14 EGYPT AND THE SOUDAN.

for you to protect Nubar's administration from any direct or indirect interference on his part. Nubar can be depended upon; that I can miarantee. He will not take office without knowing

that he is to have his own way; but if he takes office it is the

best security that you can have for the restoration of order to the country. Especially is this the case with the Soudan. Nubar should be left untrammelled by any stipulations concerning the evacuation of Khartum. There is no hurry. The garrisons can

hold their own at present. Let them continue to hold on until disunion and tribal jealousies have worked their natural results

in the camp of the Mahdi. Nubar should be free to deal with

the Soudan in his own way. How he will deal with the Soudan

of course I cannot profess to say, but I should imagine that he

would appoint a governor-general at Khartum with full powers,

and furnish him with two millions sterling — a large sum, no doubt, but a sum which had much better be spent now than wasted in

a vain attempt to avert the consequences of an ill-timed surrender. Sir Samuel Baker, who possesses the essential energy and single

tongue requisite for the office, might be appointed governor- general of the Soudan; and he might take his brother as com-

mander-in-chief.

It should be proclaimed in the hearing of all the Soudanese, and engraved on tablets of brass, that a permanent constitution was granted to the Soudanese by which no Turk or Circassian would

ever be allowed to enter the province to plunder its inhabitants

in order to fill his own pockets, and that no immediate emancipa-

tion of slaves would be attempted. Immediate emancipation was denounced in 1833 as confiscation in England, and it is no less

confiscation in the Soudan to-day. Whatever is done in that

direction should be done gradually, and by a process of registra-

tion. Mixed tribunals might be established, if Nubar thought fit,

in which European judges would co-operate with the natives in the administration of justice. Police inspectors also might be appointed, and adequate measures taken to root out the abuses which prevail in the prisons.

With regard to Darfiir, I should think that Nubar would