 be overruled by a Court in which two of these 
 Powers are without voice or vote. 
 
 It will at all events not surprise anybody 
 that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should 
 have added a strong expression of his opinion 
 that when next year the time arrives at 
 which the constitution and the powers of 
 these Mixed Courts have to be reconsidered, 
 "a very grave question ought to and must 
 arise as to what shall be their powers and 
 authority in the future, and whether they shall be 
 allowed in this way to interfere in affairs which 
 have been deliberately entrusted by the Great 
 Powers to another tribunal altogether." Perhaps, 
 however, the foregoing proposition that this 
 announcement will not surprise anybody is a little 
 too broadly stated. It should have been said 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 277 
 
 that it would surprise nobody save those who, 
 like Sir William Harcourt, were under the 
 impression that a sort of halo of international 
 sacrosanctity surrounded these same mixed 
 tribunals. Such an impression, it is true, is 
 more easily to be excused to the " man in the 
 street" than to the member of a Government 
 which actually did, and did more than once, what 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach only suggested the 
 advisability of doing. Yet that, unfortunately for 
 the statesman, is in fact the difference between 
 him and his fellow-critics of the Opposition. 
 The exact state of the case, and the precise 
 status of the Court, have been explained with 
 a lucidity so helpful to the public, if so cruel 
 to Sir William Harcourt, by the well-known 
 correspondent of the Times who signs himself 
 "A Twenty Years Resident in Egypt," that the 
 following extract from one of his letters will 
 probably dispel any lingering misconceptions on 
 the subject : 
 
 "The mixed tribunals were instituted by the Egyptian 
 Government, not only without pressure from Europe, but in 
 spite of the opposition of many Powers notably France. 
 They were instituted in order to do away with the existing 
 Consular Courts. One of the first Powers to agree was 
 Great Britain. The last great Power to come into the agree- 
 ment was France, and she only joined when she found that 
 it was going to be effected without her. 
 
 " It is important to bear in mind that it was not a con- 
 cession extracted from Egypt by the Powers, but one extracted 
 
278 LORD CROMER 
 
 from the Powers by Egypt, and which Egypt had the technical 
 right to relinquish by simple decree abolishing the Courts and 
 returning to the Consular system. 
 
 " But every Power had the same right, for the French 
 Government, opposed from the first to the tribunals, made an 
 important proviso applicable to any other Power, that if the 
 result of the experience was not satisfactory, she reserved 
 the right of returning to the old system without waiting for the 
 termination of the experimental period of five years. 
 
 "At the expiration of the first five years 1880 or 1881 
 the British Government desired a certain revision of the 
 powers of the tribunals, and not obtaining it, only consented 
 to renew for one year. This yearly renewal went on for two 
 or three years, until the British Government, having obtained a 
 part of what it asked, the five years arrangements began again." 
 
 So much for the absurd charge against the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer of the present 
 Administration of having used "language of 
 menace and defiance" in merely suggesting that 
 Great Britain should exercise the right, expressly 
 reserved to each one of the Powers, of examining 
 the operation of the judicature to which she, like 
 all the others, only provisionally assented ; and 
 of making a renewal of that assent conditional 
 on the removal of the grave political incon- 
 veniences and anomalies which have arisen from 
 their interpretation of their judicial powers. Of 
 these powers, and of those also of the Caisse de 
 la Dette, the writer above quoted remarks with 
 much pertinence, that "they were conferred 
 when Egypt was financially and morally bank- 
 rupt." The arrangements then made "to control 
 
REFORMS ACCOMPLISHED 279 
 
 a bankrupt and corrupt despot are wholly inap- 
 plicable to the present situation in Egypt, and 
 unless considerable modification is made, some 
 means will have to be found for terminating the 
 existence of the mixed tribunals established 
 by Khedivial decree in 1875-76." 
 
 To anybody indeed but a political partisan or a 
 legal pedant or what is perhaps more common 
 than either, a politician affecting the legal pedant 
 in order to disguise the political partisan the 
 situation disclosed by this incident must appear 
 plainly intolerable. On one side a Board of 
 Commissioners, originally instituted only to pro- 
 tect the interests of the public creditor, but now 
 virtually clothed with full power to control the 
 whole financial policy of Egypt, yet with its 
 omnipotence converted into impotence by the 
 theory that each one of its members possesses 
 that liberum veto which rendered the old Polish 
 Diet the laughing - stock of the world : on 
 the other side a tribunal which, if the Board 
 were to recover its omnipotence by unanimity, 
 could at pleasure reduce it again to impotence by 
 an adverse decree. To pretend that that state of 
 things is too sacred to be meddled with is simply 
 ridiculous. Why, if it were to be discovered 
 any day in this country that the judges of the 
 High Court had judicially declared it to be within 
 their jurisdiction to examine, say, the financial 
 
280 LORD CROMER 
 
 provisions embodied in a Budget Bill, and to 
 pronounce them invalid, it may be safely said 
 that, with all our reverence for the constitution, 
 and jealous respect for the independence of the 
 judiciary, we should not be long in legislating 
 to curtail their powers. The Egyptian Mixed 
 Tribunals are practically asserting the same 
 sort of political authority as belongs under the 
 American Constitution to the Supreme Court of 
 the United States. And a Supreme Court of 
 this description has to be deliberately created : 
 no nation would allow it to come into existence 
 by accident. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 The New Khedive 
 
 IN 1892 Sir Evelyn Baring was raised to the 
 peerage under the title of Lord Cromer, and 
 in the same year occurred the untimely death of 
 Tewfik Pasha and the descent of the Khediviate 
 to his son. Successions in Oriental countries 
 are very often ticklish affairs. They are some- 
 times preceded by a murder and occasionally 
 followed by an insurrection ; while even in the 
 case of States under Western tutelage they are not 
 infrequently fraught with trouble and anxiety to 
 the protecting Power. The succession of Prince 
 Abbas Helmy had disturbing consequences of this 
 description for the British Government. Tewfik's 
 successor was a youth of eighteen, of unknown 
 temperament and tendencies, and whose policy, 
 therefore, it was impossible to forecast. That he 
 had received a European education was a circum- 
 stance on which conjectures of a very diverse 
 character might with equal plausibility be founded. 
 It is possible, as our experience with the Indian 
 Babu has too often proved, to occidentalize an 
 Oriental without making anything better than an 
 
 281 
 
282 LORD CROMER 
 
 inferior European. To acquire the enlightenment 
 of the West may mean no more than indoctrin- 
 ation with those Western ideas and theories which 
 are least susceptible of safe application to the 
 government of Eastern States. In the case of 
 the young Khedive, moreover, a European meant 
 a Continental education, and there is hardly any 
 Continental school to which one would by 
 preference send an Egyptian Prince on whom it 
 were desired to impress correct views as to the 
 relation of his native country to the British 
 Power. Whether the ideas he was actually found 
 to hold on this subject were imbibed by him 
 abroad or at home, before or after his accession 
 to the Khediviate, it is impossible to say ; but 
 what is certain is that his behaviour during 
 the earliest days of his rule must have been 
 suggested, if it were the result of suggestion at 
 all, from a quarter unfriendly to ourselves and 
 to our authority in Egypt. 
 
 During the later months of 1892 there were 
 many indications of coming trouble, but it was 
 not till January of the following year that Abbas 
 declared war, so to speak, with the British 
 Government. On the i5th of that month he 
 suddenly startled the world by dismissing the 
 Prime Minister, Mustapha Fehmy, an adviser who 
 enjoyed the entire confidence of the Consul- 
 General and the Anglo-Egyptian officials as a 
 
THE KHEDIVE. 
 
 From a Photograph by J. Heyman, of Cairo. 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 283 
 
 body, and by appointing Fakhri Pasha Prime 
 Minister in his place. At that time, as had been 
 the case just ten years before, Mr. Gladstone was 
 at the Treasury ; but fortunately Lord Granville 
 was not at the Foreign Office. His successor 
 was a Minister who had already shown a firm 
 grasp of affairs abroad and a high courage in 
 dealing with them, and he had entered this 
 particular Cabinet on terms which allowed him 
 exceptional freedom of hand. 
 
 With what admirable promptitude and decision 
 he met the crisis even the Blue Book that grave 
 of all that is dramatic in diplomacy cannot 
 wholly conceal. The story indeed might almost 
 be left to tell itself in the series of telegrams 
 which flashed backwards and forwards between 
 the Foreign Office in London and the British 
 Agency in Cairo during these two or three 
 momentous January days. For another reason, 
 too, the despatches deserve to be set out in full, 
 as showing incidentally how little this dispute was 
 sought by the British Government, and how 
 absurd therefore were the French insinuations that 
 we had fixed a querelle d'Allemand on the young 
 Khedive. This is proved by a despatch from 
 Lord Cromer under date of December 19, 1892, 
 wherein, in view of the then serious illness of 
 Mustapha Pasha Fehmy and the possibility that 
 a successor to him might have to be appointed, 
 
284 LORD CROMER 
 
 the Consul-General telegraphs : "I do not think 
 it will become necessary for me to interfere 
 directly, and unless the Khedive should wish to 
 make any highly objectionable appointment, I 
 propose standing aloof as much as possible." 
 This attitude was formally approved by Lord 
 Rosebery, and when Tigrane Pasha's appoint- 
 ment was proposed by the Khedive some days 
 later, Lord Cromer, although the project met, he 
 says, with a very unfavourable reception both 
 from the English officials and the nation generally, 
 contented himself with " discouraging the idea " 
 on the ground that he considered it " advisable 
 that the Prime Minister should under present 
 circumstances be a Mahomedan." In this also 
 the Foreign Secretary concurred ; but with the 
 recovery of Mustapha Fehmy the question of 
 course dropped, only, however, to be renewed 
 a fortnight later, when the state of Mustapha's 
 health was put forward by the Khedive as a 
 pretext for his evidently premeditated coup. The 
 gravity of this move, and of the further action 
 which it foreshadowed, was instantly discerned 
 by the watchful eyes of our Agent at Cairo, who 
 thus telegraphed without a moment's delay to 
 Downing Street : 
 
 "The last time I saw the Khedive it was fully understood 
 that as Mustapha Pasha Fehmy was recovering there was no 
 longer any question of naming another Prime Minister. This 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 285 
 
 morning the Khedive's Private Secretary came to inform me 
 that Mustapha Pasha Fehmy was dismissed and Fakhri Pasha 
 named in his place. He was formerly Minister of Justice 
 and was dismissed on my advice, as he was unfavourable to 
 judicial reform. I have seen the Khedive. He bases the 
 change on the argument that Mustapha Pasha Fehmy's state 
 of health will not allow him to take up his work for some long 
 while. There is no reason why he should be absent for more 
 than six weeks. The intention to make the change is generally 
 known, but the Khedive has promised me to stop the issue of 
 any official notification till I could communicate with your 
 Lordship. I beg to refer to Lord Granville's despatch of 4th 
 January, 1884, on the subject of English advice being followed 
 while the occupation lasts. The action of the Khedive must 
 change the whole situation, both of the British Government 
 and the English officials, and great trouble will ensue. 
 
 " The Khedive also wishes to change the Ministers of 
 Finance and Justice. To these changes I would offer no 
 objection. I wish to impress very strongly on Her Majesty's 
 Government the importance of the present question." 
 
 The spirit of the new appointment, that of a 
 Minister who had actually been dismissed by the 
 Consul-General's advice, was unmistakable. It 
 was and could only be meant as a deliberate 
 affront to Lord Cromer, and, through him, to the 
 British Government. The Foreign Secretary's 
 telegraphic reply was prompt and decisive : 
 
 " Her Majesty's Government expect to be consulted in 
 such important matters as a change of Ministers. No change 
 appears to be at present either necessary or peremptory. We 
 cannot therefore sanction the proposed nomination of -FerTrrry jt\ ' 
 Pasha." 
 
 On the day of the despatch of this telegram 
 
286 LORD CROMER 
 
 another and still graver communication was 
 received from Lord Cromer in these words : 
 
 " I hear rumours from a fairly good source that if the 
 Khedive is successful in the present undertaking the next step 
 will be a wholesale dismissal of English officials. The latter, 
 acting on my instructions, have declined to recognize new 
 Minister pending receipt of instructions from London." 
 
