MR. WILFRID BLUNT AND SM E. MALET.
WE recommend the small knot of English enthusiasts who still believe in Arabi Pasha as a kind of Egyptian Garibaldi, to read the last published batch (No. 13) of official correspondence on the affairs of Egypt. It con- tains a long letter from Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, in which he sum- marises, with all the thoroughgoing and not too scrupulous zeal of a violently prejudiced partisan, the whole case for Arabi and his military revolutionists. The document is in the form of a letter to Mr. Gladstone, and was published in the Times of June 23rd. Not content with defending Arabi, Mr. Blunt makes sundry accusations of an injurious character against the English Resident Minister (Sir E. Malet) and the English Controller-General (Sir A.. Colvin). To these accusa- tions, and to the whole case set up by Mr. Blunt, Sir E. Malet makes a detailed reply, which unprejudiced readers will pro- bably consider conclusive. The impression which Mr. Blunt labours to convey is that Arabi is at the head of a genuinely national party, which represents the bulk of the Egyptian .people, and which aims at "the development of political liberty in their country in the direction of Parliamentary
and constitutional self - government." " They trusted then, as now, to the Army, which was and is their servant, to secure them these rights ; and to their Parliament to secure them these ends ; and they were prepared to advance gradually and with moderation in the path they had traced." The Dual Note presented by France and England interrupted this process of constitutional regeneration, and compelled the military to "insist upon the resignation of Sherif Pasha and to insist with the Khedive on summoning a Nationalist Ministry to office. This insistence, though represented by the English journals as the work of the Army, was, in fact, the work of the nation, through their representatives, the Nota- bles." The English and French Governments refused to recog- nise the new Government thus imposed on the Khedive, and the English Agents at Cairo are declared by Mr. Blunt to have "set themselves steadily to work," presumably "in accordance with their instructions," "to bring about a revolution counter to the will of the people and the liberties granted them by the Viceroy." "The English Press Correspondents, hitherto held in check by the Resident, have been permitted full licence in the dissemination of news injurious to the Ministry, and known to be false." Mr. Blunt proceeds to illustrate this very serious accusation, by mentioning several "scares" reported in the English Press, "and declared by him to be either totally false or resting on a very slight foundation." Mr. Blunt pro- fesses his entire belief in the "plot to assassinate the National party," and is indignant at the commutation by the Khedive of the sentence passed on the accused. Then followed the so- called ultimatum of France and England, and the resignation of Arabi's Ministry. "It became, however, immediately appar- ent that the feeling of the country had been miscalculated by our diplomacy, and Arabi, by the manifest will of the nation, returned next day to power.' We may note, in passing, that Mr. Blunt does not explain how "the manifest will of the nation " could have declared itself so emphatically in the course of a single day.
It is not necessary to follow the rest of Mr. Bluncs narra- tive, since it is merely a recapitulation of Egyptian events from the resumption of office by Arabi to the abortive mission of Dervish Pasha. Sir E. Malet traverses Mr. Blunt's state- ment in every particular. In refutation of the assertion that the "Army was and is the servant of the National Party," he
says:—
"The Army, previous to the bombardment of the Forts of Alexan- dria, was master of TOgypt, master of the Khedive, master of the National, Turkish, and Foreign parties. From all this, which make up the sum of the population, Arabi Pasha has, during the latter part of his administration, that is, since he has had time to show his real character, received no support except from very small minoritieu of each party, and from the majority of the ignorant Fellaheen who. had been encouraged to believe that he would give them the soil and cancel their debts. The fact is proved by the demand of seven- eighths of the Deputies, expressed by Sultan Naha, that he Ethould not only give in his resignation but leave the country ; and by the vigorous support extended to the Khedive by the trlerna, previous to and during the mission of Dervish Pasha."
