A RETROSPECT. 523 and kurbash, may seem to us an incalculable benefit ; still it is well to bear in mind that all reforms cut both ways. It is good, from the ordinary Egyptian point of view, to be no longer exposed to the risk of being bastinadoed ; but it is not obvious that to be deprived of the power of causing your neighbour to be bastinadoed is equally advantageous. In like fashion, it is one thing not to be forced to pay bribes in order to obtain justice ; it is quite another thing to be unable to bribe, in order to perpetrate an act of injustice, which tells for your own profit or safety. Moreover, the very order and regularity of the administration we are gradually establishing in Egypt, are somehow distasteful to an Oriental population.

I am afraid that our rigid enforcement of regulations, however useful in themselves, both bothers and worries the very men for whose benefits the regulations are enforced. I always, therefore, have entertained doubts how far we could rely upon the gratitude of the Egyptians to support us in case any serious efforts should be made to dislodge us from the vantage ground we occupy in Egypt, and thereby to undo the good work we have accomplished in the past, I am not quite sure whether we have any strong moral claim on Egyptian gratitude, as the task we have undertaken and have accomplished so successfully was, after all, performed in our interests, not less than in those of Egypt. But I am sure that, even if we had any such moral claim, it would not be of much practical value.

In as far as they have any individual opinions, the