 The Consul-General lost no time in acting on 
 the Foreign Secretary's despatch. He called on 
 Abbas Pasha the next morning, and thus reports 
 the result of his interview : 
 
 " I have seen the Khedive, and given him a copy of your 
 Lordship's telegram dated yesterday. In doing so I said that in 
 the event of his agreeing to reinstate Mustapha Pasha Fehmy as 
 Prime Minister no objection would be offered to the proposed 
 changes as regards the Departments of Finance and Justice. 
 In the contrary event I must reserve the liberty of action 
 of Her Majesty's Government as regards all these Ministers. 
 I said I did not think it would be just of me to press him for 
 an immediate answer, and that unless he sent for me at 
 an earlier date I would call to-morrow morning to hear 
 his answer. I added that it was not yet too late to yield, and 
 that I earnestly hoped he would do so, as otherwise affairs 
 might become more serious and complicated. The Khedive 
 said nothing from which I could gather probable nature of 
 his reply." 
 
 To this Lord Rosebery instantly made 
 answer : 
 
 " Your Lordship should inform the Khedive, in case of his 
 refusing to take your advice, that His Highness must be pre- 
 pared to take the grave consequences of his act, and that 
 you must at once refer to Her Majesty's Government for 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 287 
 
 As usual at the acutest stage of an Egyptian 
 crisis France intervened, and the Foreign Secre- 
 tary soon found himself in the favourite attitude 
 of the British sailor in the palmy days of nautical 
 drama the central figure in a "combat of three." 
 He had to keep a tight hold of the young 
 Khedive with one hand, while he parried the 
 thrusts of M. Waddington with the other. Thus 
 he writes to Lord Dufferin : 
 
 "The French Ambassador inquired to-day about the recent 
 proposed change of Ministry in Egypt and its causes. 
 
 " As to the facts, I told him that I could give him no more 
 information than was in the papers, except that we had 
 presented our formal protest against the appointment of the 
 new Prime Minister. 
 
 "M. Waddington intimated that our course of action 
 appeared to indicate that we claimed the right to nominate the 
 Prime Minister ourselves. I said that that was not the way 
 in which I should put the matter, but we did claim the right 
 to give authoritative advice in conformity with the terms 
 of Lord Granville's despatch of the 4th January, 1884, as 
 to the choice of Ministers. Indeed, so long as the British flag 
 was there and the British forces were in occupation it would 
 not be possible for us to allow the whole Administration, 
 beginning at the top, to be reversed at the mere whim of 
 the Khedive. The situation was undoubtedly grave, and I 
 trusted that the Khedive would be brought to a more 
 reasonable frame of mind without further measures. 
 
 "The Ambassador then said he had received a despatch 
 stating that in conversation the Khedive had stated that when 
 there was a question of nominating a successor to Mustapha 
 Pasha Fehmy, then at the point of death, Lord Cromer had 
 refused the sanction of Her Majesty's Government to the 
 appointment of any Christian Prime Minister. I expressed my 
 belief that Lord Cromer had used no such general expression. 
 
288 LORD CROMER 
 
 "The French Government, M. Waddington went on to say, 
 believed that the Khedive had been moved to this serious 
 action by irritation at hearing that Lord Cromer had assured 
 Mustapha Pasha Fehmy of his support, even against the 
 Khedive, his master. 
 
 "I rejoined that I was not aware of this report, which 
 was probably due to mere exaggeration by some members of 
 the Khedive's Court." 
 
 The rumoured incidents at the interview which 
 preceded the surrender of the Khedive will be 
 referred to hereafter. In the official account of 
 it Lord Cromer telegraphs that " His Highness 
 expressed his regret at occurrence of recent 
 incident, and pointed out that it would humiliate 
 him and make him lose all his authority in 
 the country if he were obliged to reinstate 
 Mustapha Pasha Fehmy." He suggested the 
 compromise of his being allowed to nominate 
 Riaz Pasha in his place a proposal which 
 was accepted by Lord Cromer, whose assent 
 to it was duly ratified by the British Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 But it would be unjust to the brilliant States- 
 man who then presided at the Foreign Office, 
 and who dealt so vigorously with this anxious 
 crisis, to close the narrative without reporting 
 the last and neatest passage of arms between 
 him and M. Waddington. Thus he describes 
 it to our representative in Paris : 
 
 " At a further interview with the French Ambassador 
 to-day His Excellency stated that he was instructed by his 
 
THE NE W KHEDIVE 289 
 
 Government to lay a formal protest against the action taken 
 by Lord Cromer with regard to the nomination of Fakhri 
 Pasha as Prime Minister in Egypt. What the French 
 Government chiefly objected to was the high-handed nature of 
 the proceeding. It amounted to this, that the Khedive was 
 not to appoint any Minister, except at the goodwill and 
 pleasure of the British Government. Such an event was 
 unprecedented in the history of the British occupation. It 
 went, in the opinion of the French Government, far beyond the 
 terms of Lord Granville's despatch, and would, His Excellency 
 feared, be taken throughout Europe, as in France, to be a long 
 step in the direction of actual annexation. 
 
 "As regards the nature of the proceeding, I said in 
 my reply to M. Waddington that I was aware that there 
 had been some high-handedness ; but that it had been on the 
 part of the Khedive, who without notice, warning, or consul- 
 tation had selected as his Prime Minister a person notoriously 
 unfitted for the position. To admit such a pretension would 
 be to deprive the British occupation of any reason for 
 existence, as it would open the door to the very maladministra- 
 tion to prevent which this country had in concert with France 
 intervened in Egypt. For as a matter of fact, if His Highness 
 had carte blanche to appoint whom lie pleased to any post in 
 the Administration, beginning at the top, there would be no 
 safeguard whatever against the return of the worst abuses 
 which existed under the regime of the ex-Khedive Ismail. 
 
 "His Excellency had said that the proceeding was unprece- 
 dented, and indeed it was so for one obvious reason. It had 
 never happened in the reign of the Khedive Tewfik, for 
 though that Prince had often changed his Ministers, he had 
 always been wise enough to take the British representative 
 into his counsel. And when His Excellency spoke of the 
 high-handed nature of Lord Cromer's proceeding, I was at a 
 loss to understand his meaning. The Khedive had named an 
 unacceptable Minister, and Lord Cromer on the grounds I had 
 mentioned had entered a protest. At any rate, when His 
 Excellency called to mind the express purpose for which 
 he had sought the present interview, he could hardly contend 
 that a protest was in itself a high-handed proceeding." 
 
 T 
 
2 9 o LORD CROMER 
 
 One does not know whether most to admire the 
 urbanity of form which distinguishes this verbally 
 effective retort, or the genial audacity which 
 characterizes its essentially inconsequent matter. 
 We are not told what or whether any reply was 
 made to it by M. Waddington, but it would not 
 at all surprise us to learn that His Excellency 
 was for the moment too taken aback to question 
 the soundness of the analogy, and that it was still 
 "holding the field" when the interview came to 
 an end. Perhaps it was closed before the thought 
 occurred to him that there are " protests " and 
 " protests," and that the cases compared by Lord 
 Rosebery would have somewhat better satisfied 
 the true conditions of a parallel if the French 
 Army had been in occupation of London, and 
 M. Waddington had been like Lord Cromer. in 
 a position to support his protest by an irresistible 
 body of arguments, held in reserve at not much 
 greater distance than the barracks in Birdcage 
 Walk. It is easy to say that this retort was 
 obvious, but it was one of those obvious retorts 
 which to a man whose breath has just been taken 
 away by so daring a sophism may only suggest 
 itself in the form of a bon-mot d'escalier. It is 
 quite possible, therefore, that M. Waddington 
 might have already descended the stairs at the 
 Foreign Office before it struck him that the 
 protest he had just delivered was not exactly 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 291 
 
 " on all fours " with that which Lord Cromer had 
 lodged at the Abdin Palace. 
 
 It is to be noted, however, that, before being 
 staggered by this unexpected comparison, the 
 French Ambassador had retained sufficient pre- 
 sence of mind to declare that the action of the 
 British Government "went far beyond the terms 
 of Lord Granville's despatch " ; and so in truth it 
 did. It is all very well, and no doubt legitimate 
 as diplomatic " fence," to contend that our method 
 of treating the sudden emergency which had arisen 
 was constructively prescribed in the famous docu- 
 ment referred to, and that to anyone acting in 
 the spirit of that admirably firm deliverance of 
 a deplorably weak Statesman the course was 
 clear. But it must be remembered that merely 
 to act in its spirit in the circumstances which 
 now presented themselves involved a very 
 momentous extension of its letter. " It should," 
 Lord Granville had written, " be made clear 
 to the Egyptian Ministers and Governors of 
 provinces that the responsibility which for the 
 time rests on England obliges Her Majesty's 
 Government to insist on the policy which they 
 recommend, and that it will be necessary that 
 those Ministers and Governors who do not follow 
 this course should cease to hold their offices." 
 But what was here in question was not the 
 disposition of officials, but the acts of their 
 
292 LORD CROMER 
 
 Sovereign ; what the British Government were 
 confronted with was not the individual recalci- 
 trancy of Ministers who were unfriendly to the 
 British policy, but the deliberate design of the 
 Khedive to appoint and sustain in office such 
 Ministers as would assist him to bring that policy 
 to nought. To act, therefore, in the spirit of 
 Lord Granville's declaration it was necessary for 
 his successor to take the very decisive step of 
 inserting the words " and the Khedive himself " 
 after the words " Egyptian Ministers and 
 Governors," and of so amplifying the final 
 words of the declaration as to make it not only 
 impose on contumacious Ministers the penalty 
 of dismissal from office, but threaten an im- 
 practicable Khedive with deposition from the 
 throne. 
 
 This was an undoubtedly logical corollary from 
 the declared policy of the British Government ; 
 but it is not every Government that has the 
 courage of its logic. Thanks, however, to its 
 representative Minister at home, and its repre- 
 sentative agent abroad, the Government then 
 in power fortunately had. Lord Rosebery 
 telegraphed his instructions to Lord Cromer, 
 with full confidence in the strength of the man 
 who was to carry them out ; and Lord Cromer 
 executed them with equal assurance of the 
 firmness of the man from whom they had been 
 
ffi 
 
 if 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 293 
 
 received. The result was a sharp but short 
 struggle, followed by a complete victory. What 
 passed between the British Consul-General and 
 the young Khedive at that fateful interview on 
 January 1 7 belongs of course to the secret history 
 of diplomacy, and Blue Books cannot be expected 
 to divulge it. But it is tolerably well known that 
 on the side of the British Consul-General very 
 plain language had to be used. It was currently 
 reported in Cairo that at a critical point in one of 
 their colloquies Lord Cromer had to invite His 
 Highness to look from a window of the Abdin 
 Palace on a British regiment paraded for some 
 military purpose or other on the square without, 
 and thus tacitly to remind him of the irresistible 
 power which lay behind the measured and 
 courteous remonstrances of his adviser. If so 
 blunt an appeal to the visible symbols of coercion 
 became really necessary, we cannot doubt that it 
 was painful to the Consul-General to employ it 
 against an inexperienced youth, possibly less to be 
 blamed for his self-will than to be pitied for the 
 misfortune of having fallen under the influence of 
 unscrupulous and intriguing councillors. But as 
 little can we doubt, or could Lord Cromer have 
 doubted, that the sternest was also the kindest 
 treatment of the misguided Khedive, and that 
 however his feelings may for the moment have 
 been wounded, he would live to thank the 
 
294 LORD CROMER 
 
 inflexible monitor who had saved him from 
 rushing upon his ruin. 
 
