62 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

fulfilled its purpose, while the Turks remained a nation of warriors, with their hands against every one of their neighbours, gave rise to gross abuses, when the conquering period of Turkish history had practically passed away. The more one studies Eastern life, the more one arrives at the conclusion that the risk of assassination plays a part in Oriental affairs, public, as well as private, of which happily, we have little knowledge or experience in the world of latter-day Christendom.

There is, perhaps, more to be said, as a matter of argument, in defence of the harem system than my fellowcountrymen, and, still more, my fellow-countrywomen, would be apt to allow. To my mind, the one unanswerable objection to polygamy, and to the seclusion of women, is that the system is fatal to the idea of the family, which forms the basis of all true civilization. As a rule, a Turk s sons are all by different mothers, whose lives are passed in incessant intrigues to advance the interests of their own sons, to the detriment of the interests of their half-brothers. There is so much good in human nature, alike in all races and under all creeds, that no system, however bad in theory, ever works out quite so badly in practice as it ought to do logically. I do not question, therefore, that in all countries where the harem system prevails, there are many homes in which the natural forces of kinship have full play. This is especially the case in Egypt, where polygamy is reserved to a small wealthy class, and where the mass of the population are more kindly by character than in other Mahometan lands.