DECREE

We, Khedive of Egypt,

In view of our Decree of the 4th October, 1881 (11 Zilcadé, 1298),

In view of the decision of the Chamber of Delegates, and conformably with the advice of our Council of Ministers,

Have decreed and decree,

Art. 1. The Members of the Chamber of Deputies are elected. An ulterior and special Law will make known the conditions of electorability and of eligibility for election, and at the same time the mode of election to the Chamber of Deputies.

Art. 2. The Members of the Chamber of Deputies are elected for a period of five years. They receive an annual payment of £E.100.

Art. 3. The Deputies are free in the exercise of their mandates. They cannot be bound either by promises or by (government) instructions, or by an (administrative) order, or by menaces of a nature to interfere with the free expression of their opinions.

Art. 4. The Deputies are inviolable. In case of crime or misdemeanour committed during the course of the Session, they cannot be put under arrest except with the leave of the Chamber.

Art. 5. The Chamber may also, after its convocation, demand, provisionally and for the duration of the Session, that any one of its Members who has been imprisoned shall be set at liberty, or that all action directed against him shall be suspended during the Chamber's recess, if for a criminal matter, where no judgment has yet been pronounced.

Art. 6. Each Deputy represents not only the interests of the constituency which has elected him, but also the interests of the Egyptian people in general.

Art. 7. The Chamber of Deputies shall sit at Cairo. It is convoked each year by Decree of the Khedive, and according to the advice of the Council of Ministers.

Art. 8. The ordinary annual Session of the Chamber of Deputies shall be for three months, viz., from the 1st November to the 31st January. But if the work of the Chamber is not finished by the 31st January, it may then demand a prolongation of fifteen to thirty days. This prolongation will be accorded by Decree of the Khedive.

Art. 9. In case of necessity the Chamber will be convoked in Extraordinary Session by the Khedive. The duration of the Extraordinary Session will be fixed by the Decree convoking it.

Art. 10. The Sessions of the Chamber shall be opened in the presence of the Ministers either by the Khedive or by the President of the Council of Ministers, acting by delegation of the Khedive.

Art. 11. At the first sitting of each annual Session an opening Speech shall be pronounced by the Khedive, or in his name by the President of the Council of Ministers. It shall have for its object to make known to the Chamber the principal questions to be presented to it in the course of the session. After the reading of the opening speech the sitting shall be adjourned.

Art. 12. During the three following days, the Chamber, having named a Committee for the purpose of preparing a reply to the opening speech, shall vote its reply, which shall be presented to the Khedive by a deputation chosen from amongst its members.

Art. 13. The reply to the opening speech may not treat of any question in a decisive sense, nor contain any opinion which has been the object of previous deliberations.

Art. 14. The Chamber shall submit to the Khedive a list containing the names of three Members whom it may propose for the office of President. The Khedive shall name by Decree one of the Members, thus designated, President of the Chamber of Deputies. The office of President shall continue for five years.

Art. 15. The Chamber shall elect two Vice-Presidents which it shall choose from among its Members, and shall name the Secretaries of its Bureau.

Art. 16. An official report of the sittings of the Chamber shall be drawn up under the direction of the Bureau of the Chamber, composed of its President, Vice-President, and Secretaries.

Art. 17. The official language for the Chamber shall be Arabic. The proceedings and reports of the Chamber shall be drawn up in the official language.

Art. 18. The Ministers shall have the right of being present at the sittings of the Chamber, and of speaking there, when they shall think fit. They may cause themselves to be represented there by high state officials.

Art. 19. If the Chamber decides that there is reason for summoning one of the Ministers to appear before it to give explanations on any question, the Minister shall appear in person or cause himself to be represented by another official to give the required explanations.

*Art. 20. The Deputies shall have the right to supervise the acts of all public functionaries during the Session, and through the President of the Chamber they may report to the Minister concerned all abuses, irregularities, or negligences charged against a public official, in the exercise of his functions.

Art. 21. The Ministers are jointly and severally responsible to the Chamber for every measure taken in Council, which may violate existing rules and regulations.

Art. 22. Each Minister is individually responsible, in the cases foreseen in the preceding article, for his acts occurring in the exercise of his functions.