 Abbas Pasha gave way, and on the i8th of 
 January the crisis was at an end. The appoint- 
 ment of Fakhri was cancelled, and though, to break 
 the Khedive's fall, the reinstatement of Mustapha 
 Fehmy was not insisted upon, Abbas was obliged 
 to accept Riaz Pasha as Prime Minister, with the 
 consent of Great Britain. The Ministers of 
 Finance and Justice, however, Boutros and 
 Mazlum Pashas, though their loyalty to the 
 existing regime was certainly not conspicuous, 
 were allowed to retain their offices. More 
 mischief, however, had already been done than 
 could be thus easily remedied. The revolt of the 
 Khedive had thoroughly unsettled the native 
 mind, and the friction between the English 
 officials and their Egyptian subordinates, which 
 had been reduced to a minimum, once more 
 became acute. Riaz Pasha, though appointed 
 with the concurrence of the British Government, 
 showed no disposition to further the ends of 
 British policy. It may be that his defeat by 
 Lord Cromer two years before still rankled in 
 his mind, and that the demise of the Khediviate 
 had inspired him with hopes of avenging it. 
 Tewfik, he knew by bitter experience, was not 
 to be relied on for steady suppbrt in a conflict 
 with the Consul-General ; Abbas, apparently of 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 295 
 
 stronger and more masterful dispositon, might 
 prove stancher in his backing. Whatever may 
 have been the cause of the Prime Minister's 
 attitude, there was at least no doubt of its nature. 
 It was one of stubborn opposition to British 
 influence, and it was imitated, as in such cases 
 always happens, throughout every rank of the 
 Administration. 
 
 Nor was this anti-British movement confined 
 to the official world. " The spectacle of the 
 Khedive at open variance with the -British," 
 writes Sir Alfred Milner in his graphic account 
 of the crisis, " naturally gave fresh encourage- 
 ment to all those elements of Egyptian society 
 which are permanently hostile to us, and incited 
 them to unprecedented activity. . . There are 
 the fanatics, to whom even intercourse with 
 foreigners is more or less repugnant, and foreign 
 predominance intolerable. There are the old- 
 fashioned Pashas and their following, who from 
 self-interest or mere conservatism long for the 
 return of autocratic native government. There 
 are a certain number of young men, ambitious, 
 clever, sympathizing with modern ideas, who 
 believe themselves capable of governing the 
 country on progressive principles without external 
 aid. Finally, there are the turbulent elements of 
 the population partly Egyptian, partly low-class 
 foreigners and Levantines who are always in 
 
296 LORD CROMER 
 
 favour of change, and who find the orderly and 
 honest administration of to-day less congenial 
 than the system which preceded it. None of 
 these parties is very formidable by itself, and 
 their positive aims are quite inconsistent with 
 one another. But in the negative policy of 
 Anglophobia they were all able to unite, and 
 encouraged from above they made an influential 
 coalition. The greater portion of the Press, 
 whether native or European, is inspired by one 
 or other of these factions ; and though the Press 
 is still an inconsiderable power in Egypt, its 
 vehement tirades, however childish and men- 
 dacious, were not without effect in creating the 
 appearance of a genuine national movement. 
 Moreover, the bulk of the people, who at heart 
 are far from dissatisfied with the stat^ts quo, find 
 it prudent to give a demonstrative though hollow 
 support to the policy of their rulers. It did not 
 occur to them to doubt that the Khedive and 
 his Ministers, before placing themselves in open 
 opposition to the English, had made sure that 
 they were strong enough to carry such a policy to 
 a successful issue, and this being so they naturally 
 desired to be on the safe side." 
 
 It is in fact this calculation, always more or less 
 operative in the native mind, which tends and 
 so long as the future of Egypt remains uncertain 
 must perpetually tend to embarrass us in that 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 297 
 
 country. If it were known to-morrow that we 
 intended to hold Egypt as we hold India that is 
 to say, as so much territory, of which nothing 
 but superior force will ever dispossess us the 
 situation would still be difficult. We should still 
 have our opponents to deal with among the native 
 politicians and the official class, and the forces of 
 bigotry, corruption, and self-seeking which we 
 have now to combat would, though perhaps in 
 diminished intensity, still exist. But outside this 
 hostile camp, as one may call it, we should be 
 surrounded by a ring of benevolent, instead of 
 as now indifferent, if not positively malevolent 
 neutrals. In other words, we should receive the 
 passive support of all those persons everywhere 
 a large, and in Eastern countries an over- 
 whelming body who desire to be on the winning 
 side. As it is. we do not get the passive support, 
 and we cannot expect to have it. It is not that 
 we are unpopular with the great mass of the 
 people, or at any rate to such an extent as to 
 make them wish to get rid of us. Free to choose, 
 without fear of the consequences, they would 
 undoubtedly prefer the present state of things to 
 the arbitrary system that preceded our advent. 
 But to borrow once more from the terse and 
 lucid account of the situation given by the 
 brilliant writer above quoted, "with the Khedive 
 and the native magnates conspicuously against 
 
298 LORD CROMER 
 
 us, they shrewdly reason thus : If we do not 
 take sides against the English we shall be 
 prejudiced while they remain, and punished when 
 they go. If we do take sides against them 
 we shall curry favour with our native rulers in 
 the present, and we are perfectly safe whatever 
 may be the result in the future ; for should 
 the English remain they will not hurt us, and 
 should they go we shall be able to make 
 capital out of the fact that we belonged to the 
 patriotic opposition while they were here.' ' 
 
 Such were the standing difficulties of our 
 position in Egypt, which at once aggravated, and 
 were aggravated by, the immediate consequences 
 of Abbas Pasha's outbreak. For a whole year 
 their combined force continued in operation, and 
 with the result that what one may call "the 
 coefficient of friction," on the wheels of the 
 Anglo- Egyptian administrative machine, rose to 
 a higher point than it had reached at any time 
 within the last seven or eight years. Almost 
 every Englishman engaged in the work of 
 administration found the dead -weight he had to 
 lift appreciably heavier. His native subordinates 
 yielded him a less cheerful obedience ; his native 
 colleagues, of equal or superior rank, gave him 
 no help. Outside the official circle men who had 
 formerly been friendly now showed a disposition 
 to hold aloof in some cases frankly explaining 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 299 
 
 that they were afraid to appear on good 
 terms with the English. It was even said that 
 the manners of the common people towards 
 Englishmen became visibly discourteous and 
 menacing ; and it is the fact that the signs of 
 popular feeling were regarded, if not with actual 
 apprehension, at any rate with uneasiness, by 
 experienced observers not wont to take alarmist 
 views on any matter. 
 
 In short it was an anxious year for all English- 
 men in official positions, and of course most 
 anxious of all for him on whom the chief respon- 
 sibility rested the British Consul-General. How 
 long this state of tension might have lasted if the 
 Khedive had been an older and less impetuous 
 man, and a better player of the dangerous game 
 upon which he had entered, it is impossible to 
 say. Fortunately for us, or rather perhaps for 
 him since it is rather he than we who would 
 have suffered from a prolongation of the crisis 
 his impulsive temper brought matters to a head, 
 and forced on a second conflict with the British 
 authorities. He might have continued with 
 impunity to thwart and embarrass the civil 
 administration of the country, but he was 
 imprudent enough to lay a hostile hand upon 
 the one wheel of the machine with which we 
 cannot allow anybody, from the Khedive himself 
 down to the smallest of discontented native 
 
300 LORD CROMER 
 
 officials, to intermeddle. His attack, however, 
 upon the military system, as remodelled by 
 English officers, was not fully developed until the 
 beginning of the following year, and in the 
 meantime the situation was rendered more 
 irritating, though not perhaps to any material 
 extent complicated, by the action of the Egyptian 
 Legislative Council, which assembled as usual at 
 the beginning of December, and at once set to 
 work to show its hostility to English ideas. It 
 began by attacking two of its members for having 
 as a matter of courtesy called upon Lord Cromer 
 in Cairo, and on that point brought upon itself a 
 sharp rebuff, alike from the British representative 
 and from the Egyptian Government. It then 
 proceeded to attack the Budget, especially the 
 estimates of the War Department, and the 
 expenses of the army of occupation. It proposed 
 to abolish the Prisons Departments, the Munici- 
 pality of Alexandria, and the Department for 
 repressing the slave trade. It recommended a 
 large reduction of the grant for Public Works, 
 and of the salaries of European officials. It 
 appointed a Committee to inquire into the alleged 
 unsatisfactory administration of the Domains, 
 demanded a reduction of the secret service 
 money, denounced the extravagance of the 
 Government, deplored the " rapidly increasing 
 poverty and distress of the Egyptian people," 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 301 
 
 and in short behaved itself generally as an 
 Oriental legislative body, called into existence by 
 Western experimentalists, would be likely to 
 comport itself towards the authors of its being. 
 
 As it turned out the Council proved to have 
 gone a little too fast and too far, even for its 
 own friends, and to have offended not only 
 the English Administrators, but the Egyptian 
 Government also. They were snubbed by Riaz 
 Pasha, and their allegations as to the financial 
 condition of the country were met by Sir Elwin 
 Palmer with a clear and conclusive contradiction. 
 Eventually the Government rejected nearly all 
 the Council's proposals. There can be little 
 doubt, however, that native opinion in Cairo, so 
 far as it expressed itself, was delighted with 
 the action of the Council, and this is a fact 
 which may well have weighed more with the 
 Khedive and his Government than the behaviour 
 of the legislative body itself. 
 
 In the autumn of 1893 Abbas took his first 
 step on the path of danger by appointing Maher 
 Pasha Under Secretary of State for War. In 
 the nomination itself there might not at another 
 moment have been anything particularly objection- 
 able. But at this particular juncture of affairs it 
 was understood, and it proved, to be an appoint- 
 ment made with intent to create trouble, and to 
 further the Khedive's hostile designs against 
 
302 LORD CROMER 
 
 British policy. Its true character, as a blow aimed 
 at the authority and influence of the Sirdar, the 
 English Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian 
 Army, Major-General Sir Herbert Kitchener, 
 became speedily apparent ; and unwilling as Lord 
 Cromer is, and always has been, to meddle with 
 the everyday business of Egyptian Administra- 
 tion, or to intervene between the English and 
 native servants of the Khedive, his summons to 
 such intervention had now become clear and 
 imperative. The existing Egyptian Army had 
 been created by British officers, and for ten years 
 the supreme authority of the Sirdar in all purely 
 military questions had remained undisputed. If 
 the reorganization of the defences of Egypt were, 
 as beyond question it was, the most conspicuously 
 successful of our administrative achievements in 
 that country, it was so by reason of its having 
 been also the one undertaking in which we had 
 the most absolutely free hand. In the interests 
 of Egypt, and indeed of Europe in general, it 
 was essential to maintain that freedom at all 
 costs, and to oppose the promptest and sternest 
 resistance to any attempt to impair it. Fully 
 alive to this, Lord Cromer delivered instant check 
 to the Khedive. Supported as before and with 
 the same vigour by the Foreign Office, he quietly 
 but firmly insisted on a modification of Abbas's 
 policy, and with some trouble a compromise was 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 303 
 
 arranged, which left the Sirdar's authority 
 nominally unimpaired. 
 
 But the truce was of short duration. In 
 January of 1894 the Khedive set out from Cairo 
 for a "progress" to the frontier at Wady Haifa. 
 To his subjects the occasion was a highly 
 interesting one, for this was not only his first 
 tour of his dominions since his accession to his 
 dominions, but, as was understood, his first intro- 
 duction to the scenery and monuments of the Nile. 
 The Father of Waters was en ffoe for a thousand 
 miles of its length. At Keneh, at Luxor, at 
 Assouan, elaborate receptions were prepared 
 for him, and turbaned crowds of fellaheen 
 flocked from all the neighbouring villages to 
 the landing-places to pay their homage. But 
 even here and to his Mahommedan subjects 
 he showed signs from time to time of his 
 arbitrary and impracticable temper, and he lost 
 no opportunity of publicly slighting the British 
 officers who accompanied or received him. It 
 would almost seem as if he had been deliberately 
 working himself up to the calculated outburst 
 of petulant rudeness which was shortly to follow. 
 On his arrival at Wady Haifa, where he was 
 of course received with all due deference by 
 the military authorities, the usual review and 
 inspection of the troops was held in his honour ; 
 and at its close, in place of the few words of 
 
3 o 4 LORD CROMER 
 
 formal commendation which are looked for on 
 such occasions, the Khedive complained publicly 
 and pointedly to the Sirdar of the military 
 inefficiency of the force under his command. 
 
