THE CONDITION OF EGYPT—PAST AND PRESENT.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3231, 7 November 1881, Page 4

THE CONDITION OF EGYPT—PAST AND PRESENT.

jFrom time immemorial the Egyptians have been bondsmen, hewers of wood and drawers of water. Their history, if written by themselves, would be that of a succession of taskmasters. No knowledge of ethnology is required to see that the Fellaheen belong to a completely different race from the Turkish landowners, and yet they have neither faith, nor language, nor individuality of their own. They are a hard-working, long-suffering,Bimple-minded people, crushed in spirit by long ages of servitude, regarding it as the natural order of the universe that they should not reap tho fruit of their own labour, and accepting hard usage and illtreatment as all in the day's work. Bondage is the normal condition of the Egyptians, and, by the peculiar configuration of the country, they are bondsmen with no possibility of escaping from their bonds. Egypt is a narrow tract of country occupied by a dense population, and surrounded on every side by the sea or by the desert. Thus there is no escape for the Fellah from his task-masters. It was only by a series of miracles that the exodii3 could be effected, and. the days of miracles are past. The climate of Egypt is so beautiful, the soil so fertile, the ways of life so simple, that even grinding oppression does not suffice to stop the increase of the population. It is difficult to conceive anything more wretched than the mud huts in which the tillers of the soil live huddled together, more like rabbits burrowing in a warren than human beings. Half clad, underfed, and overworked, afflicted with, every malady due to want of proper food and common cleanliness, they toil on, winter and summer alike, without complaint, or even, I should say, without any deep sense of wrong. To be subject to every kind of exaction, to be forced to leave their own fields to work for others, to have their water supply cut off to suit the wants of the pasha, to labour on the canals and roads under the lash, to be defrauded of their wages, to be taxed, bullied, and cheated by every official, seems to them natural, if not right. I remember once seeing a public road not half an hour out of Cairo being repaired by forced labour. The labourers were men, women, and children. 'To each batch of ten labourers there was attached a ganger with a stick, who kept striking the labourers when "they loitered in their work The foreman, whip in hand, went about cutting afc the gangers, and the engineer had a kurbash wherewith to chastise the foreman. The scene was typical of the whole social fabric of Egypt, and what was more typical still was that everybody concerned took it as a matter of course. It is necessary to bear in mind the normal condition of the Fellaheen in order to realise the significance of the fact that of late their lot has been felt to be unbearable even by themselves. I do not accuse the Khedive of wanton oppression. On the contrary, I believe him to be a man of goodnatured disposition, who would sooner see other people happy, if ifc did not interfere with his own comfort or convenience, and who has a certain dim consciousness of the truth, ignored by most Eastern rulers, that the prosperity of his people is an element of his Own greatness. —" England and Egypt," by Edward Dicey.