*Art. 23. In case of persistent disagreement between the Chamber of Deputies and the Ministry; when repeated interchanges of views and motives shall have taken place between them, if then the Ministry does not withdraw, the Khedive shall dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, and decree that new elections shall be proceeded with, within a period of time not exceeding three months, counted from the day of dissolution to that of reassembly. All Deputies thus dismissed shall be eligible for reelection.

Art. 24. If the new Chamber confirms by its vote that of the preceding Chamber which had provoked the disagreement, this vote shall be accepted as final.

*Art. 25. The Bills and Regulations emanating from the initiative of the Government shall be brought into the Chamber of Deputies by the Ministers, to be examined, discussed and voted. No Law shall become valid until it has been read before the Chamber of Deputies, Article by Article, voted clause by clause, and consented to by the Khedive. Each Bill shall be read three times and between each reading there shall have been an interval of fifteen days. In case of urgency a single reading shall, by a special vote of the Chamber, be declared sufficient. If the Chamber judges it necessary to demand the introduction of a Bill from the Council of Ministers, it shall make the demand through the intermediary of the President of the Chamber, and in case of the approval of the Government, the Bill shall be prepared by the Ministry and introduced to the Chamber according to the forms fixed by this Article.

Art. 26. The Chamber shall choose from amongst its Members a Committee, charged to examine all Bills and Regulation submitted to it. This Committee may propose to the Government amendments of such bills as it has been charged to examine; in which case, the bill and the amendments proposed shall be sent back, before any general discussion, by the President of the Chamber, to the President of the Council of Ministers.

Art. 27. If the Committee does not propose any amendments or if those proposed are not adopted by the Government, the original text of the Bill shall be placed for discussion before the Chamber. If the amendments proposed by the Committee are accepted by the Government, then the text thus amended shall be placed for discussion before the Chamber. In case the Government should not accept the amendments proposed by the Committee, then the latter shall have the right of submitting its opinion and observations to the Chamber.

Art. 28. The Chamber of Deputies may adopt or reject all Bills submitted to it by the Committee. It may also return them to the Committee to be examined a second time.

Art. 29. The President of the Chamber shall convey to the President of the Council of Ministers the Laws and Regulations voted by the Chamber.

Art. 30. No fresh tax—direct or indirect—on movable, immovable or personal property may be imposed in Egypt without a Law voted by the Chamber. It is therefore formally forbidden that any new tax shall be levied, under whatever title or denomination it may be, without having been previously voted by the Chamber of Deputies, under penalty, against the authority which shall have ordered it, against the employés who shall have drawn up the schedules and tariffs and against those who shall have effected the recovery of the amounts, of being prosecuted as peculators. All contributions thus unduly levied shall be returned to those who have paid them.

Art. 31. The Annual Budget of the Receipts and Expenditures of the State shall be communicated to the Chamber of Deputies not later than the 5th of November of each year.

Art. 32. The General Budget of Receipts shall be presented to the Chamber, accompanied by notes explanatory of the nature of each receipt.

Art. 33. The Budget of Expenditure shall be divided Department by Department, and shall be subdivided into sections and chapters, corresponding to the various branches of the public service depending upon each Ministry.

Art. 34. The following cannot on any account be objects of discussion in the Chamber:

Also all matters relating to the Debt and resulting from the Law of Liquidation, or Conventions existing between the Foreign Powers and the Egyptian Government.

*Art. 35. The Budget shall be sent to the Chamber, to be examined and discussed there (under reserve of the preceding Article).

A Committee composed of as many Deputies, and having the same number of votes as the Members of the Council of Ministers and its President, shall be named by the Chamber to discuss, in common with the Council of Ministers, the Budget Estimates, and to vote them either unanimously or according to the majority.

Art. 36. In case of an exact division of votes between the Commission of the Chamber and the Council of Ministers, the Budget shall be returned to the Chamber and, should the Chamber confirm (by its vote) that of the Council of Ministers, this vote shall become executory (exécutoire). But if the Chamber should maintain the vote of its Committee, then the procedure shall be according to Articles 23 and 24 of the present Law. In this case, the credits of the Budget Estimates which shall have caused the division of votes, if they figured in the Budget of the preceding year, and if they are not affected to any new object of expenditure, such as public works or others, shall be employed provisionally and until the meeting of the new Chamber, according to Article 23.

Art. 37. If the new Chamber confirms the vote of the preceding Chamber, on the Budget, this vote shall become definitely executory, in conformity with Article 23.