 The significance of so carefully studied an 
 insult was of course impossible to mistake. 
 General Kitchener understood it as a blow aimed 
 directly at him and his authority, and he at 
 once tendered his resignation. The Khedive, 
 however, his object being sufficiently attained by 
 the humiliation of the highest British military 
 authority, requested him to withdraw it. In the 
 circumstances, no doubt, and in the immediate 
 interests of discipline, the Sirdar had no choice 
 but to comply, but it was of course impossible 
 that the matter could be allowed to end here. It 
 was essential that something should at once be 
 done to re-establish the undermined authority of 
 the British commander of the Egyptian forces, 
 and it was rightly judged that to this end it 
 was necessary that the slight offered to General 
 Kitchener should be atoned for as formally and 
 publicly as it was inflicted. Acting accordingly 
 under instructions from Lord Rosebery, the 
 British Consul-General waited on the Khedive, 
 and then and there demanded that he should 
 issue a general order expressing his approval of 
 the discipline and efficiency of the Army, and his 
 satisfaction with the officers whose authority he 
 
GENERAL KITCHENER. 
 
 From a Photograph by J. Heyman, of Cairo. 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 305 
 
 had so deliberately attempted to overthrow. The 
 position in which Abbas Pasha thus found himself 
 was if possible even more painful than that into 
 which his imprudence had betrayed him just a 
 year before. But as had happened previously on 
 two separate occasions to his father, and as always 
 happens with Oriental Sovereigns who rely upon 
 Oriental Ministers to back them in a conflict with 
 a great Western Power, the Khedive looked 
 around him in vain for supporters. The Ministry 
 of Riaz Pasha, by whom he had been up to this 
 point supported in his campaign against his 
 British tutors, now shrank back in dismay at the 
 rashness of his latest act, and urged him to 
 submit. The French Minister, and the other 
 foreign elements usually most hostile to Great 
 Britain, were alarmed at the possible consequences 
 of a collapse of discipline in the Army. It is 
 even possible that the Khedive himself was 
 somewhat disconcerted at the evidence of the 
 universal uneasiness which his recent conduct 
 had inspired. Anyhow, he retreated with the 
 best grace he could muster, and issued the order 
 which had virtually been dictated to him. It was 
 published in the first instance only in French ; 
 but with this the British Government was not 
 satisfied. They held it, and no doubt rightly 
 held it, necessary to force the unhappy young 
 Sovereign to drink the cup of humiliation to the 
 
306 LORD CROMER 
 
 very dregs, and the general order had to be 
 published in Arabic also. Nor was even this all. 
 Lord Cromer was further instructed to demand 
 the removal of Maher Pasha from his post at 
 the War Office. Here again the Khedive was 
 at first inclined to make a stand. He then 
 endeavoured to temporize with the demand, and 
 sought to delay the dismissal of the Under 
 Secretary until another suitable post could be 
 found for him. Once more, however, the 
 requirements of the British Government were 
 inflexibly insisted on, and within a few days 
 Maher Pasha was sent elsewhere and replaced 
 in his post by Zohrab Pasha, a Minister whose 
 loyalty to British policy could be relied on. 
 
 With this last and in some respects sharpest 
 encounter the struggle ended. Its consequences 
 for the half-hearted advisers who had instigated 
 Abbas, only to abandon him, were exactly what 
 historic precedent might have taught him to 
 expect. History indeed repeated itself with 
 curious exactitude in the case of Riaz Pasha, 
 who, just as he had fallen into disfavour three 
 years before through his having embroiled Tewfik 
 in a contest with the British representative, in 
 which the Khedive and his Minister got the worst 
 of it, so now was he about to lose power again 
 through precisely the same error committed as 
 counsellor of Abbas. The confidence of his 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 307 
 
 present, like that of his former master, was 
 entirely destroyed. Mutual recriminations on 
 the failure of their joint attempt at revolt may 
 not improbably have ensued, and what was 
 practically a two months' ministerial crisis was 
 at last brought to an end by Riaz's resignation, 
 and the recall of Nubar Pasha to office after six 
 years of retirement. 
 
 It was to all intents and purposes a signal of 
 surrender, for though Nubar Pasha has had 
 passages of arms with Great Britain and her 
 representative, and though he chafes occasionally 
 under the restraints which British policy imposes 
 upon him, he is far too able a statesman not to 
 perceive that the future of the country depends 
 on its working cordially with the one Power 
 which can save it from what he has himself called 
 the "curse of internationalization." There are 
 still, as there have ever been, but two possibilities 
 before Egypt. Her native rulers, the Khedive 
 and his Ministers, may frankly accept the 
 assistance of Great Britain in that still far from 
 completed work of administrative reform which 
 can alone make Egypt capable of ultimate 
 autonomy ; or they may revert to their recent 
 policy of hostility and obstruction a policy 
 which will render the accomplishment of our 
 undertaking impossible on its present lines, and 
 must eventually lead to the formal and permanent 
 
308 LORD CROMER 
 
 establishment of British dominion over the 
 country. The one result in which it could not 
 possibly issue would be the escape of Egypt from 
 foreign control. To substitute European for 
 English tutelage with all its consequences, 
 some of them doubtful, others proved by past 
 experience to be disastrous, is the utmost that 
 Egypt under existing conditions could hope to 
 achieve. 
 
 Happily there is good reason to believe that 
 Abbas Pasha thanks to the firm and tactful 
 diplomacy of Lord Cromer, aided by the teaching 
 /of events has at last had his eyes opened to the 
 Teal facts of the situation. More than three years 
 have now passed since the Khedive made his 
 last and most desperate attempt to free himself 
 from British control, and they have been years 
 full of instruction for any not unteachable mind. 
 In 1895 he paid an official or semi-official visit to 
 his suzerain at Constantinople, and he returned 
 from it in a most wholesome condition of disen- 
 chantment. His reception by the Sultan and his 
 entourage was disappointing ; and his departure 
 was allowed to take place with a lack of ceremony 
 which gave him not unnatural offence. He came 
 back to Cairo convinced that no substantial aid 
 was to be expected from Constantinople, and he 
 has in the meantime learnt to estimate the support 
 of European intriguers in his own capital at its 
 
THE NEW KHEDIVE 309 
 
 true value. He has discovered that these false 
 friends of his, though they are willing enough to 
 egg him on in a course of obstruction to British 
 policy, have neither the will nor, if they had it, 
 the power to render him any efficient assistance 
 in the difficulties which he thereby brings upon 
 himself. In a word, he has now convinced himself 
 not only that the English are his most helpful 
 friends and his most powerful enemies, but that 
 wherever else he turns, either at Cairo or else- 
 where, he will find no so-called friends who are 
 not enemies in disguise. And for the last year 
 and a half the effects of the discovery have been 
 visible not only in the attitude of the Khedive 
 himself, but in that of his native subjects. The 
 so-called National party in Egypt consists largely 
 of that time-serving element among the Arabic 
 and Levantine population who habitually take 
 their cue from their ruler, and the temperature of 
 whose patriotism rises and falls with the variations 
 of the thermometer at the Abdin Palace. It is 
 therefore a most hopeful sign of the political 
 weather that patriotic ardour at Cairo subsided 
 many months ago into a cold but contented 
 acquiescence in British rule. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 The Advance to Dongola 
 
 THE history of Lord Cromer's official career 
 has now been brought nearly down to the 
 present day. It only remains to add a brief 
 account of the important military movement 
 which has again directed the attention of the 
 British public to the country wherein after 
 a brief period of service, not indeed more 
 able or faithful, but rendered more conspicuous 
 by the dramatic events associated with it, he 
 had settled steadily down to twelve years of 
 comparatively unnoticed though invaluable work. 
 It must be a satisfaction to him, as assuredly 
 it has been to all who have formed a correct 
 conception of his views on Egyptian policy, 
 that the forward movement into the Soudan 
 has taken place during his Consul-Generalship 
 at Cairo, and promises to be crowned with 
 the recovery of the Soudan before its close. 
 
 It will not have been forgotten how desperate 
 were the attempts of the " Little Englander" 
 party to make out, when the advance from 
 
 310 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 3 n 
 
 Wady Haifa was first announced, that the step 
 was taken, not only without consultation with 
 Lord Cromer, but in opposition to his well- 
 known and decided belief in its inexpediency. 
 How far it may have been found possible to 
 take counsel with him at the moment one 
 cannot say. Urgent reasons of State may 
 have compelled the Government to take im- 
 mediate action ; in so far indeed as they were 
 actuated by that desire to assist Italy which 
 they put forward in their Parliamentary explana- 
 tion of their policy, there was undoubtedly no 
 time to be lost. It may be, then, that the 
 order to advance took not only the "politicals" 
 in Egypt, but the soldiers by surprise. Still 
 there is a wide difference between being unpre- 
 pared for, and being opposed to, an expedition 
 to the Soudan ; and even if it be the fact 
 that the former word correctly describes Lord 
 Cromer's attitude towards the movement, there 
 is not the slightest warrant for applying to it 
 the latter. The Radical members of Parliament 
 who " heckled " the Government so pertina- 
 ciously on the point during the early session of 
 1896 were unable to point to a single scintilla 
 of evidence to justify their interrogations, and 
 in fact no such spark of testimony exists. 
 
 The Consul-General simply suffered, in fact, 
 from a revival of the impression to which he 
 
3 i2 LORD CROMER 
 
 owed so much unmerited misjudgment of the 
 position taken up by him thirteen years before. 
 The Radicals believed, or more probably pre- 
 tended to believe, that the diplomatic adviser 
 who in common, be it remembered, with every 
 single military authority who was consulted on 
 the question had recommended the evacuation of 
 the Soudan in 1883, must necessarily be opposed 
 to an expedition for its reconquest in 1896. As 
 well might it be pretended that the triumphant 
 march in which Wellington halted not till he had 
 swept the French invaders of the Peninsula 
 across the Pyrenees, was unwillingly commenced 
 by him in 1811 because he had retired behind 
 the lines of Torres Vedras in 1810. The retreat 
 in the one case as the other was a matter 
 of military necessity, and in one case as in the 
 other it was executed by men who cherished 
 at the time the confident hope of retracing their 
 steps and recovering the country from which they 
 had retired. That Sir Evelyn Baring was to 
 be numbered among them in 1883 it would 
 doubtless be too much to affirm. He surveyed 
 the situation in those days with the eye of 
 the politician rather than with that of the soldier ; 
 and the political future was then too dark for 
 forecast of any remote future. For all that was 
 visible at that time to the most prescient of 
 observers, the English tenure of Egypt might 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DOA T GOLA 313 
 
 any day have been determined ; and of course 
 if it had come abruptly to an end, with its work 
 unfinished, the Native Government which had 
 been too weak to hold the Soudan would 
 manifestly, and a fortiori, have been unable 
 to recover it. But so soon as it became certain 
 that England had no mind to leave Egypt till her 
 work was completed and still more when the 
 military portion of that work was so far advanced 
 as to place the country in possession of a 
 well-drilled and disciplined army the situation 
 was entirely altered. Recovery of the Soudan 
 became at once an attainable object of Egyptian 
 policy, and the only question that remained 
 was whether it was a desirable one. To affirm 
 that Lord Cromer, though obliged to recognize its 
 possibility, disputed its expediency, would be to 
 impute to him such a lack of political perception 
 as no man of his powers and experience could, 
 without gross absurdity, be charged with. As a 
 matter of fact, and as is well known to all who 
 have been admitted to his confidence on the 
 subject, the British Consul-General has long been 
 as firmly convinced as anyone of the absolute 
 necessity of the Soudan, not merely to the 
 due development of Egyptian prosperity, but 
 to the mere safety of the country and the 
 stability of the Khedive's rule within his own 
 borders ; and that whether he was or was 
 
3 i4 LORD CROMER 
 
 not prepared for the advance of the Egyptian 
 Army at that particular juncture, the general 
 policy of the enterprise had his hearty approval, 
 and was promoted by him not only as a matter 
 of official duty, but with all the energy of 
 personal good will. 
 
