a colony, it may not be out of place to show what a drain these two provinces are on the national exchequer, and how little probability there is of their ever becoming fields for French emigration. The total budget receipts for the former state in 1883 amounted to 840,780l., and it was compelled to maintain an army upwards of 57,000 strong, whilst in Tunis are quartered 31,000 men. The table at the end of this paper clearly demonstrates the extent to which France supports her colonies, who, in return, offer a temporary home to a large number of discontented officials. Emigration in France is practically unknown, because it is virtually forbidden. The oppressive bureaucracy in all, and the intolerable climate in many, of the colonies make life a burden to emigrants, who wisely prefer to bear the ills they have rather than fly to others they know not of; and thus it comes to pass that, in the year 1882, of the 3,968 emigrants who left French shores, only 293 were bound for French colonies. This fact is in itself a sufficient rejoinder to the oft-repeated assertion in Parisian papers that the French are a nation of colonists. It is true that in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth France possessed enormous colonial possessions, and the manner in which she lost some and sold others forms a chapter in her history which redounds neither to the credit of her military nor political authorities, and opens up a question beyond the limits of a magazine article. The generosity of England at the Treaty of Paris restored to France islands which, though unsuited to European labour, might, by the judicious importation of coolies, have been continued in their career of prosperity. For close on three-quarters of a century these fertile islands have been left in undisturbed peace; they have had the blessings of manhood suffrage showered upon them; they have been honoured by being permitted to return representatives to the Chambers, and yet they appear to be dying of inanition, their trade returns annually show a decrease, their native manufactures diminish. Excessive taxation, it is true, maintains their revenues at a high figure; but none are self-supporting, and the large sums spent by the mother country on injudicious public works do not compensate in any way for the destruction of their staple industries by that injurious protectionist system, supported by deputies in obedience to the cry of the electors. If English sugar merchants complain of the loss of their trade owing to French bounties, with how much more reason may the people of Réunion, of Guadaloupe, and of Martinique cry out, For it is not an enemy that hath done this thing, but mine own familiar friend.' There are many who aver that England's colonial policy is a failure. Doubtless more might be done to bring about a closer legislative union between our dependencies and the home Government; but when we consider that, in 1882, the exports from those dependencies exceeded 145,000,000l., that the population of 250,000,000 who own our sway were ruled by less than 70,000 British troops, and that the revenue of New South Wales, by no means our richest colony, was 7,647,000l., nearly three times that of all the French f FRANCE FRENCH COLONIES BRITISH COLONIES JENCLANDI Diagram showing the comparative area of colonies added together, I maintain that no man will be rash enough to i assert that these colonies of ours have not been a gigantic success, and that much of our power, much 1 of our wealth, is due to the enterprise, energy, and perseverance of our colonists. When Frenchmen shun their colonies, how can it be claimed for them that these colonies are popular? When the State spends four millions on them, how can it be asserted that they are a success? And when Frenchmen refuse to emigrate, how can it be maintained that they are a colonising race? Facts are stubborn things; and though it is said statistics are fallacious, and figures can be made to prove anything, I opine I have given reasons enough and to spare in support of the generally accepted idea on this side of the Channel that the French do not understand how to colonise. Table showing the Population, Numbers of Official Residents, Strength of Garrison, THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. No. LXXXVIII.—JUNE 1884. "HOW LONG HALT YE BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS?' Ir has been my fate for many months to be the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the Government in regard to Egypt may be made straight. Like most preachers, I have of course my own individual theory of salvation, a theory which has at least these two claims to consideration: that, being the only one as yet untried, it is the only one as yet unproved a failure; and that, whatever may be its defects, it could not be attended with worse results to Egypt than the numerous other remedies already applied. But my object in this paper is not to recommend any one specific, but rather to point out the necessity of adopting some definite form of treatment, either in one direction or the other, instead of continuing a series of experiments under which the unhappy patient is becoming so exhausted that he will soon be beyond treatment. In doing so I shall endeavour to avoid any debatable matter, and shall keep personal views as much as possible in the background. The struggle which terminated with Tel el Kebir was, in a general sense, one between the people and their rulers, and it resulted in the defeat of the former. But prior to their own defeat they had morally destroyed the power of the latter, and therefore after Tel el Kebir there existed authority neither on the one side nor on the other. The sole power lay in the hands of the sixteen thousand British VOL. XV.