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PASHA OF EGYPT.
millions of quarters of wheat from foreign lands, the consumption would increase to that extent, for it is astonishing how much consumption increases where the price of corn is low, and where trade is healthy and prosperous. There are many districts in which the increase of consumption is only one-fifth: but were it one-tenth it would make an increase of two millions of quarters, and the introduction of two millions of quarters of corn would be the export of between four and five millions of manufactures in order to accomplish the payment. My friend (the chairman) referred to some circumstances which took place in Egypt. It is almost repeating myself and him to advert to the subject again, but the facts are so interesting that I must be excused for doing so. Egypt, it is well known to you, has been for between 3000 and 4000 years the the granary of the world. It was the granary of the world in the time and from the time of Pharoah to the present day. Even when its population was between seven and eight millions (and it is now, perhaps, not more than two millions), it produced not only sufficient for its own consumption, but its overflowing harvests were diffused to every place throughout the Mediterranean, and their super-abundance supplied food for more than Egyptian mouths. The Pasha, who is a very intelligent and a very remarkable man, and a man capable of reasoning, and a man, more than any Turk I ever met with, alive to the great interests of the country, had been interfering with the introduction of corn, and put a heavy duty on, under the belief that his all productive country never could want corn. But it happened there, as it will happen anywhere, that any interference with production is an embarrassment to production, and that capital, finding itself embarrassed and annoyed by each interference, applies itself to other channels; and when I was in Egypt the people were absolutely menaced with a famine, and in Cairo corn could scarcely be had for love or for money, or even with the despotic orders of the Pasha in hand. I did speak to the Pasha upon the subject, and I told him that he was deluded by those about him, and like other monarchs surrounded by mere flatterers, who rather told him that which was not true than that which was. I told him how the country was menaced with nothing less than starvation, and that, if the system were continued, he would probably see his army in a state of revolt, for it was true in Africa as well as England, that no revolt was so terrible as that of the belly. He did, after a long debate, and after fighting very heroically in the Chandos style, give way, and said he thought it was better to let corn come in and go out of the ports without any duty whatever. I ventured to assure him he would soon see the beneficial consequences. I had reason to say so, for it was then at 180 piastres, but after this it fell down to seventy. Corn thenceforward came in and went out to all quarters, and I left Egypt exporting instead of