 The insinuations for there were no materials 
 for anything more than insinuations of Lord 
 Cromer's hostility to the movement were the 
 more absurd because if he had been opposed 
 to it that fact could hardly have failed to become 
 known at a much earlier date. For it is not 
 as though the forward policy had but recently 
 come to the front. For at least two years before, 
 the question of the recovery of the Soudan had 
 been a subject of discussion in diplomatic and 
 military circles ; and the changes in the " in- 
 ternational " situation in Central Africa, which 
 have tended to make that question an urgent 
 one, had been under observation for a longer 
 period still. It was matter of common remark 
 among those who had followed the pro- 
 gress of affairs in that region, that at least 
 one European Power was pursuing a policy of 
 extension and conquest in the Dark Continent 
 which seriously menaced our position in Egypt, 
 and which, if persisted in, would at no distant date 
 enable that Power to obtain the command of 
 those head - waters of the Nile on which the 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 315 
 
 prosperity, not to say the very life, of Egypt 
 depends. And that those advances would have 
 sooner or later to be met by a counter movement 
 on the Egyptian side was never doubted by any 
 competent authority. That it was precipitated by 
 other causes by the growing restlessness of the 
 Dervishes, and by apprehensions of the agitating 
 effect likely to be produced upon them by the 
 defeat of the Italian arms at the beginning of 
 the year 1896 is true enough; but these in- 
 fluences could have done little more than hasten 
 the despatch of an expedition which could not 
 in any case have been long delayed. 
 
 Still it was thought by the British Government, 
 and perhaps wisely enough, that the desire to 
 help a great and friendly Power in a position of 
 extraordinary difficulty might well determine the 
 moment for striking the blow. Driven back in 
 the direction of Massowah by their defeat, the 
 remains of the Italian army found it impossible 
 to lend a helping hand to their sorely pressed 
 comrades in Kassala. There were threatening 
 signs of movement among the Dervishes in the 
 direction of the beleaguered stronghold, and one 
 of the avowed objects of the British advance was 
 to effect a diversion in its favour. Accordingly 
 on March 21 Sir Herbert Kitchener, Sirdar of 
 the Egyptian Army, accompanied by Major 
 Wingate, the chief of the Intelligence Department, 
 
316 LORD CROMER 
 
 and Slatin Pasha the romantic story of whose 
 long captivity among, and ultimate escape from, 
 the Dervishes is well known left for Assouan 
 and Wady Haifa with the First Battalion of the 
 North Staffordshire Regiment, while simulta- 
 neously an advance column of the Egyptian and 
 Soudanese troops pushed forward from the last- 
 named place to Akasheh, which they captured 
 without opposition, occupied, and proceeded at 
 once to fortify. 
 
 Here it was necessary to make an enforced 
 halt of two months' duration until the rise of the 
 Nile permitted the land-advance to be assisted by 
 river operations. In the meantime the railway 
 from Wady Haifa was being pushed southward 
 with all possible despatch. On the 6th of 
 June the forward march was resumed, and the 
 expeditionary force at last got to close quarters 
 with the enemy at Firkeh. The behaviour of the 
 Egyptian soldiery which had been the subject 
 of many misgivings did the greatest credit to 
 their English training. Even their Soudanese 
 comrades, whose pluck and staunchness had often 
 already been tried and tested, were not braver or 
 steadier in the field. The Dervishes occupied a 
 formidable position, and defended it with their 
 usual desperate valour, but after hard fighting 
 were routed with great loss. It was a brilliant 
 success, and demonstrated once for all the ability 
 
I* 
 
 fi 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 317 
 
 of the fellah, when properly drilled and led, to 
 hold his own against the wild warriors of the 
 desert. Every detail of the engagement confirms 
 this most gratifying conclusion. The Dervishes 
 at one point of the position were repeatedly called 
 upon to surrender, but refused, and died sword in 
 hand. Eighty of them were killed in one hut, 
 and thirty of their Emirs, including Hammuda, 
 their commander, were killed. This obstinacy 
 of defence means equally hard fighting on the 
 side of the attacking force, while its steady 
 behaviour when the positions were reversed is 
 sufficiently attested by the fact that a charge of 
 the Dervish cavalry was repulsed at the point of 
 the bayonet by the Egyptian line. The moral 
 effect of the victory was instantaneous and 
 immense ; its military result followed promptly 
 in the evacuation of Suarda, which had long 
 been the headquarters of the Dervishes, and the 
 abandonment of a large quantity of supplies. 
 
 From Suarda the march was pursued without 
 resistance to Kosheh, which became the next 
 halting-place of the expedition and the point of 
 departure for the final advance to Dongola. It 
 was at this stage of the enterprise, however, 
 that its real difficulties were to begin. The 
 Dervish was an enemy much less to be dreaded 
 than disease. Cholera broke out among the 
 troops in the midsummer heats, and during the 
 
318 LORD CROMER 
 
 months of July and August the camp suffered 
 somewhat severely. As, however, is the case 
 with every visitation of the kind at the present 
 day, its ravages were undoubtedly much ex- 
 aggerated. It was ascertained on good authority 
 by one of the most active of the newspaper 
 correspondents engaged in a review of the 
 campaign after its close, that the mortality from 
 the cholera among the troops was somewhere 
 between 15 and 20 per thousand, which, though 
 of course regrettable, cannot be considered as at 
 all approaching calamitous proportions. Apart, 
 too, from cholera the health of the troops was 
 singularly good, the sick-rate from all other causes 
 being no more than 1 1 per cent. Among other 
 notable over-statements of that time were the 
 accounts of the alleged inordinate losses among 
 the transport animals through overwork. As a 
 matter of fact, to quote the same trustworthy 
 authority, out of 3000 camels, the whole number 
 with the Expedition, only 300 succumbed or 
 had to be turned adrift throughout the whole 
 campaign. More than that number were lost in 
 a single day during the campaign of 1884, in 
 which, too, the total proportion of loss amounted 
 to no less than 70 per cent. As little, too, did 
 the cavalry suffer in the Dongola Expedition, 
 not more than 76 out of a thousand horses 
 having perished either in action or from other 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONG OLA 319 
 
 causes. And lastly, a word must be said of the 
 famous Absarat desert march, over which there 
 were as many portentous shakings of the head at 
 the time as though for rashness and reckless 
 indifference to human life it had been a sort of 
 second Balaklava. It is true that its length 
 thirty- six miles was considerable ; but except 
 for a few miles the marching was fairly easy, 
 and in the last campaign watering-places had 
 been established. The extravagant language 
 in which the operation was described was not 
 justified by its intrinsic severity or difficulty, but 
 was in reality provoked by certain disastrous 
 accompaniments of it for which no human fore- 
 sight could have provided. On their march the 
 troops were overtaken by a violent storm of wind, 
 sand, and rain, and in the dust and confusion of 
 the scene men strayed wholesale from the route. 
 In the result probably about 300 of the 
 Soudanese blacks turned about and eventually 
 came back, weak and exhausted, into camp at 
 Kosheh, having lost some eight or ten of their 
 number. This disaster, therefore, considering 
 the extraordinary rarity in the African desert of 
 such visitations as the terrible tempest which 
 directly caused it, ought in justice to be 
 reckoned as among those mischances of a 
 campaign for which commanders are not re- 
 sponsible. 
 
320 LORD CROMER 
 
 Nevertheless it may be said, and indeed has 
 been said, that although military experts cannot 
 foresee Soudanese storms, they know the seasons 
 of the year in which such storms are likely to 
 occur, and should avoid selecting such seasons 
 for difficult operations. Here, again, the average 
 readings of the thermometer for the months of 
 July and August in the tropics are not (it might 
 be said) inaccessible statistics, nor the mortality 
 from sunstroke and the risk of cholera outbreaks 
 among incalculable contingencies. "Apparently," 
 it was remarked the other day by a critic of 
 one of the narratives of the campaign, " every 
 reasonable purpose would have been served by 
 sending the Expedition in September instead of 
 March." If for "every reasonable purpose" we 
 read every purpose within the extremely limited 
 knowledge of the "man in the street," the 
 proposition might pass ; but if we are to talk of 
 what is reasonable, it surely stands to reason 
 and to common sense that if with all the 
 obvious inducements to despatch an expedition 
 in September instead of in March a Govern- 
 ment in fact despatches it in March instead of 
 September, that Government must have had 
 very strong motives for making such a choice. 
 
 Surely, too, it was plain from the first on 
 the patent facts of the case that though the 
 advance itself into the Soudan were dictated 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 321 
 
 by purely administrative and military reasons, 
 the selection of the moment for making it 
 might have been almost exclusively determined 
 by considerations of la haute politiqtie. It is too 
 readily forgotten that the interests of Egypt on 
 the Upper Nile are in a far more precarious 
 condition to-day than they were on the morrow 
 of the evacuation of the Soudan, and that 
 movements of Great Powers in Central Africa, 
 influenced, as they well might be, by the turns 
 of European politics, may at any moment expose 
 them to a far graver menace than that of the 
 fanaticism or rapacity of Dervishes. At any 
 moment, therefore, rapidity of precautionary 
 action may be imposed upon an English Govern- 
 ment by information to which Governments alone 
 have access, and which it is from the nature of 
 the case impossible for them to divulge. 
 
 Apart, moreover, from obscure considerations 
 of this kind, it is going much too far to assume 
 that the purely military work of the Expedi- 
 tion would have been no more difficult in 
 September of 1896 than it proved to be in 
 March of the same year. If the crushing 
 defeat of one European army to the east 
 of the Nile had not been followed as speedily 
 as it was by the advance of another Power up 
 the river valley, it is impossible to say what 
 effect the elation of unchallenged victory might 
 
322 LORD CROMER 
 
 not have produced in the minds of the desert 
 tribes, and what it might not have done to con- 
 centrate their forces and to attract new recruits 
 to their banners. What we do know, and it 
 should be surely enough to satisfy us, is that 
 the prompt despatch of the Egyptian troops 
 from the frontier at Wady Haifa produced 
 an instantaneously disconcerting effect on the 
 Dervishes, and that before they had time to 
 recover from it we had routed and rolled them 
 back many scores of miles to the south. But 
 to resume the story of the march. 
 
 It was on the iQth of September that the 
 final blow of the year's campaign was struck. 
 Nothing could have been more decisive or less 
 Homeric than the battle at which it was de- 
 livered, which has been well described as " a cross 
 between an artillery duel and a naval engage- 
 ment." After a toilsome desert march through- 
 out the previous day, the force bivouacked at 
 about a mile to the north of the rock of Abu 
 Fatmeh, and some six miles from the Dervish 
 fortified post of Kerma, where it was supposed 
 that the enemy, led by Wad el Bishara, the 
 Governor of the Dongola Province, who had 
 come north with reinforcements, intended to make 
 a determined stand. At four in the morning 
 of Saturday the iQth the troops set out again, 
 and by daybreak arrived at Kerma, only to find 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 323 
 
 the fort deserted. From a report afterwards 
 brought in by a spy they learned that at 
 midnight, or very early that morning, Wad el 
 Bishara and his men had withdrawn across 
 the Nile to Hafir, on the west bank, where, 
 it was again alleged, they were resolved to fight 
 to the last man. 
 
 Bitterly disappointed at this retreat of the foe 
 whom they had hoped to encounter, the army 
 continued without halting to advance in battle 
 array for another mile and a half, until nearly 
 opposite Hafir, where, as soon as day had 
 broadened, the enemy's position was plainly 
 discernible. It had been selected with no little 
 judgment, commanding the very point on the 
 river at which the Sirdar had purposed trans- 
 porting his troops to the opposite shore. Wad 
 el Bishara's defences, too, were strong enough to 
 offer a considerable resistance to light field guns, 
 such as constituted the only artillery which could 
 be brought to bear upon them from the opposite 
 bank. Fire was, however, opened upon them 
 about seven o'clock, though with comparatively 
 little effect, at a range of about 2000 yards, and 
 without eliciting any reply. 
 
