The Porte shuffles, as of course she would shuffle, about
the
proclamation of Arabi as a rebel, for the Sultan is well aware of the rising enthusiasm in the Mahomedan party for the adventurer who seems to have taken up the gage against the Infidel. The Government of the Sultan, therefore, asks him to postpone the declaration till the Mahomedau troops' actually land, which Lord Dufferin, we trust, will stoutly resist— especially since the publication of a proclamation by Arabi, in which he claims the Turkish troops as coming to his own assist- ance. The truth is that it is a serious mistake to let the Turkish troops go to Egypt at all. We shall have to divide them, to watch them, to keep them under the range of our Fleet,—in fact, to be prepared at any moment for their turning against us, either with the Sultan's secret approval, or without it. Nothing can be more dangerous than to call upon an ally of whom we are a great deal more afraid than we are of the enemy, only because we hope to use him against the enemy. It is like the policy of Louis XI. in his visit to Charles of Burgundy, without the same prospect of extricating our- selves from the difficulty.
