stagnation, and rejected them one by one, until he came, by an exhaustive process, to the government of England. It is quite true that since that speech was made Parliament has disestablished the Irish Church, and passed quite a number of Land Acts. Yet Irishmen are not allowed to control their own administration and finance, although they have shown in their Town and County Councils their competence for civic and municipal life. Even an Ulster Unionist, such as Mr. Long has become, can hardly maintain that this sort of Home Rule, gas and water Home Rule as it used to be contemptuously called, is fatal to the unity of the Empire, or the integrity of the United Kingdom. Mr. Redmond and the Nationalists will, of course, not be satisfied with it. But, being practical men, they will take it. for what it is worth, and make the best of it. Difficulty is most likely to arise over taxation, for the fiscal union of the three countries is an important thing. The whole subject bristles with difficulties, though an Executive Council is a much simpler affair than a subordinate Legislature. It is fortunate that the Government do not depend upon the Irish vote, and can therefore act with firmness as well as with justice. Everybody remembers the emphasis which Mr. Gladstone laid upon this independence two-and-twenty years ago. At the General Election of 1885 he implored the voters of Great Britain to give him a majority large enough to counterbalance Mr. Parnell's followers. Do not,' he said, in effect, do not compel us to deal with the Irish question when the Irish members can say to us, "Unless you do this or that we will turn you out to-morrow. Lord Randolph Churchill was very sarcastic over this appeal, and said it was a fine practical result of enfranchising the Irish labourers to ask for the power of voting them down. The appeal, as we know, met with an unfavourable response. Mr. Gladstone was never again independent of the Irish vote, and was never able to carry Home Rule. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is in a far happier and securer position, for his followers have a majority in the House of Commons over all other parties combined. He has himself been Chief Secretary for Ireland, and in Mr. Birrell he has a colleague acceptable to every party in the House. It is a great opportunity. Home Rulers may be disappointed to find that executive devolution does not lead to the success of their larger policy. Unionists, on the other hand, by being brought nearer to Home Rule, may lose some of the dread and distrust with which it now inspires them. At any rate, the experiment under proper safeguards is surely worth trying. What those safeguards should be, and how far Mr. Birrell's Bill provides them, will be proper and legitimate subjects for debate in Parliament. It must not, of course, be forgotten that this House of Commons was elected to carry social reforms. The constitutional conflict which the Lords have raised was neither expected nor desired. Perhaps it ought to have been expected. But there were reasons why it should not be. For ten years the House of Lords had completely

effaced itself. Its last great exertion of power in 1893 was made against a Government numerically weak and actually without a British majority. Liberals naturally thought that the Lords would not at once begin to work against the decisive results of a General Election. They were mistaken. But it is their duty, before trying conclusions in the country, to use the power given them for the purposes for which they were entrusted with it. The tumult of a General Election is not favourable to clear political thinking, nor is an appeal to the country required to ensure the preponderance of the representative principle. If it were, we should have annual Parliaments for Liberal Administrations, and the Septennial Act for Conservatives, which is absurd.1

What Mr. Birrell justly called the historic occasion' of the debate on Mr. Hayden's amendment to the address may have important consequences even in the near future. The delay in reinstating evicted tenants under the Act of 1903 is dangerous to the peace of Ireland, and discreditable to the honour of Parliament. Mr. Redmond's cordial reception of the Chief Secretary's speech was due not so much to Mr. Birrell's genial and sympathetic humour as to his definite assurance of early legislation, and his manly acknowledgment that an inhuman landlord was a public nuisance. It was natural that Mr. Redmond should be pleased. The event of the debate was the sudden conversion of Mr. Walter Long. Mr. Long did nothing for the evicted tenants when he was Chief Secretary; but, as he said himself, it is useless to go back upon that, and much better to bury the hatchet. Mr. Long is a party man, an out-and-out Tory. But he is eminently honourable, candid, and sincere. What he says he means, and what he promises he will perform. Ulster member though he be, and Leader of the Ulster Unionists, he is free from religious bigotry, and imbued with the sound traditions of public life in England. He knows perfectly well that the restoration of these evicted tenants to their holdings is essential for the peace and prosperity of the Irish people. Mr. Birrell can now count upon his support, and therefore any legislation which the Government proposes for the relief of evicted tenants is likely to pass without serious opposition in either House of Parliament. As much cannot, of course, be said for the University Bill, or the Executive Council Bill. But neither of these measures is so urgent a problem as the just treatment of a landless and discontented population with an indisputable grievance. It is difficult to suppose that three Irish Bills will pass this year, and there can be no doubt that the Evicted Tenants Bill is the most important of the three. HERBERT PAUL.

This sentence was written before Mr. Birrell made the identical remark in the House of Commons.

The Editor of THE NINETEENTH CENTURY cannot undertake

to return unaccepted MSS.