 The fight did not begin in earnest until the 
 arrival of the three gunboats, which shortly 
 afterwards came steaming up the river, and when 
 a thousand yards of the Dervish forts 
 
3 2 4 LORD CROMER 
 
 opened fire upon them. Even this failed for a 
 time to provoke any return, but at last the enemy 
 opened fire with cannon and small arms from 
 the works along the bank, while swarms of 
 Dervish riflemen armed with Remingtons poured 
 down to the water's edge and raked the advancing 
 gunboats with a galling fusillade. So hot was the 
 fire of artillery and small arms combined that 
 the boats slackened speed, stopped, and then 
 retreated down stream for some 1500 yards, 
 though in the meantime still keeping up a brisk 
 bombardment at longer range. After a short 
 interval the steamers were again swung round 
 into line, and once more advancing up stream 
 made vigorous play with their machine guns 
 on the forts ; and thus for two hours the artillery 
 duel went on, the superiority in number and 
 power of weapons being all on the Egyptian 
 side, but the Dervishes showing their old pluck 
 and tenacity in sticking to their guns. Again 
 and again, as one gun after another was tem- 
 porarily disabled, it was supposed that the enemy's 
 batteries had been silenced ; but again and again, 
 whenever the firing ceased from the steamers, 
 a gun would be run out and a shot discharged 
 at them. At last, at about 10.45 a - m -> tne three 
 gunboats were sent forward, and running the 
 gauntlet of the Mahdist lines under a fierce fire, 
 which, moreover, they returned with such good 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 325 
 
 will as temporarily to silence the shore works, 
 the little flotilla steamed up the river past Hafir 
 under orders to proceed to Dongola. 
 
 Though the land forces had taken little or 
 no part in this engagement, it practically opened 
 the way for them to the goal. It had, in fact, 
 broken the neck of the Dervish resistance ; and 
 when three or four days later the Sirdar's army 
 advanced upon Dongola, the gunboats at the same 
 time steaming side by side with them up the 
 Nile, they encountered no serious opposition. At 
 five o'clock in the morning the first movement was 
 made, and just an hour afterwards the enemy's 
 encampment was reached. Wad el Bishara, 
 though severely wounded at Hafir, was reported 
 to be still full of fight, and to be "encouraging" 
 his troops in Oriental fashion by threatening 
 all those who showed signs of wavering with 
 instant death. As a matter of fact, however, 
 his nerve was shattered. An artillery engage- 
 ment between the forts and steamers delayed 
 the advance of the Egyptian force for a brief 
 space, but before ever they got to blows with 
 the Dervishes the Dervish leader and his prin- 
 cipal lieutenant had fled. Against such a dis- 
 couragement it would be difficult even for the 
 best disciplined European troops to bear up ; 
 to an Eastern army it is inevitably and promptly 
 fatal. The Dervishes were completely dis- 
 
326 LORD CROMER 
 
 organised, and the Egyptians gained an almost 
 bloodless victory. The cavalry by land and the 
 gunboats by water pursued the flying foe, but 
 armed resistance was for all practical purposes 
 over, and hundreds surrendered themselves 
 passively to the victors. That night the army 
 of the Sirdar encamped within the mud walls 
 of Dongola, and on the very same evening Lord 
 Cromer arrived in Egypt on his return from a 
 stay of some weeks in England. 
 
 It was an inspiriting welcome to his official 
 home, and a most gratifying episode to have 
 interpolated itself in a long and often monotonous 
 history of hard administrative work. Repre- 
 senting, too, as it did, but the first stage in our 
 enterprise of reconquest, this little campaign 
 is nevertheless one on which the country has 
 good cause to congratulate itself, and which may 
 well inspire us with just pride in the organization, 
 civil and military, by which it was carried out. 
 The Expedition of 1896 was, like most adven- 
 tures into the formidable wastes of the Soudan, 
 beset with difficulties requiring a large measure 
 of capacity and wise forethought at headquarters, 
 and of courage, resource, and endurance in the 
 field to ensure its success. But Lord Cromer and 
 the Sirdar had so thoughtfully provided for all 
 contingencies at all capable of prevision, and Sir 
 Herbert Kitchener showed such promptitude in 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 327 
 
 grappling with and overcoming all unforeseen 
 obstacles, that the campaign "went" from start 
 to finish almost without a hitch. Even reckoning 
 in the hindrances entailed by an unprecedented 
 succession of violent sand and rain storms, the 
 advance was, on the whole, so admirably 
 managed that the losses and hardships incidental 
 to it have been trivial as compared with those 
 of similar warlike operations, either in the 
 Soudan or elsewhere. 
 
 A few facts and figures may help perhaps to 
 impress this truth upon the minds of those to 
 whom it has not yet been fully brought home. 
 Wady Haifa, the frontier and advanced post of 
 operations, is distant, roughly speaking, 1000 
 miles from Cairo, and all communication had to 
 be carried on by alternate railway and river 
 travel. An army numbering with non-com- 
 batants about 20,000 men, together with their 
 transport animals and materials of war, a camel 
 transport corps of 2000 men, many of whom 
 knew nothing of that peculiar animal, had to 
 be trained, armed, set to work, and kept at it ; 
 and so rapidly and thoroughly was this work 
 accomplished that these raw amateurs, as they 
 were at starting, became one of the most efficient 
 arms of the force, making long and toilsome 
 marches, sometimes of forty miles a day, without 
 the slightest abatement of their good spirits or 
 
328 LORD CROMER 
 
 good humour. When further it is stated that 
 the amount of food and forage required by the 
 expeditionary force amounted to some fifty tons 
 a day, all which had to be sent not only over this 
 distance of 1000 miles, but latterly five hundred 
 miles further, some idea may be formed of the 
 labour entailed in forwarding such quantities of 
 material, and keeping a month's stock ahead in 
 case of accidents. It meant the employment of 
 steamers as well as sailing craft by hundreds 
 on the various reaches of the river, and in 
 addition camel transport round the cataracts, and 
 from the railroad to the army in the field. 
 
 Individual ability and energy play of course 
 an important part in an achievement of this kind; 
 but its success must always be due in an even 
 larger measure to loyal and harmonious co-opera- 
 tion among all the various parties and depart- 
 ments engaged in the work of organization. 
 And the best if not the only security for this 
 is to be found in unity of aim and counsel 
 among the civil and military authorities. To 
 the native administration of the Egyptian War 
 Office, under the guidance of the Sirdar, the 
 chief share of credit must no doubt be ascribed; 
 but without the constant cordial support of 
 their coadjutor at the Agency, and without the 
 animating influence of that zeal and public spirit 
 which Lord Cromer and the school of English 
 
THE ADVANCE TO DONGOLA 329 
 
 administrators trained under his eye have infused 
 into the Egyptian officials, the military operations 
 which began in March 1896, and ended six 
 months later in the capture of Dongola and the 
 restoration to Egypt of a rich and fertile province, 
 would assuredly not have run so smooth and 
 unchequered a course. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 Personal Characteristics 
 
 AS this imperfect memoir draws near its close, 
 its irremediable but, as I venture to think, 
 excusable inadequacy impresses itself more and 
 more upon the writer. The difficulties with 
 which he had to contend were from the first 
 patent, and were indeed dwelt upon with perfect 
 frankness by the distinguished subject of the 
 biography in the course of a conversation with 
 his biographer. If it be an almost impossible task 
 to give a full and faithful account of the political 
 career of a leading English statesman during his 
 lifetime, or perhaps until a good many years 
 have passed since his death, it may well be con- 
 tended that in the case of an English diplomatist 
 this impossibility becomes complete. If much 
 remains unknown to the biographer in the former 
 instance, in the latter hardly anything is revealed 
 to him. In the one case our Parliamentary 
 system exacts a certain amount of self-disclosure 
 from our public men ; in the other the traditions 
 of our diplomatic service enjoin upon them the 
 
 330 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 331 
 
 utmost amount of self-effacement. The states- 
 man is sometimes compelled to step forward 
 into the light ; the diplomatic agent lives . per- 
 petually in the shadow. 
 
 It may be said though it would of course be 
 only an utterance of sanctissima simplicities that 
 the true record of the diplomatic agent's career 
 is to be found in the correspondence which has 
 passed between him and his official superiors 
 for the time being in Downing Street ; but there 
 is no Ambassador, Envoy, or Consul-General, 
 of however melancholy a temperament, who 
 could entertain this proposition without a smile. 
 " Do not read history to me," said Sir Robert 
 Walpole on his death-bed, " for that I know must 
 be false." It would need less than the long 
 experience of that Minister, and none of the 
 profound solemnity of that moment, to make a 
 diplomatist willing to say the same of the Blue 
 Book. As an official narrative of the facts which 
 Governments are supposed to lay before the 
 representatives of the nation or in other words, 
 as such a careful selection of communications 
 from their agents abroad as may best help their 
 Parliamentary case at home the Blue Book is 
 all that can be desired. But as a record of the 
 part really played by such agents in the deter- 
 mination of the policy which their employers 
 have to defend in Parliament it is of most 
 
332 LORD CROMER 
 
 doubtful and variable value. If the agent hap- 
 pens to be an enthusiast for the policy of his 
 employers, and that policy happens to be one 
 which is popular and successful, one, in fact, 
 which they are proud of and eager to avow, why 
 then, indeed, the agent, though he may not get 
 full credit for his share in it, may count upon his 
 action and opinions in the matter being placed 
 beyond the reach of public misconception. 
 Should he, on the other hand, be the instrument 
 of a policy of which he either actually dis- 
 approves, or at any rate is not ardently enamoured, 
 and if at the same time that policy is neither 
 successful nor popular, nor a source of pride 
 to its authors, he need not expect that Blue Books 
 will give any adequate account of his opinions, 
 or even of his action. Rather he may think 
 himself fortunate, or at any rate he may con- 
 gratulate himself on his discretion and exactitude 
 in expressing himself, if it does not create or help 
 to perpetuate a totally false impression concerning 
 them. 
 
 That Lord Cromer has at least escaped this 
 fate reflects great credit on his abilities as a 
 despatch writer ; and the fact that even the Blue 
 Books of 1884 leave his official reputation 
 unimpaired is one reason why they have been 
 so freely drawn upon for extracts in the pages 
 of this volume. We may depend upon it that 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 333 
 
 if the Gladstone Government could have laid 
 even a portion of their responsibility for the 
 many blunders committed by them between 
 September, 1883, and January, 1885, upon the 
 shoulders of their Egyptian advisers they would 
 have been all eagerness to do so. As a matter 
 of fact they took shelter behind the Consul- 
 General and his military colleagues whenever 
 that retreat was open to them. For every back- 
 ward step they took, for every interval of delay, 
 for every mood of hesitancy, for every qualm 
 of misgiving, they were only too glad to be 
 able to refer to the correspondence of their 
 Blue Books for a Parliamentary explanation. If 
 they could have shown that Sir Evelyn Baring's 
 advice proved prejudicial to their Soudanese 
 policy at any stage of it ; if they could have 
 shown that whether from motives of personal 
 jealousy, as has been absurdly suggested in a 
 recent biography, or from any other cause, Sir 
 Evelyn Baring had opposed the mission of 
 Gordon until it was too late for it to be 
 successful, or that he had delayed the suscep- 
 tion of measures for Gordon's relief, or that, 
 in short, he had in any way, by act or default, 
 contributed to the tragic result of that mission, 
 all possible care would have been taken that 
 this point in the defence of the Government 
 should be duly brought out in the " papers," 
 
334 LORD CROMER 
 
 and properly impressed upon the mind of 
 Parliament. That Ministers could find nothing 
 in Baring's despatches out of which to make 
 this sort of Parliamentary capital has, I think, 
 been fully shown already. The published corres- 
 pondence entirely exonerates the Consul-General 
 from any further or other responsibility in the 
 whole matter of the retirement from the Soudan 
 than such as belongs to every diplomatic servant 
 of the country abroad who accepts a policy not 
 of his own choice, but dictated to him by his 
 official superiors, and does, as he is bound to do, 
 his loyal best to carry it to a successful issue. 
 
 More than that, however and it is little 
 enough the Blue Books cannot be expected to 
 show. Their negative evidence is as valuable to 
 Lord Cromer as any negative evidence can be ; 
 but of positive evidence as to his services in 
 the capacity of adviser and agent, they contain 
 as little as such documents usually do. In the 
 private advices which Ministries at home receive 
 from Her Majesty's representatives abroad ; in 
 the warnings that are addressed to them, to 
 be noted or neglected, as the case may be ; 
 in the reports of the steps taken by such agents 
 on the spot, and of their own responsibility, in 
 anticipation of some danger to the interests of 
 the country it is in these that the true record of 
 a diplomatist's official career is to be found, and 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 335 
 
 these seldom or never see the light. The tacit 
 understanding with the diplomatic servant is that 
 if his observations turn out accurate, and his 
 recommendations wise, the credit is to go to 
 the home Minister whom he has advised ; 
 and that if the reverse should be the case 
 he should be willing to act as that eminent 
 person's Parliamentary scapegoat, and accept a 
 position in the desert of unpopularity without 
 a murmur. It seems a singularly one-sided 
 arrangement, but our diplomatic service has 
 always dutifully accepted it on, of course, the 
 implied consideration that their faithful and silent 
 service will be duly recognized by the Crown 
 and it is acted upon with remarkable dignity and 
 self-control. The diplomatist, however unappre- 
 ciated be his services, or however misconceived 
 his opinions, will rarely consent to lend his assist- 
 ance to any public vindication of the one or 
 explanation of the other at the hands of anybody, 
 be he biographer, essayist, journalist, or what not. 
 And Lord Cromer is perhaps of all men the 
 least disposed to swerve by one hair's breadth 
 from this salutary rule. 
 
