One hundred years ago
The Lord Mayor entertained her Ma- jesty's Ministers at the Mansion House on Wednesday. Lord Northbrook and Mr Childers, in returning thanks for the Army and Navy, alluded with some pride to the promptitude with which `England the Unready' had equipped and sent out so considerable an expedi- tion; and in this the nation will heartily concur, though Indian statesmen may doubt whether greater rapidity and less careful all-round completeness might not have answered the purpose in Egypt even better. Mr Gladstone's speech was, of course, the speech of the even- ing. He spoke of the danger of a conflict with the Lords as virtually over, remark- ed that the interests in defence of which we had gone to Egypt, though they might be ours, were 'not ours alone, but interests common to us with every State in Europe, nay, with the whole of the civilised world'. Egypt had become the great gate between the Eastern and Western hemispheres; the interests of mankind demanded that that gate should be open, 'and in order that it may be open, it is not less essential that the country in which it is set should be a country under a peaceful, orderly, and legal government'.
Spectator, 12 August 1882
Previous page
