Monetary considerations have as much weight with an Englishman as with another. As perhaps half of Egypt's bonded debt was held in England when the occupation began, the gradual appreciation of the value of Egyptian securities has seemed to Britishers another justification for continuing their sojourn in Fypt. When they went there Egyptian credit was as low as it well could be, for Khedive Ismail had played fast and loose with national solvency from his accession to the day on which he was deposed.

English people owned bonds to the face value of $275,000,000 in 1882, it is estimated, and these could not have been sold then for more than half that sum. "Egyptians" are now quoted at a premium of from three to six per cent., and the difference between the estimated value in 1882, and the value to-day, of England's supposed financial stake in Egypt, is the comfortable sum of $140,000,000-sufficient to pay for the army of occupation for more than a century! This restoration of Egyptian credit has benɔfited all bondholders equally-French, German, Italian, Austrian and Russian, as well as English.

An incidental reason why Great Britain retains her hold upon Egypt is that the cotton crop of the Nile valley red ices more and more each year the dependence of British spindies upon the cotton-fields of the United States.

There are also several considerations of minor importance which have influenced the Egyptian policy of England. The conquest of the vast region lying south of Nubia can better be prosecuted from the north than from any other point; and geographers are agreed that whoever controls Equatorial Africa and the sources of the Nile becomes the natural holder of Egypt. Further, without Egypt firmly in hand, the ambition of British map-makers for a zone of territory stretching continuously from the Cape to Cairo, and bringing more than half the African continent under British influence, must of necessity be abandoned.

Are the people of Egypt materially benefited by English rule? Unquestionably they are. Unpopular as it is with nearly every class in Egypt, and condemned throughout Europe, the occupation has done vast good. No fair investigator can witness the present condition of the Egyptian fellaheen, knowing what it was before the advent of the English, without conceding this. For half a dozen years Egypt has fairly bristled with prosperity.

The story of that country's emergence from practical bankruptcy, until its securities are quoted nearly as high as English consols, reads like a romance; and there is no better example of economical progress, through administrative reform, than is presented by Egypt under British rule.

Security is assured to person and property; slavery has been legally abolished; official corruption is almost unknown; forced labor for public works is no longer permitted, and native courts have now more than a semblance of justice. Hygienic matters have been so carefully looked after that the population has increased from seven to nine millions in a decade or more. Land taxes have been lowered and equalized, and are systematically collected, and scientific irrigation is so generally employed that the cultivable area has been considerably extended. Egypt was probably never so prosperous as at the present time.

The debt is being slightly reduced, and will be made less burdensome as time goes on, by the increased productiveness of the soil. Taking the present population at nine millions, the per capita debt of the Egyptians is close upon $60. When it is borne in mind that the population is almost entirely agricultural, with whom the wage standard is about fifteen cents a day, it will be seen that the Nile fellah is mortgaged for generations to come, and the mortgage is held by European money-lenders who have no real interest either in him or his religion.

The present external debt is approximately $508,000,000, and it is a popular error that it has been reduced since the coming of the English. On the contrary, it has been increased by $40,000,000. This went to indemnify Alexandrians whose property had been destroyed at the time of the rebellion and bombardment, to defray the cost of the military campaign thirteen or fourteen years ago which resulted in the loss of the Soudan, and for certain public works deemed imperatively necessary.

By her management of affairs England has, nevertheless, so improved the conditions in Egypt that European bondholders have been satisfied to have the interest on their securities reduced from seven to three and a half and four per cent.

England possesses a capacity for conducting colonies, and rehabilitating exhausted countries, which amounts to genius. Overbearing and arrogant as the British functionary out of England often appears, he must be scrupulously honest and capable

to find a place in the perfectly organized machinery guided from London. Frenchmen say that Egypt's restoration to easy prosperity could have been better accomplished by them, and they allege that this prosperity is more apparent than real, charging that much is neglected in the desire to make a favorable showing in the yearly balance-sheet. But investigation of what France does with her own dependencies, nearly every one of which is administered at a loss, gives support to the belief that Egypt is better off under British guidance than she could be under that of France. No alien power could have done better in Egypt than Great Britain has. But readers who have that inherent respect for right which Americans possess may see scant justification for Britain's absorption of Egypt merely in her ability to do good work there.

Is England educating the Egyptians to govern themselves? Emphatically not!