 To these general considerations of the difficulty 
 which interposed itself to the construction of any 
 complete biography there are others of a special 
 character to be added. Anglo-Egyptian politics 
 possess an exceptionally delicate and complex 
 
336 LORD CROMER 
 
 character of their own, and their governing events 
 are still recent. Hence one is confronted with a 
 twofold obligation to reticence in the fact that 
 many of the actors in the drama wherein Lord 
 Cromer played so prominent a part are still alive, 
 and that of the many burning questions which it 
 has been his lot to deal with some are not yet 
 cold. " Even in these rapid days," writes a 
 personal friend and first-hand observer of the 
 Consul-General's entire career in Egypt during 
 the last thirteen years, "the occurrences of 1883- 
 1886 cannot be labelled 'Ancient History' ; and 
 though for convenience sake we may divide the 
 history of the British Occupation into distinct 
 acts and scenes, and speak of certain transactions 
 as finished, we have no guarantee that the event 
 of to-morrow will be intelligible save by observing 
 its close connection with the speeches made or the 
 obligations undertaken a dozen years ago. The 
 scenes of the drama have hitherto had a close 
 connection with each other, and in spite of many 
 transformations the characters have preserved a 
 consistency which forbids us to treat them as 
 personages whose past is unknown to us. Thus 
 there are many despatches and documents which 
 would present the history of the last thirteen 
 years in an entirely new light, but which it is 
 as impossible to publish now as it would be to 
 disclose prematurely the incidents on which the 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 337 
 
 playwright relies to justify his denoument" For 
 the purposes, in fact, of any complete survey of 
 the official life of the distinguished subject of 
 this memoir we shall have to wait as we do in 
 the case of public men more highly placed still 
 for the disclosure of those private records which 
 are usually withheld from the world until not 
 only he who preserved them, but most of his 
 contemporaries also are in their graves. 
 
 In such a case, and in default of adequate 
 materials for setting forth the work of the 
 diplomatist, a biographer must be content with 
 such a portrait as he is able to draw of the man. 
 His personality is in itself an attractive one, 
 and is rendered additionally so by the peculiarities 
 of his career. An officer of artillery, who began 
 life by making a serious study of the scientific 
 part of his profession, who first brought himself 
 into notice by his ability as a financier dis- 
 played in what is perhaps the most important 
 financial position in the British Empire outside 
 the United Kingdom, and who has in the later 
 stages of his official life developed the highest 
 capacities and won unbounded confidence as a 
 diplomatist, he can at any rate boast a unique 
 history. It is rare for a soldier to distinguish 
 himself as an economist and administrator of 
 great revenues ; and it is perhaps rarer still 
 for any man to break through the somewhat 
 
338 LORD CROMER 
 
 narrowing influences of the financier's employ- 
 ment, and rise to such conceptions of national 
 and international policy as have directed Lord 
 Cromer's diplomatic course in Egypt. Rarest of 
 allus-JLtoJirid any servant of the Crown who has 
 passed from its military to its civil_service, and 
 then from one branch of the latter service to 
 another, and who while attaining to an^eminent 
 position in both civil capacities has in each, case 
 added to his personal reputation for ability, and 
 has in neither provoked challenge of his deserts. 
 Such an experience, especially when we consider 
 the jealousy, under a strictly regulated system 
 like our own, of all transfers from one department 
 of the service to another, would in itself stamp 
 him who has undergone it as the possessor of no 
 ordinary gift of adaptability, and of a truly many- 
 sided genius. 
 
 The last of Lord Cromer's promotions was 
 no doubt the most remarkable, and might have 
 been expected to provoke the greatest amount of 
 criticism. It is not that the faculties which it 
 called for differed to any very great extent from 
 those which he had displayed in his previous 
 employment : on the contrary, it was well known 
 that the Anglo- Egyptian problem was largely a 
 financial one, and that whoever was selected to 
 deal with it must be a financier first and foremost. 
 What made Baring's appointment to the Egyptian 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 339 
 
 Consul -Generalship a peculiar one, and might 
 have made it a subject of jealous comment, was 
 not so much that it was conferred upon a man of 
 his proved aptitudes, as that the Government did 
 not seek for someone of the same qualification 
 within the ranks of the diplomatic service. And 
 this was the more likely to be grudged because 
 the Agency at Cairo had, since Tel-el- Kebir, 
 become a post which any diplomatist ambitious 
 of distinction might well have been glad to fill. 
 Its duties were in the highest degree interesting, 
 and having regard to the entirely new situation 
 created by the English occupation of Egypt, the 
 able and tactful discharge of these duties already 
 promised to become a matter of international 
 importance. In short, the post to which Sir 
 Evelyn Baring was appointed in 1883 was one 
 which must have been coveted by many a man 
 who had been ''through the mill." It had been 
 previously held by Sir Edward Malet, and before 
 him by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Vivian, both in 
 the usual line of promotion; and indeed it appears 
 to have in only one other case in recent times 
 been bestowed upon anyone not in the regular 
 diplomatic service. It is thus among the 
 strongest of testimonies to Baring's reputation, 
 not merely for financial, but for general adminis- 
 trative ability, that no audible voice of criticism 
 was raised against his appointment either by the 
 
340 LORD CROMER 
 
 press on its own account, or acting as a medium 
 of remonstrance emanating privately from the 
 official world. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is probable that his financial 
 skill and reputation filled the most prominent 
 place in the estimate at first formed of him by 
 his colleagues at Cairo. At an official dinner 
 given to him on entering upon his duties as 
 Consul-General, Sir Auckland Colvin, who had 
 succeeded him as Controller of the Finances, 
 referred pointedly to this reputation of his in 
 proposing the toast of his health, and with 
 humorous solemnity warned the heads of 
 departments to be careful as to what they 
 submitted " to the spectacled eyes of the most 
 remorseless of financiers." Even Sir Auckland 
 Colvin probably did not foresee the notable 
 expansion which, under the influence of a 
 transformed situation and new responsibilities, 
 was to be effected in the remorseless financier's 
 ideas of Anglo-Egyptian policy. But even with 
 widened conceptions and designs the instincts 
 and habits of the remorseless financier remained 
 unchanged. On this point I may cite the 
 testimony of one who has enjoyed the intimacy 
 and, from a peculiar point of vantage, studied 
 the career of the Consul -General during the 
 last fifteen years, and who thus writes to me 
 of him : 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 341 
 
 " In time it was discovered that he was much more [than a 
 mere financier] ; but still his first object everywhere and always 
 is to set things on a firm financial basis. Loosely-kept accounts, 
 vague statements as to the extent of a debit balance, his soul 
 abhors. He is as anxious that the nation should pay its debts 
 as that the individual should pay his, because he knows that 
 there is nothing so fatal to public or to private morality as 
 laxity about pounds, shillings, and pence. The reign of the 
 Khedive Ismail was an object-lesson on the evils of extrava- 
 gance that might have converted Dickens's Micawber or 
 Charles Lamb's Mr. Bigod to thriftiness, and the man whose 
 task it was to repair the ruin caused by this prodigal misrule, 
 even if he had not been a Baring, would naturally have learned 
 to place sound finance before everything else. Not only in 
 figures, but in all matters small and great, Lord Cromer values 
 accuracy. Half the misfortunes in life, he is fond of saying, 
 are due to inaccurate statements." 
 
 And here is what the same appreciative 
 observer says of Lord Cromer's methods of 
 procedure in his new and wider sphere of 
 duties : 
 
 " The work in Egypt grew upon the English representative, 
 but it was work under imposed conditions. The necessity of 
 fiscal reform was admitted on all sides, but beyond this Lord 
 Cromer was not given a perfectly free hand. He was to work 
 on the lines of Lord Dufferin's celebrated despatch, and this 
 document prescribed certain conditions which were attractive 
 on paper but difficult to establish in practice. Lord Dufferin 
 could not boldly place Englishmen at the head of the various 
 departments, but leaving \\\?, native Pashas in their high 
 office_s_JiP provided each of them with an -English, Under- 
 secretary, who was to giiidg ?"d influence him in his adminis- 
 tratiYe_diiiies. Had each of these subordinates been endowed 
 with the tact or sympathetic dexterity, as well as with the 
 unexampled experience of Lord Dufferin himself, the result 
 
342 LORD CROMER 
 
 might have been successful, but when the Under-Secretary 
 was deficient in those gifts friction immediately resulted. 
 
 " However, Lord Cromer had to carry out the programme 
 as best he could with the materials that he found provided for 
 him. One by one he took in hand the various departments, and 
 laboured to substitute order for chaos, honesty for corruption, 
 and industry for inertness. The hardest task was, and is still, 
 to develop in native officials a sense of responsibility and self- 
 reliance. Timid and suspicious, nurtured in a hot atmosphere 
 of gossip and intrigue, fond of subterranean ways and 
 tortuous paths to promotion, the Egyptian did not take 
 kindly to the English regime, because he did not and could 
 not believe in it. He cannot understand even now that 
 hard work, and not backstairs influence, is the passport to 
 promotion. 
 
 " The British Representative and his band of subordinate 
 workers had the hard task of impressing this lesson on the 
 natives, and their work has been rendered doubly hard by the 
 persistent hostility of the French. The explanation of this 
 hostility, and of the phases through which it has passed, belongs 
 to the history of the British Occupation, and I need not go 
 into it. My only object is to show how Lord Cromer's special 
 gifts have enabled him to proceed with his reforms, when to 
 this irritating opposition were added the dangers of pestilence 
 and war. 
 
 " His first rule is to take one thing at a time. His mind is 
 
 like a large bureau with many pigeon-holes, each labelled with 
 a docket specifying its contents. He has that rare gift, an 
 accurate sense of proportion ; and he decided when he took 
 charge of Egyptian interests what were the relative sizes of 
 the questions to be dealt with. Then he studied each 
 thoroughly, first satisfying himself what work had to be 
 done, and then selecting men qualified to do it. 
 
 " Here of course occasional mistakes have been inevitable. 
 It was impossible to find always the right men in Egypt, and 
 the workers imported from India, though superior to the 
 Englishmen on the spot, failed sometimes to realize the 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 343 
 
 anomalous part they had to play, and either effaced them- 
 selves too much and became Egyptianized, or effaced them- 
 selves too little and were hated as domineering Englishmen. 
 But to all his countrymen associated with him in Egypt 
 Lord Cromer has been absolutely loyal. He has upheld them 
 through evil report and good report. He has encouraged 
 the shy, checked the over-confident, backed up those who 
 wanted support, and left those who had stuff in them judi- 
 ciously alone. 
 
 " His philosophy leads him to take kindly views of men. 
 He likes to think generously of those about him, and he 
 often says that as he grows older he thinks better of the rank 
 and file of humanity than he did when young. All those who 
 have worked under him feel that he trusts them, and that he 
 requires at their hands equal candour. He loses no oppor- 
 tunity of praising his . subordinates and of recommending 
 them for promotion ; but he requires from them staunch and 
 thorough loyalty in return. His attitude towards his men 
 is not unlike that of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, when he said 
 that 'he must have confidence in the Sixth.' 
 