WE seem to be threatened with a reopening, in one or other form, of an Egyptian question.' With the reconquest of the Egyptian Soudan in 1898, and the conclusion of the Anglo-French agreement in 1904, there was an end, at least for a time, to all need of anxiety about Egypt. The country had entered on an extraordinary period of prosperity which has since reached incredible proportions. Private enterprise and capital were abundant. The finances had been placed beyond possibility of disaster. Reforms of many useful kinds were being actively pursued. The fellahin were basking in the sunshine of an impartial and vigilant administration. The relations between the Khedive and the British authorities, which for some years after the accession of the former in 1892 had been unduly strained, had grown more friendly. The atmosphere, in a word, was serene and unclouded when there arose, of a sudden, an acrid dispute between Great Britain, the Power in possession of Egypt, and Turkey, its suzerain, regarding the boundary of Turkey and Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula. While this dispute was in its acutest stage uneasiness was felt as to the probable attitude of the Muhammadan population in Egypt, should there be an outbreak of war between Great Britain and Turkey. A spirit of restlessness 525

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and a general disquietude produced much public anxiety. That these misgivings were not wholly without cause would seem to have been proved when, shortly after an arrangement between the two Powers had been arrived at, a savage outbreak of violence occurred in Denshawi, an Egyptian village of the Delta, which ended in the murder of a British officer of the army of occupation, and the serious illtreatment of three of his comrades. But the British forces in Egypt had been strengthened during the crisis of the dispute with Turkey; and public excitement, however much it may have simmered, never, except in this instance, actually boiled over. Yet evidence had been given of the existence of at least a temporary state of feeling distinctly inimical to British occupation, and, for the first time since 1882, the sense of public security had been rudely shaken. A blow had been dealt to the hopes entertained in many quarters that the benefits conferred on Egypt by British administration had led captive the hearts of the Egyptians, and had reconciled, if not the pashas and the classes hitherto dominant, at least the mass of the people, to the control of a foreigner and an infidel. It was a fellah who had led the murderous assault on a British officer; it was by fellahin that he was assassinated and his comrades violently handled; what sympathy may have shown itself during the trial of the criminals was not enlisted in favour of the prosecution.

There is no exercise more idle for one who is not in the centre of affairs than to explain away the immediate causes of contemporary political events, and authoritatively to pronounce on the hidden steps which may have brought about a crisis. Only those who are behind the scenes have means of accurately informing themselves; others must be content more or less with guesswork. Nevertheless, indications very frequently exist which may guide the outsider in forming an opinion, and in framing, from a review of the various elements engaged, an approximate estimate of the circumstances which in their several degrees have brought about results in evidence. Thus, in the present case, we know that the Sultan of Turkey has never shown himself otherwise than uncompromisingly averse to a British occupation of Egypt. So long as a spirit of antagonism dominated the relations of Great Britain and France in regard to Egyptian affairs, the Sultan had an instrument ready to his hand on which he might rely to embarrass the British authorities in Cairo. As he had found a dog who was obliging enough to bark for him, there was no need for him to put himself forward. But when the Anglo-French settlement of 1904 was concluded the dog on whom he had counted ceased to bark. In the absence of the assistance hitherto available to him he may have felt himself compelled to resort to other means of harassing and obstructing the even course of British administration in Egypt. There exists no lack of agency. So long as his envoy, Ghazi Ahmad Mukhtar Pasha, who showed himself so active in his

master's interests during the late frontier dispute, remains in Cairo he has ample facilities for working out his ends. So long as Egyptians are corruptible, and journalists in Cairo are venal, the Sultan need fear no lack of a ready chorus. Nor will an audience be wanting. A quarter of a century has well nigh passed since the collapse of Turkish rule in Egypt; the present generation of young Egyptians has never felt its rigour. On the other hand, the young generation of Turks never ceases to regret past opportunities. If with the lapse of time the sense of relief from a grinding tyranny is weakened, memories of past privileges and facilities of public plunder are strengthened. The Khedive is no longer a raw and unknown lad, educated abroad and not known in his own country. He is believed to have amassed much wealth; he has necessarily acquired experience with the growth of time; and with increased intercourse has come greater influence with his co-patriots and coreligionists, which he can scarcely be expected not to use to what he may think to be his own advantage. In the eyes of the Palace party and of all who are brought within its control, the Khedive is looked upon as in vinculis; moreover, in the whirligig of time the day may come when he may again be placed in a position to favour friends or to chastise opponents. The dual system under which Egypt is nominally administered is necessarily unstable. In the comparatively small political system of which Cairo is the centre are two potentates-the one de facto, the other de jure. In the methods of British administration much is unpalatable to those whom it holds in control, especially to such as would otherwise be all-powerful. The knowledge that the supreme authority in Constantinople, probably high authority nearer than Constantinople, shares the views of the malcontents of Cairo gives them confidence which might otherwise be wanting. Though the advent to power of a Liberal Government in England may not in other respects be agreeable to Constantinople, it suggests the adoption of an appeal to which no Liberal party wholly turns a deaf ear. The demand for representative institutions and for the machinery of self-government has in past times been worked for all that it was worth, and will again in supple hands be so manipulated as to find supporters among the benches at Westminster. The Egyptian Press enjoys almost uncontrolled freedom, and a section of it fearlessly uses its freedom to support or to keep alive agitation; while personal liberty of speech and of criticism is as unrestrained in Cairo as in London. It may be surmised that the proposal, which is known to find favour at the Agency in Cairo, to obtain the consent of the Powers to cancel the Capitulations so far as concerns Egypt meets with strenuous opposition from many European residents there, and inclines them to combine with native malcontents, with whom otherwise they could have but little sympathy, in seeking to fetter the authority of the British representatives in that country. Finally,