The occupation was begun in good faith, no doubt, but the British had not long weathered the first outburst of indignation over the non-fulfilment of their promise to evacuate (ingeniously addressed to no specific government or personage), when they began to trim their sails for a protracted, if not permanent, stay in Egypt. They would as soon think of giving Gibraltar back to the Spaniards as of restoring Egypt to the Egyptians, one being as necessary as the other to British aggrandizement in the East. England's desire to remain could not be better served than by making her functionaries appear essential to the well-being of Egypt; in fact, by making progress dependent upon her administrators, accountants, and irrigation experts. This she has done, and the "understudies" of these clever servants, those who could best take their places, are Englishmen. There are many hundreds of native subordinates doing the simplest routine work, who perceive the splendid results, but contribute thereto chiefly by their submissiveness. They are not being instructed sufficiently to keep Egypt from retrogressing should they find themselves in charge of affairs.

The Khedive is compelled to yield to England in choosing a ministry, even. This results in his having a partisan cabinetmade in London-about him, whose counsels must necessarily be acceptable to the British. On occasions when the Khedive has selected a minister without first securing the consent of England,

he has been promptly called to account, and menaced by a display of power in the streets of his capital by thousands of British guns and bayonets, which has not been abated until the office had been filled by an Egyptian practically named by the British. government.

Obviously, this system renders any ministry a time-serving body, and it is a depressing picture of personal effacement which is presented by an Egyptian statesman in these days who must play the dual role of being loyal at once to his "Effendina," and to the foreign nation absorbing his country. Some of the ablest men in Egypt are kept in private life by their unwillingness to acquiesce in these conditions.

The real business of important executive departments in Cairo is directed by the under-secretaries (assistant ministers), who are English, and their utterances and plans formally receive the sanction of their Egyptian chiefs. The native minister is the visible and signatory power, but the creative and actual force is the English assistant. Everything financial is dictated by an "adviser," as is nearly everything judicial, and the "advisers" are British. Similarly, the ministry of the interior, presided over by the educated and capable Egyptian Premier, is also directed by an "adviser," translated from a very subordinate position in the British diplomatic service to this department dealing with all questions concerning the internal policy of the oldest nation in the world.

Each year sees an augmentation of the number of Britishers on the pay-roll. It is true that one Englishman can perform the work of two native clerks, but he gets the pay that would go to three. All foreigners are lavishly paid, wholly from the Egyptian exchequer. The salary of an "adviser" is about $10,000 a year, and under-secretaries receive $7,500.

Sixteen years is a considerable lapse of time anywhere; in the East, where people mature early, it represents a generation. Those who were children in the year of the bombardment are now in the prime of their faculties, and England has had ample time to fit them for fair administrative work.

Uninfluenced by political motive, the schools of the American Presbyterian Mission have done a hundred-fold more for the cause of education in Egypt than has Great Britain. These schools, distributed throughout the country, are yearly elevating

VOL. CLXV.-NO. 493.

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hundreds of youths to a better condition, teaching them in particular the value of order and system.

Since England does but little to develop a class that may in time take the positions now filled by her own countrymen, Anglophobe critics point to that fact as confirmatory evidence of the insincerity of the statement that England ever intends the Egyptians to resume the helm of state.

An apparent failure has been the omission to introduce the English language into general use. Egypt is a polyglot country, and the incorporation of English as an "official language" might with propriety have followed the introduction of the present system of affairs. French, conseque: tly, remains the only European language known to any extent by the educated natives; and where there is one Egyptian who knows English, forty who read and write French are to be found. Only one of the Khedive's ministers knows English, yet all six are proficient in French.

The official language of the government has been French for many years. Official publications and correspondence are in French. It is the European language of the railways and postal department. Postage stamps, railway tickets and telegraph forms, actually printed in England, express their values and conditions in French and Arabic. English employees in governmental bureaus write officially to each other in French, frequently to the confusion of the ideas intended to be expressed. An entire department, having charge of museums and the conservation of antiquities, and employing thousands of natives, is exclusively French in administration, although supported in great measure by English-speaking visitors. So long as the European language of the Egyptian official remaius French, his mode of thought and action will be French also.

In Cairo and Alexandria ten or more newspapers are printed in the French language, purveying opinion bitterly hostile to the occupation. One of these, published at the capital, prints daily in displayed type a list of Great Britain's broken pledges in connection with the occupation, quoting from Blue Books and like documents such extracts as appear to prove its case. Only one English journal is published, and that is forced to print its news and editorials in French as well as English to secure remunerative publication.