 "Lord Cromer's resemblance to the great Headmaster is 
 specially shown in his relations with the junior members of 
 his staff. The Agency at Cairo is an excellent diplomatic 
 school. The Chief treats his subordinates with perfect 
 frankness, and the result is that he is served with unswerving 
 devotion. He requires thoroughness and hard work. His 
 conversation rich in quotations, historical references, and 
 shrewd criticisms of men and things is full of instruction and 
 stimulating suggestion. Dull indeed must that Secretary be 
 who does not learn something from the daily talk Lord 
 Cromer pours out over the luncheon table. In his relations 
 with his ' boys,' and above all in his happy domestic life, the 
 warmth of heart that underlies the brusque manner is apparent. 
 For one of the young men who was associated with him in 
 the most trying time in his Egyptian career he cherished, as 
 he has himself told us, a fatherly affection ; and those who saw 
 his sorrow at the untimely death of Gerald Portal realized 
 
344 LORD CROMER 
 
 that, like all the other sides of Lord Cromer's character, his 
 affections are strong. There is nothing weak or superficial 
 in the man. 
 
 "Sir Alfred Milner pointed out, when sketching the diffi- 
 culties of the Egyptian problem, that it required above all 
 other things patience; and indeed without this, tact, energy, 
 financial adroitness, and financial ability would have availed 
 little. Lord Cromer knows better than most men how to 
 wait without losing time, when it would be inopportune to 
 push one of his chief projects, for which he never loses a 
 moment, but turns aside and puts in some smaller work which 
 is auxiliary to the main object. And the name of these tasks 
 is legion. The British Agent and Consul-General is the 
 universal referee, and is applied to by petitioners of every 
 nation, and ' in all causes ecclesiastical and civil.' 
 
 "In a single morning he may be requested to give his 
 verdict on a proposed economy on the Budget, on the dis- 
 missal of a postman, on a plan for augmenting the Army, on a 
 quarrel between two rival Jewish sects, on the deportation of a 
 drunken Irishman, on a question of precedence of the wives 
 of two Egyptian officials, and on the best method of preserv- 
 ing the remains of a Ptolemaic temple. These and a score 
 of other matters pass in review before ' the spectacled 
 eyes/ and are investigated and adjudicated on with a 
 care and thoroughness alike untiring and inexhaustible. 
 And during six months of the year to these multifarious 
 duties are added social engagements luncheon parties, 
 dinner parties, and receptions to 'all and sundry' who may 
 be furnished with letters of introduction to the Agency 
 not to mention interviews with journalists and members 
 of Parliament who wish to prove the Occupation a failure, 
 and projectors whose nostrums have only to be tried and 
 paid for to convert it into a triumphant success. 
 
 "All these claimants in turn receive appropriate treatment. 
 They are not sent away with frothy assurances of support 
 which mean nothing, enforced by emphatic shakes of the 
 hand which mean less. They are not snubbed or handed 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 345 
 
 over to an Under-Secretary ; each has his claims listened to, 
 and he may be sure that if Lord Cromer has promised to 
 write a letter on the matter that letter will be written before 
 the day closes, and in his next interview he will find that 
 his proposal has been thoroughly sifted, and subjected to 
 a glance as penetrating as a search-light. 
 
 " My sketch has shown Lord Cromer as an indefatigable 
 worker. He is also an omnivorous reader, but with a high 
 critical standard. He likes no inferior work. This is largely 
 owing to the fact that he lays a sound foundation. Like 
 Coleridge, he regards the Bible as the ' Statesman's Manual.' 
 Few divines know the Book of Job and the prophecies 
 of Isaiah better; but though again with Coleridge he would 
 say that 'Sublimity is Hebrew by birth,' he begins every 
 day with a page of Greek or Latin authors. He loves 
 his Homer. The i2th Book of the Iliad is his favourite, 
 Cicero and Juvenal he enjoys. His favourite study is history, 
 and his favourite period the French Revolution. Indian 
 questions of course interest him keenly. 
 
 " His knowledge of the English poets is remarkable. 
 Dryden's masculine verse attracts him, but his voluminous 
 note-books contain extracts from writers of every century. He 
 loves a good novel, and enjoys healthy stories, like those 
 of the new romantic school of novelists ; but he never fails 
 to express his loathing of the nauseous fiction of the day, 
 and has been known to put chance-found volumes of it 
 into the first fire he could find alight. 
 
 " Among his favourite passages from the Latin poets may 
 be cited the noble lines of Claudian on the maternal and 
 beneficent function of Imperial Rome : 
 
 " ' Hsec est in gremium victos quoe sola recepit 
 Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit 
 Matris non dominoe ritu, civesque creavit 
 Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit. 
 IIujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes 
 Quod veluti patris regionibus utitur hospes 
 Quod sedem mutare licet ; quod cernere Thulem 
 Lusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus 
 Quod bibimus passim Rhodanum potamus Orontem 
 Quod cuncti gens una sumus.' 
 
346 LORD CROMER 
 
 " Will any Egyptian poet ever celebrate the beneficent work 
 of England in the nineteenth century as Claudian celebrated 
 the work of Rome in the fifth ? It seems as if we should be 
 too sanguine to expect such a eulogy, though it would be 
 in many respects just. At all events, such a panegyric would 
 be incomplete without a tribute to the man who has been 
 'the voice of England in Egypt,' and who has directed her 
 efforts for good with such distinguished vigour, wisdom, and 
 perseverance EVELYN BARING, LORD CROMER." 
 
 Side by side with this unofficial testimony to 
 the great qualities of the Consul-General let me 
 place the no less admiring estimate formed of 
 him by one of the ablest and most distinguished 
 of the young Englishmen who served under 
 him in fact if not in form during the darkest 
 and most difficult years of the British Occupa- 
 tion, and recorded in what has become the 
 standard work on this remarkable chapter in our 
 history. Sir Alfred Milner writes (England in 
 Egypt, p. 437) as follows : 
 
 " In the art of government the Englishman seems to be as 
 handy and adaptable as he is clumsy and angular in society. 
 There are other nations with equal and perhaps greater gifts 
 for the creation of an ideally perfect administration, if they 
 have a tabula rasa wherein to construct it. But I doubt 
 whether any of them could have made anything at all of a 
 system so imperfect, so incongruous, and so irritating as 
 that which we found in Egypt, and which we have not been 
 permitted radically to alter. The logical Frenchman would 
 have been maddened by its absurdities. The authoritative 
 temper of the German would have revolted at its restrictions. 
 They would have insisted on governing in their own way, or 
 they would have despaired of governing at all. It needed 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 347 
 
 that incarnation of compromise, the average Briton, to accept 
 the system with all its faults and set to work, quietly plodding 
 away to do the best he could under untoward circumstances. 
 
 " The qualities of the race have triumphed. But our 
 success might have been less complete ; perhaps that success 
 might never have been attained at all had it not been for 
 one remarkable piece of good fortune. The stars were indeed 
 gracious when at the beginning of our greatest troubles it 
 occurred to the British Government to entrust the conduct of 
 its policy to the hands of Sir Evelyn Baring. It would be 
 difficult to overestimate what the work of England in Egypt 
 owes to the sagacity, fortitude, and patience of the British 
 Minister. His mental and moral equipment very remark- 
 able in any case was peculiarly suited to the very peculiar 
 circumstances in which he found himself placed. Perhaps 
 the most striking feature about him has been a singular 
 combination of strength and forbearance ; and he needed 
 both these qualities in an exceptional degree. On one side 
 of him were the English officials, zealous about their work 
 fretting at the obstruction which met them every time, and 
 constantly appealing to him for assistance to overcome it. 
 On the other side were the native authorities, new to our 
 methods, hating to be driven, and keen to resent the appear- 
 ance of English diplomatic pressure. The former were often 
 induced to grumble at him for interfering too little, the 
 latter were no less prone to complain of his interfering too 
 much. 
 
 "What a task was his to steer an even keel between 
 meddlesomeness and inactivity ! Yet how seldom has he 
 failed to hit the right mean. Slowly but surely he has carried 
 all his main points. And he has carried them without 
 needlessly overriding native authority or pushing his own 
 personality into the foreground. He has realized that the 
 essence of our policy is to help the Egyptians to work out as 
 far as possible their own salvation. And not only has he 
 realized this himself, but he has taught others to realize it. 
 By a wise reserve he has led his countrymen in Egypt to 
 
34 LORD CROMER 
 
 rely upon patience, upon persuasion, upon personal influence 
 rather than upon rougher methods to guide their native 
 colleagues in the path of improved administration. Yet on 
 the rare occasions when his intervention was absolutely 
 necessary he has intervened with an emphasis which has 
 broken down all resistance. Criticize him as you will and 
 he has made mistakes like other statesmen the record of 
 his nine years of arduous labour is one of which all English- 
 men may well feel proud. The contrast between Egypt to-day 
 and Egypt as he found it, the enhanced reputation of England 
 in matters Egyptian, are the measure of the signal services 
 he has rendered alike to his own country and to the country 
 where he has laid the foundations of a lasting fame." 
 
 This tribute from one who knew Lord Cromer 
 so well as did the author of England in Egypt 
 could be swelled, if need were, by many confluent 
 streams of eulogy from members of what may 
 be called the Anglo-Egyptian Civil Service. 
 Those who have come into closest contact, official 
 and personal, with Lord Cromer, bear testimony 
 with one voice not only to the confidence and 
 the admiration, but to the feelings of regard and 
 affection with which he inspires his subordinates. 
 That " brusque manner," to which reference has 
 been made in one of the foregoing extracts, 
 belongs so essentially to the mere external as- 
 pects of demeanour, that no one who has ever 
 got beyond the first few phraser of a ceremonious 
 introduction to the British Consul-General would 
 be even conscious of its existence. It is the 
 thinnest of crusts on the surface of a genuine 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 349 
 
 and genial nature, and the warmth engendered 
 by a five minutes' conversation suffices to thaw 
 it. There could be no greater mistake than to 
 imagine that it is due to any defect of sympathy 
 in the man. The truest measure of the magni- 
 tude of such an error is to be found in the whole- 
 hearted devotion which animates the co-operating 
 efforts of his staff a sentiment which only sym- 
 pathy can create and sustain. It is no small part 
 of the debt for which a Minister in Lord Cromer's 
 position becomes the creditor of his country, that 
 he has been enabled to enlist support of this de- 
 scription from those who work with him. Ministers 
 who fail, even only from faults of temperament or 
 manner, to secure it lose half their usefulness ; 
 and apart altogether from the Consul-General's 
 diplomatic gifts, apart from his skill in dealing 
 with the difficulties which were created for him 
 by native ill-will, native inertia, native intrigue, 
 it is certain that his capacity for managing his 
 own countrymen of the official class, and for 
 evoking from each of them the best that he 
 had to give, contributed immeasurably to the 
 splendid success of our administrative under- 
 taking in Egypt. 
 
 And whatever be the ultimate issue of that 
 undertaking, its record, let us be sure, will retain 
 a lasting place in history, as its memories will 
 abide in the traditions of the Egyptian people. 
 
350 LORD CROMER 
 
 If England, concentrating her strength for self- 
 defence, were forced to-morrow to retire from 
 Egypt even as Rome, our prototype in history, 
 withdrew her legions from our own shores when 
 her enemies gathered on her frontier the last two 
 decades of the nineteenth century would still be 
 remembered in the Nile Valley as a period when 
 for the first time for countless generations law 
 and order and security reigned under the aegis of 
 a Power which has spread these blessings over 
 half the world ; when the stream of justice flowed 
 pure from its fount, and the rich man could no 
 more deflect its course than he could divert the 
 waters of the Nile from the plot of the poorest 
 cultivator ; when the hand of the oppressor was 
 stayed over the people, and the extortions of 
 the tax-gatherer were made to cease, and the 
 lash was wrested from the task-master, and the 
 peasant everywhere ate of the fruit of his labour, 
 no man making him afraid. The recollection of 
 these things will not soon pass away in Egypt; 
 the experience is too sadly strange, too patheti- 
 cally novel for that. It will be engraven on the 
 hearts of the people as upon a stela as enduring 
 as the sepulchres of their kings. And wherever 
 the tale of this great and beneficent work is told, 
 the name of the English administrator who 
 guided its whole course from commencement 
 to completion, whose unconquerable patience 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 351 
 
 overcame one by one all the obstacles that 
 impeded it, whose sagacity foresaw and whose 
 firmness averted all the dangers that threatened 
 it, will claim a place at the head of every 
 chapter of the noble narrative, and be recalled 
 with honour on every page. 
 

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