THE IMPRACTICABLES ON EGYPT.
SIR WILFRID LAWSON'S outbreak on Wednesday, in relation to the bombardment of the forts of Alexandria, was, no doubt, an inevitable event, for Sir Wilfrid Lawson would not have been Sir Wilfrid Lawson, if he had not taken that view. Nor are we much surprised at the tone taken by Mr. Rylands, and the more moderate tone of Mr. Illingworth. The use of force for any purpose not obviously and exclusively defensive, always kindles the indignation of a certain section of the Radical party, who at once start to their feet and cry out that it is an act of assassination, directed against national life. Even the Impracticables, however, cannot prevent the con- stituencies from looking a little deeper into the facts, before they echo this violent language against the Government. Let us consider for a moment what it would mean, if the British Government had, as apparently Sir Wilfrid Lawson wishes, effaced itself in Egypt, and stood quietly by, permitting Arabi to do what he would with the Khedive,—which means to depose him, which he proposed, and ultimately, if we may trust the latest accounts, to assassinate him. Of course the result must have been the setting-up of a government of military mutineers, at war with all the rest of the world, entirely irre- sponsible to the people of Egypt, and bent on securing for the leaders of the mutiny as large a portion of loot as possible, before its ultimate disorganisation and disappearance, and this in a country which contains one of the great European high- ways, essential not to English commerce only, but to the com- merce of every industrial people, whether of Europe or Asia. No doubt, the fact that Egypt commands the securest route to India may make the anarchy of Egypt an even greater danger to England than to any other portion of Europe, but though it would make us the first sufferers, we should
share our troubles with the East and West alike. It seems to us perfectly childish to maintain that the responsi- bility of the civilised Powers for the decent government of Egypt is only on a par with their responsibility for the decent government of the interior of China or the interior of Africa, or that we can see the overthrow of all orderly authority there, without taking reasonable measures to restore and assert it. If the Porte be regarded as the ultimate Government of Egypt, the mounting of guns on the Alexandrian forts was in defiance of the authority of the ultimate Government, being against the orders of the Porte's own Envoy. If the Khedive be regarded as the true ruler in Egypt, the whole policy of Arabi was a mutiny against the authority of the Khedive, and the beginning of an attempt to destroy him. As for the plea that he represented the National Party, no plea could be more absurd. He is bringing famine on the Egyptian people, and his chosen instruments are the cut-throats of the Egyptian prisons. If the use of force against such a power as his is not legitimate,—even when a European Conference, sitting on this very issue, allows its use, and, so far as is known, approves its use,—there is no sort of use of international force that can bo regarded as legitimate at all. And this is really the conclusion to which such speeches as Sir Wilfrid Lawson's and Mr. O'Kelly's point. If life is lost anywhere in consequence of the use of our national armaments, they immediately cry out on the cruelty and dishonour of the Power which causes that loss of life. Are they, then, really prepared to say that to let men murder each other, and, in the course of murdering each other, to break up not only some of the greatest achievements of material civilisation, but those on the preservation of which the restoration of their own country to prosperity must depend, is righteous and just ; and that to restore authority to a land in anarchy, at the cost of many guilty and some
innocent lives, is unrighteous and unjust B Sir Wilfrid Lawson accuses the Prime Minister of deserting in Office the principles he had announced in Opposition. Nothing can be more con- trary to the fact. In Opposition, Mr. Gladstone protested, and warmly protested, against the selfish seizure of " places of arms " in the interest of England ; but he also protested most warmly against the failure to intervene against ruthless oppression like that of the Turks in Bulgaria, whose doings Arabi Pasha has almost rivalled in Egypt. What did Mr. Gladstone say on the subject of Egypt ? Why, he expressly declared, when he was still in Opposition, that the true course was to use the naval power of England for the defence of the Suez Canal,—and to that declaration he has rigidly adhered. It is not for any selfish purpose that England now intervenes. Every one knows that it is to save Egypt, not to annex Egypt, that the Government are exerting their whole power.