Art. 38. No Treaty or contract between the Government and third parties and no farming concession shall acquire a final character without having been first approved by a vote of the Chamber, provided that such Treaty, contract or concession does not relate to an object for which a sum has already figured in the approved Budget, corresponding to the year for which the Treaty, contract or concession shall have been proposed. Likewise no concession for public works, the execution of which shall not have been foreseen by the Budget, and no sale, or gratuitous alienation of the State domains, nor concession of privilege of any kind shall become definitive until it shall have been approved by the Chamber.

Art. 39. All Egyptians may address a petition to the Chamber of Deputies. The petitions shall be sent to a Committee chosen by the Chamber from among its Members. Upon the report of this Committee the Chamber shall take into consideration or reject the petitions. The petitions taken into consideration shall be sent back to the Minister concerned.

Art. 40. All petitions relative to personal rights or interests shall be rejected if they are outside the competence of the Administrative and Civil Tribunals, or if they have not been previously addressed to the competent administrative authority.

Art. 41. If during the recess of the Chamber grave circumstances shall demand that urgent measures be taken to avoid a danger menacing the State, or to assure public order, the Council of Ministers may, then, upon its own responsibility and with the sanction of the Khedive, order those measures to be taken, even if they should be within the competence of the Chamber, supposing the time to be too short for the convocation of the latter. Nevertheless, the affair should be submitted for examination, at its next sitting, to the Chamber.

Art. 42. No one may be admitted to explain or discuss questions or to take part in the deliberations of the Chamber other than its Members, with the exception of the Ministers or of those who are assisting or representing them.

Art. 43. The votes of the Chamber shall be given by the holding up of hands or by calling over of names or by ballot.

Art. 44. The vote by calling over of names shall only be on the demand of at least ten Members of the Chamber of Deputies. All votes which may affect the provisions of Article 47 shall be made openly.

Art. 45. The naming of the three candidates for the Presidency of the Chamber, as well as the election of the two Vice-Presidents and the nomination of the first and second Secretaries to the Chamber shall be made by ballot.

Art. 46. The Chamber of Deputies may not validly deliberate unless at least two-thirds of its Members are present at the deliberation. All decisions shall be taken absolutely according to the majority of votes.

Art. 47. No votes entailing Ministerial responsibility shall be given without a majority of at least three-quarters of the Members present.

Art. 48. No opinion shall be given by proxy.

Art. 49. The Chamber of Deputies shall elaborate its own internal Regulations. These shall be made executory by Decree of the Khedive.

*Art. 50. The present Organic Law may be amended after agreement between the Chamber of Deputies and the Council of Ministers.

*Art. 51. The interpretation of all Articles and phrases of the present law which it may be necessary to make clear shall be made on agreement between the Chamber of Deputies and the Council of Ministers.

Art. 52. All provisions of Laws, Decrees, Superior Orders, Regulations, or Usages contrary to the present Law are and shall remain revoked.

Art. 53. Our Ministers are charged, each in what concerns him, with the execution of the present Law.

Done in the Palace of Ismaïlieh, 7th February, 1882
(18 Rabi Awel, 1299).
(Signed) Mehemet Tewfik.

By the Khedive:
The President of the Council of Ministers, Minister of the Interior.
(Signed) Mahmoud Samy.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Justice.
Moustapha Fehmy.
The Minister of War and Marine.
Ahmed Arabi.
The Minister of Finance.
Ali Sadik.
The Minister of Public Works.
Mahmoud Fehmy.
The Minister of Public Instruction.
Abdallah Fikry.
The Minister of the Wakfs.
Hassan Chéréy.

[APPENDIX IV]
Letter Received by Mr. Blunt from Boghos Pasha Nubar as to his Father Nubar Pasha's Political Connection with the Khedive Ismaïl. (Translated from the French.)

Paris, September 26th, 1907.

Sir,

I have just read in the Egyptian Gazette of the 14th instant your reply to Mr. Lucy about the Cyprus Convention, and I was very glad to observe the offer you made in it of correcting in your book any errors which might be pointed out to you. It has decided me to appeal to your loyalty in regard to a mistake about my father which has found its way into it. I do not know from what sources you have drawn your information, nor do I doubt your good faith, which has certainly been misled.

