168 The British Campaign in the Soudan.

‘« This act of unwarranted interference, by which an enormous area of the Ottoman Empire was wrested from its legitimate ruler and thrown into the direst anarchy, at once awakened Egypt to the hypocrisy of British declarations. The mask was for the moment cast aside. . . . Cowte gue codite, the Soudan was to be abandoned, and proclamations to that effect were issued without delay. The fact of such a proclamation bore an immediate and fatal result ; every tribe that would have remained faithful to the government if prepared to assert its power, was in self-preservation forced to abandon a government that had forsaken the most sacred duty of upholding the rights of those subjects who had declared their loyalty.”

When Tewfik-Pasha was notified of the commands of the British Ministry, what manhood still survived in him after so many humiliations was aroused. For the first time he refused to obey, and declared his resolution to abdicate and to throw the responsibility upon England rather than submit to the sacrifice.

But this could never be permitted, for it would destroy the beautiful fictions of England’s disinterested occupation of Egypt and non-interference with purely Egyptian concerns, and of the Khedive’s supposed independence of action! A middle course was adopted. Tewfik was quieted by being permitted to call upon his suzerain-lord, the Sultan, for Turkish troops, provided that Turkey bore the expense and would bind herself to withdraw as soon as the Soudan was pacified. But this qualified concession was almost immediately withdrawn; and when Turkey prepared an expedition, England assumed the preposterous position of recognizing the Sultan’s paramount rights over the Soudan, and yet ordering her ironclads to prevent, by force if necessary, the landing of Turkish troops in the Soudan. (See Sir H. Layard.) To quote from Prof. Dicey (Nineteenth Century, March, 1884): ‘* Put into plain English, the programme came to this: England refused to send troops to the Soudan herself ; she forbade Egypt to send troops ; she consented to