-No. 88. 3 N troops; and at their feet, to be disposed of as best seemed good to the conquerors, lay a mixed population of five million souls. It would be quite foreign to my purpose to consider the policy or impolicy of the first step taken towards the restoration of order: it may have been the height of wisdom or the depth of folly; it may have been necessitated by, or totally opposed to, the previous policy of the existing or any former English Government. With all this I have nothing to do, but I note the fact that Lord Wolseley, upon his arrival in Cairo, telegraphed to the Khedive that he held his palace in the capital at his disposal; and when, within a few days, the Khedive arrived, the conquerors and the sole masters of Egypt passed in review before Tewfik Pasha standing under the royal banner of England, and left him installed in his palace the nominal ruler of the country. Our first act, therefore, was the restoration of the Khedive, and in every subsequent act we have to bear this in mind. The Khedive re-established, we had to provide for his support. We disbanded his own army and left a reduced force of 6,000 men to support his authority. This second act was the recognition of our responsibilities to Egypt. The Khedive thus established and supported, we proclaimed our intention of withdrawing that support so soon as a stable government was formed. (This third act was the recognition of our engagements to Europe.) As we expressed the hope that this might be effected in six months, there was clearly no time to lose. We had committed ourselves to the Khedive and to the establishment of a stable government, but to nothing else, when Lord Dufferin arrived in Cairo, and to him was left the further development of the problem. There were obviously two different courses open to him—the one to leave the Khedive to form his own government while we remained to preserve order; the other to go a step further and ourselves to establish the Khedive's government. Let us consider what would have been the result had we adopted the former course. The Khedive was by no means without friends: the ruling Turkish party had remained faithful to him; the Sultan, though never very cordial, would have respected a man protected by 6,000 British bayonets; the people would have forgiven everything to his success. A ministry would have been formed among the Turkish party, and Riaz, the most capable man in it, would have been named Prime Minister. Riaz is a man who has suffered much from Arabi, for he well-nigh lost his belief in his own infallibility, and Christian charity is a quality which he values too highly to use in profusion; his colleagues would have been of the same disposition; the Khedive's feelings towards the leaders of the revolt were not sentimentally humane; so that, on the whole, it may be feared that the so-called National Party would have fallen upon evil times. Some thirty of their leaders might have suffered the extreme penalty; the remainder would speedily have become ardent supporters of the new order of things, and Tewfik would have lived for ever in the memory of his people as the just, because the successful, Khedive. A Turkish army would have been established, less disciplined perhaps than that of Sir Evelyn Wood, leaving in many ways much to be desired, but yet capable of preserving order and in case of need of making some show of fight. The anomalies of the capitulations would have remained; seventeen consuls-general would have continued to exercise each each an imperium in imperio, but gratitude to England, who had restored the Riaz Ministry to power, would have given us great weight in their councils. The disinterestedness of our intervention would have been proved, and, in the event of our ever having to fight upon the side of Egypt, we should have been in the territory of a grateful ally. We should certainly not have been able to suppress the Kourbash, nor torture, nor slavery, nor backsheesh; but we should very readily have obtained any number of decrees declaring them all very wicked and illegal. We should not have succeeded in endowing the fellah with a vote which he does not want, nor in establishing a French criminal procedure which he does not understand; but the principle of equal justice to all would have been solemnly pronounced, and if a few unfortunates did unjustly suffer, we could console ourselves with the idea that we had not rendered even their lot more hard, that there was a fairly strong government, able to protect the large majority and less tyrannical than when we began our intervention in 1875. In the Soudan we should probably have watched Abdelkader continuing his Fabian tactics with the Mahdi; the British public would have been still ignorant of the geographical positions of Khartoum and Suakim; the lives of Hicks, of Moncrieff, of Morice, and of how many others would have been spared. Chinese Gordon would have been undermining the seat of the Mahdi's power in the Congo, and by this time we should have been clear of the country, but, made wise by experience, would have kept upon it a watchful eye, and been prepared with all the prestige of a great success to prevent a relapse into anarchy. But we did not adopt this course; we had higher aims, nobler aspirations; we felt bound to show that our intervention was not only in the interests of the bondholders, was not solely directed to the maintenance of the status quo, but was destined to leave things better than they had been, to ameliorate the lot of the fellah |