Against the assertion of Mr. Blunt that the fall of the Cherif Ministry was not the work of the Army, but "of the nation, through their representatives the Notables," Sir E. Malet quotes "the positive and solemn assurance of Sultan Pasha, President of the Chamber, that the Deputies, in insist- ing on that occasion on a change of Ministry, acted under menace from the military, and through fear." All the rest of Mr. Blunt's assertions are passed in review by Sir E. Malet, and, as it seems to us, entirely demolished. Two or three specimens will suffice. One of the items of false intelligence which Mr. Blunt accuses Sir E. Malet of "disseminating through Europe" was "the scare of the revolt in the Soudan." Since Mr. Blunt wrote thus, the revolt in the Soudan has proved its existence by the defeat of an Egyptian army. What was untrue was the denial that there was a revolt, and the assertion by Mahmoud Pasha Sarni, a creature of Arabi, that the leader of the revolt had been
defeated and killed. " The scare of large military ex- penditure" is another piece of false intelligence which Mr. Blunt accuses Sir E. Malet of having spread by means of "English Press Correspondents." Sir E. Malet replies effectively by the irrefutable argument of figures. Arabi, after obtaining power, nearly doubled the expenditure of the Ministry of War in ten months. "An ultimatum, dictated by the Consuls-General," says Mr. Blunt, "was sent to the Ministers." Sir E. Malet declares that the ultimatum in question "was not sent at the dictation of the Agents. It was completely voluntary on the part of Sultan Pasha, President of the Chamber of Notables, "and I was surprised," says Sir E. Malet, "when he informed me that he had made" the demand that Arabi should resign and leave -the country. We have no hesitation in accepting Sir E. Malet's account, in preference to Mr. Blunt's. In the first place, Sir E. Malet was on the spot, whereas Mr. Blunt was in England during nearly the whole of the period embraced by his letter ; and he received his information from Arabi's partisans. In the second place, Mr. Blunt is clearly a man endowed with an infinite .capacity for being deceived. Be allowed himself to be persuaded that Arabi was a disinterested, truthful, and pure-minded patriot, bent on regenerating the Egyptian people by means of Parlia- mentary institutions and purified Courts of Justice. And Mr. Blunt's eyes were not opened by Arabi's very unconstitutional method of developing constitutional government. Arabi made and unmade Ministries by military violence, and forced himself into office at the head of his battalions. One of his first acts in office was to increase the Army by more than one-third, and to multiply the pay of his officers. And this increase in the Army was not made by voluntary recruitment, but by forced conscription. The Circassian officers were faithful to the Khedive, and therefore Arabi had them arrested on a trumped- up charge of a plot to assassinate, not "the National Ministry," as Mr. Blunt has asserted, but Arabi himself. How cruelly they were tortured, by Arabi's orders and in his presence, to extort from them the false confessions which Arabi wanted, we have known for some time on authentic private information, and the facts have lately been published in the Times. But Mr. Blunt's faith in his hero is too robust to be shaken by ordinary evidence. He is not convinced even by the sack and burning of Alexandria,—deeds which place Arabi in the infamous category of such criminals as Nana Sahib and Skefket Pasha. Mr. Blunt has for some time figured before the English public as an authority on the poli- tical and religious aspirations of the Arabs ; but he has himself supplied, in a very succinct form, the measure of his capacity as an interpreter of current political events. It is reasonable to suppose that he knows his own country some- what better than Arabi and Egypt, and here is the kind of news which he has been sending to his friends in Egypt. In the middle of last May he sent the following telegram to a member of the Mussulman community of El Azhar, in Cairo : —" Is the National party content at present with Arabi ? English Government pretends the contrary. If you allow yourselves to disunite with the Army, Europe will annex you." The palpable ignorance of this message is more surprising even than its seditiousness and arrog- ance. The Sheikh to whom it was addressed complained to the Khedive, "on discovery, of the deception which had been practised upon him ;" and Sir E. Malet affirms "with confidence that the University, the Chamber, and the nation
• arc anxious for the termination of the military despotism which now terrorises them." All true Liberals must welcome any signs of a genuine desire and capacity for self-government among the Egyptians. But the first step in that direction must be the suppression of the military adventurer whose sole aim is self-aggrandisement, and who has hitherto done abso- lutely nothing to show any sympathy or good-will towards the mass of the Egyptian people. Political liberty and con- stitutional progress are not likely to be promoted by the agency of a rowdy and mutinous army.
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