282 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

Sunday afternoon all the wealthy European merchants are away in their summer abodes along the coast.

The shops and stores are deserted by the European clerks and shopmen ; and therefore on such a day and hour the rioters were less likely to meet with any formidable resistance. If the attack had not been arranged beforehand, with the approval of the authorities, it is incredible that the police would not have interfered at once, or that, if they needed assistance, they would not have called on the army for support \ But, as I have said, both the police and the chiefs of ) the army declined to put down the riot till they had V received orders from Arabi, who was then at Cairo.

At the urgent request of Dervish Pasha, Arabi telegraphed from Cairo, instructing the troops to restore order. This was done without any resistance on the part of the mob, who dispersed at once.

The legal adage. Cut prodest ille fecit confirms the conviction that Arabi was the real author of the riots, which ended intentionally, or unintentionally, in a massacre. It is obvious that if he could have persuaded the public, both at home and abroad, that there was a serious risk of a wholesale massacre of the Christians in Egypt, owing to popular indignation at foreign intervention, and that his personal influence, as Minister of War, was alone capable of averting such a catastrophe, his position would have been immensely strengthened. I am quite willing to give Arabi the benefit of the doubt, and to admit the possibility of the outbreak of fanaticism — which he, or his agents.