ery loss of about £100,000 a-year, out of a total of 4½ millions. As a finishing stroke of irony on the jelly-fish friend of the fellaheen, he stipulated that the 5 per cent tax on the coupons should be returnable when the Egyptian Treasury was in a position to do so! A minister like Lord Palmerston or Mr Canning would have been apt to reply to such a proposal that it was difficult to distinguish it from a gratuitous insult. Lord Granville swallowed it as the Curaçao after a feast of leeks.
With this grand climax to our Egyptian benefactions, we may now make up the four years' account and see how it looks as a whole. As a standard of comparison, let us recall for a moment the final boon of the late Government to the fellaheen. Under the Law of Liquidation originated by Lord Salisbury, the annual charges on the public debt of Egypt were reduced by a million and a half sterling – the one solid and substantial measure of relief which the fellaheen owe to foreign intervention. Mr Gladstone, after ignoring their existence for eighteen months, had his attention rudely called to the fact by Arabi Pasha's first rising in September 1881, when the Khedive's palace was surrounded by a mob of mutinous soldiers, who had been "retrenched" by the new Control. That was the first shot fired by the National movement, but it had already formulated a distinct and comprehensive programme, which Mr Gladstone might have seen in the Consul-General's reports of the day, had he felt the slightest interest in the subject. But Mr Gladstone had evidently never been able to spare five minutes to it from his Irish Land Act, and his anti-obstruction rules. He was glad, no doubt, to leave it in the hands of his friend Gambetta, who showed that it is not always the most ardent republican who is the best judge of republicanism in others. Gambetta proposed that the two Powers should send each an ironclad to Alexandria, ostensibly as a counter-demonstration against the Turkish mission to Cairo. Another pretext was found for it afterwards, but that was the original one. Our Consul-General at Cairo foresaw the dangerous effect this might have on the Egyptian people, then madly excited against the army of foreign officials which the new Controllers had let loose on them. He telegraphed to London that "the demonstration" (Mr Gladstone's favourite recipe for all foreign troubles, a "naval demonstration") "implied danger to Alexandria, and was calculated to cause agitation and disturbance among the whole Arab population, and not improbably might lead to a general revolution." But Gambetta, of course, knew better than a Consul-General. He intended that the "naval demonstration" should be followed up; and at the close of the year, when a new assembly which had been elected under the influence of Arabi Pasha was about to meet, he proposed that the two Powers should make it perfectly clear they would stand no nonsense. His plan was to address to Tewfik Pasha a joint note, intimating to him, and through him to the Nationalists, that the Powers were resolved to strengthen his position and repress disorder.
That was virtually, as Earl Granville could not fail to see, a declaration of war to the knife against the National movement. He boggled at it, but influence was brought to bear on him through the negotiations for the renewal of the French Commercial Treaty, which were then in a critical state. Mr Gladstone was not going to sacrifice such a sop for the Chambers of