If it is to become an axiom among Radicals that international force can never rightly be used anywhere, whether in defence of liberty or in defence of order, or to secure the fulfilment of contracts, why, then, the Radical party should have begun to scream out when we compelled Turkey to render to Montenegro what she had agreed to give to Montenegro, and should then have pro- tested that we were risking the shedding of blood for no purpose worthy of the cost. They should, indeed, cry out for the surrender of our Indian Empire itself, for we venture to say that the acts of authority by which we put down anarchy on the borders of our Indian Empire, are justifiable only on the same principles on which it is perfectly justifiable for us to intervene for the restoration of order in Egypt. If the mandate of the people be the only justification for the exist- ence of authority in any land, we have no more right in India than we have in Egypt. If responsibilities are created by direct interests and duties, then we are under heavy responsi- bilities for the pacification of Egypt, no less than for the pacification of India. Sir Wilfrid Lawson might almost as well plead for the right of the wild beasts in the jungle to resist invasion, as for the right of such selfish and cruel mutineers as Arabi Pasha to resist the intervention of Europe in Egyptian affairs.
We would suggest to the Radical party that before they raise the cry of cruelty and dishonour again, in connec- tion with such proceedings as the disarmament of the Alex- andria forts, they should consider and clear up for themselves the principles on which they act. Most of them, we believe, repudiate the extreme non-resistance idea. They admit force to be necessary as the basis of Government, and most of them are inclined to approve the application of force even to the prevention or punishment of foreign outrages, so long as they are quite convinced that it will diminish and not increase the area of oppression. They were disposed to justify the inter- ference of Russia in Bulgaria ; they made no objection to the interference of England, in conjunction with all the other Powers, in Turkey, when Turkey declined to carry out her con- tract with Montenegro. Nay, they were far from unfavourable to the attempt to force on Turkey the fulfilment of the hopes, —for they were no more than hopes,—held out to Greece by the Congress of Berlin.' But if they approved, or even did not disapprove, of all these acts of forcible intervention, we cannot understand how they can utter this outcry against the dis- armament by our Fleet of the Alexandrian forts, which were being armed by Arabi Pasha solely for the purpose of resisting the authority of Europe, the authority of Turkey, and the authority of the Khedive of Egypt. Sir Wilfrid Lawson and his friends talk as if Arabi Pasha were a sort of national hero, representing the Egyptian people as William Tell repre- sented the people of Switzerland. What pretence they have for this view, except the inveterate intellectual caprice of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt and Sir W. Gregory, it would be hard to say. All we know of Arabi points strongly the other way. There is, we believe, ample evidence that he cruelly tortured the Circassian officers in his employ, in order to make them confess to a plot against himself which had never taken place, in order that he might get rid of their influence among his troops, which he regarded as more faithful to his master than to himself. His career throughout has been that of a selfish military usurper, not in the least of a national hero, and his use of the convicts for the firing and plunder of Alexandria, shows him in his true light. He is really one of those military intriguers, so common in the East, from whose elevation to power nothing could be hoped, whether for the people of Egypt, or for the interests of Europe. Those who take his side, and think that all intervention
against him was cruel and oppressive, might just as well insist on polite treatment for the brigands of Sicily, or the brigands of Albania. In our belief, it is for the highest interest of Egypt that she should, for a time, be the ward of Europe, and pro- tected by Europe from the tricks of such military schemers as Arabi, who have just as much right to regard themselves as patriotic heroes as the leaders of the Ku-Klux Clan had in the United States. There is nothing which injures true Liberalism more than the sympathy of its left wing with all the loose ruffianism of unsettled States. For the prosperity of countries like Egypt, a settled Government, and a settled Government that protects the interests of the peaceful in- habitants, is the first of all conditions ; whereas, the military rebels who have brought about this crisis, have shown the utmost contempt for all settled government by their attempts to unsettle the only Government which existed; and the utmost contempt for the interests of the peaceful inhabitants, when, in the case of Alexandria, they sacrificed them, without mercy, to plunder and massacre, only that they might secure an interval for their own escape. It is a pity, no doubt, that we had not provided a landing force to protect the town, before we opened fire on the forts. In that respect we probably deferred too literally to the authority of the Conference, which em- powered us only to repel the preparations aimed at the safety of the Fleet. But if the Government be open to any charge, it is that of doing too little on our own responsibility in Egypt, not to that of doing too much.
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