EGYPT AND ENGLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5142, 15 September 1877, Page 6 (Supplement)

EGYPT AND ENGLAND.

(From the Pali Mall Gazette.) To one of the monthly reviews M. do Laveleye contributes some observations on “ British interests,” with particular reference to Egypt. Not that he has anything new to say on that part of his subject. His arguments are all perfectly familiar to English politicians ; but it is something to see them enforced in public by a foreigner of M. do Lavcleyo’s reputation. Plainly stated by Englishmen in jJrint, they would have been met at once with an outcry against English selfishness and greed. M. de Laveleye says ; “ If Kussia annexes Armenia, then there is a measure of precaution imposed upon England, and that measure is the occupation of Egypt and Cyprus. I say Cyprus and not Crete. Crete ought to go to Greece, because the national sentiment there is too much awake to be restrained. In Cyprus this is not the case, and moreover this island, transformed into a Gibraltar, will be a better and nearer commanding point for the shores of Syria and the entrance to the Suez Canal. . . . England will be constrained to do this on several grounds To begin with, if when the time comes for peace Kussia shall acquire considerable territory in Asia, and England shall decide on no act of compensation, her authority in the East will find itself distinctly touched. If, at the beginning, as the Liberal party wished, she had acted in accord with Kussia, the defeat of Turkey would not have at all compromised her prestige. Now that the English Government has deliberately figured as the adversary of Kussia, it is evident that the complete success of Kussia is a check for English influence. The only way of parrying the blow is to restore the equilibrium by an act of wise vigor, which would echo and resound all over the Eastern world.

“In the second place, the control of the passage of the Canal can only be thoroughly secure if it is guarded on the spot by English forces. Russia, by the annexation of Armenia, would command Syria, and so would threaten the Canal with an attack by land against which the English fleet would be powerless. The purchase of the Canal shares was an absurdity, unless it was the prelude to occupation. The approach of Kussia plainly makes the further step now necessary. “ Such a step, commended as it is by English interests, would be at the same time a great blessing to the Egyptians, and a great gain to civilisation in general. The Valley and the Delta are among the richest districts in the whole world : water, sun, rich soil, and all the products of Europe and the tropics ; a gentle, intelligent, and prodigiously laborious population, whom even incessant and organised pillage does not disgust with toil ! . . . . The lot of the slave in the Southern States of the American Union was paradise compared with that of the Egyptian fellah. As I looked at these poor creatures working all day long, and often half the night as well, to satisfy the insensate and prodigal rapacity of Cairo, I said to myself, ‘ Why does not Europe, that sends cruisers to suppress the slave trade, send thither a few good regiments to put an end to these barbarities ?’

“ Egypt, in the hands of the English, would recover the splendor of her antiquity. With public works such as those which Mr. V/. T. Thornton has described in his excellent book on the ‘Public Works of India,’ the extent of arable land, the numbers of population, and the revenue would all augment. Thanks to the annexations conducted by Colonel Gordon, Egypt now extends to the great lakes of Central Africa, and she has thus become, in point of territorial extension, one of the largest countries in the world. Only let her pass under the protection of England, instantly the slave trade is suppressed, steam navigation connects the interior of the continent with the Mediterranean, and civilisation and commerce penetrate into an immense region of admirable fertility, and, by reason of its altitude, habitable by Europeans. By the Cape, by Natal, by the Transvaal, the English are advancing towards the Zambesi. Already they have a station on Lake Nyassa ; soon they will have others od Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria. The International Exploration Society, founded under the auspices of the King of the Belgians, will send into the country travellers, emigrants, artisans of every kind. It has been shown that a telegraphic line could easily be established from Cairo to Natal and the Cape. Lieutenant Cameron thinks that railways uniting the centre of Africa to the coast would not be long in paying their expenses. If, therefore, England consented to fix her attention in this direction, an unbroken current of civilisation would speedily cross Africa from Alexandria to the Cape along the line of the high table-lands. The English would thus erect for themselves an empire as extensive as that of India, with virgin lands of far greater fertility, with a more agreeable climate, and completely free from long droughts. “ As for India, necessarily England will lose it in the end. ' The reason is plain. I say nothing of the danger of the approach of the Russians, which must go on with time, without necessarily ending in a shock. But the more actively the English set up railways in India, canals, manufactories, schools—the more, in a word, they civilise the natives—by so much the more. rapidly will they be hastening the epoch of their coming of age, and consequently their aspirations after independence. What do we see in Europe? In proportion as a country is instructed, and so acquires consciousness of itself, the national feeling awakes. . . . The English administer the Indian Empire better than any other European Power would do, and infinitely better than native potentates. But the better the administration, the sooner will the hour of emancipation strike. It is simply impossible that a hundred thousand Europeans should continue indefinitely to govern two hundred millions of foreign subjects, when the latter have once been, in however slight a degree, penetrated with modem ideas.

“If then the emancipation of India must inevitably take place, even in a remote future, a far-sighted English Minister ought already to take hia measures. He ought to occupy Egypt in order that the road to India may not be interrupted. And along the banks of the Nile he ought to advance towards the interior of the continent, so as to have a new colonial empire when the old empire comes to cut the bond that attaches it to the mother-country.” In summarising hia argument M. de Laveleye thus concludes;— “ In Asia Minor such annexations as Russia may make will not bring her sensibly nearer to India, but they will considerably lessen the distance that separates her from Syria and the Suez Canal. - To secure this passage, and to preserve her authority in the East, England will therefore be obliged in spite of herself to declare a protectorate over Egypt. This will be an indispensable measure of compensation, which every true friend of humanity, to whatever nation he belongs, ought sincerely to applaud.” .