9 0.

4i6 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

regard to our relations with Egypt We went there against the will of our Government ; we were detained there against our wishes ; we made repeated efforts to get quit of our connection with Egypt, and time after time we were baffled by circumstances over which we had no control. If the Wolff-Mukhtar Convention had been ratified, we should long, ago have quitted Egypt, and, having once quitted it, we could never have regained the position we then occupied, and still occupy, by no merit of our own. With the abandonment of this position, the whole system of British supervision, undej: which we have made Egypt solvent, prosperous, and progressive, would have fallen to pieces like a house of cards. This, from an Imperialist point of view, would have been a calamity for Egypt, as well as for England. Of course, people who have no faith in, or sympathy with, England's Imperial mission, may hold that it would have been better for the world at large if England had quitted Egypt. Granted their premises, I cannot dispute their conclusions. But when I see it stated, as I do often, not only by Continental critics, but by Little Englanders at home, that the policy of England in Egypt has been actuated by a greedy desire to add the valley of the Nile to the dominions of the British Empire, I may fairly ask how they reconcile this contention with the patent fact that England, under a Conservative, as well as under a Liberal Government, went out of her way, time after time, to cut J