You say that Nubar Pasha was Ismaïl's Minister of Finance, and that in virtue of this office he was responsible for the ruinous loans contracted by the latter. This is evidently a complete mistake, my father never having been Minister of Finance, and having had nothing to do directly or indirectly with any of the loans.

The only offices which he filled during Ismaïl's reign were the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was never, I repeat, Minister of Finance, for this very good reason that, in spite of his great intelligence and qualities as a statesman, he recognized that he did not understand financial questions, and the Khedive, who also knew it, would never have thought of confiding a Ministry to him, which he himself felt he was incapable of directing.

Ismaïl's Minister of Finance was the Moufettish Ismaïl Pasha Sadek, whom you speak of on pages 18, 39 and 40 of your book. He was the sole collaborator and confidant of the Khedive upon financial matters, and it was he who organized the loans.

As to my father, I think what will best show you how entirely he was a stranger to financial administration, is a simple résumé of his career, under Ismaïl, which I shall try to condense into a few lines.

"In the very first year of Ismaïl's accession, 1863, Nubar Pasha was sent on a mission to Paris to regulate the differences relating to the Suez Canal. He remained there two years, and upon his return to Egypt he was appointed, first, Minister of Public Works, and then, Minister for Foreign Affairs. A year later, in 1866, he went once more on a mission to Europe, and remained three years absent. It was during this period that he obtained the Firman of 1867, granting to Egypt administrative autonomy, the right of making Customs Conventions with the Powers, and the title of Khedive for the Viceroy. It was at this time, too, that he commenced the first negotiations for Judicial Reform with the Powers. He did not return to Egypt until 1869, and then for six months only, in order to assist at the opening of the Suez Canal, and preside at the Commission of Inquiry for Judicial Reform which was sitting at Cairo, and he returned to Paris in 1870 to continue there the negotiations for the Reform. These negotiations, begun in 1867, lasted until 1875, about eight years, during which time Nubar Pasha lived almost entirely in Europe, with the exception of short intervals of a few months in Egypt. In 1874 he was dismissed by the Khedive on account of a difference of opinion relative to the said negotiations, and he remained in Europe without employment for a year. He was recalled by Ismaïl to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in June, 1875. Six months later, he was again dismissed, January, 1876. He then remained two years in Europe, exiled, and did not return until 1878, when recalled by the Khedive to form the Mixed Ministry in conjunction with Sir Rivers Wilson."

My father declares in his memoirs, which I hope one day to be able to publish, that during the fifteen years of Ismaïl's reign, he spent twelve in Europe on missions, on leave of absence, or in exile. The dates and facts which I have recited above prove the accuracy of this statement. During all these absences from Egypt, Nubar Pasha, exclusively occupied with his negotiations, could not take any part in the interior affairs of the country, about which he was not even consulted. Thus, while in Paris in 1869, he learnt from M. Béhic, Minister of Public Works to the Emperor Napoleon III, in the course of a conversation with him relative to the Judicial Reform, that the Khedive had just arranged a loan of ten millions sterling, of which my father had not even been informed; and again, at Constantinople in 1873, where he was pursuing his negotiations for the Reform, it was indirectly that he learned that the Khedive was negotiating a fresh loan of thirty millions.

You see, Sir, by these facts, which it will be easy for you to verify, that not only was my father never Minister of Finance, nor connected with the Khedive's loans, but that all his energy, his talents and the influence which he had acquired were employed in negotiations abroad: (1) for the regulation of the question of the Suez Canal, which culminated in the arbitration of Napoleon III, through which Egypt obtained a verdict for the abolition of forced labour in the making of the Canal; (2) for obtaining Firmans from the Sublime Porte; (3) for the Judicial Reform which was his conception and his work, and to which he consecrated all his energy, his intelligence, and the best years of his life. I must also add that he continued to work zealously for the abolition of forced labour while Director of Railways and at the Ministry of Public Works. This we owe in large measure to him, as Sir W. Wilcocks so courteously testifies in his book on the Irrigation of Egypt.

Do you not think, Sir, that I have a right under these circumstances to appeal to your courtesy in asking you to rectify in the new edition of your book the erroneous passages which I have mentioned? You cannot fail to see the importance which I attach to these corrections, for it would not be just, in a work bearing upon history, for my father to be held responsible for government measures to which he was altogether a stranger.

My father in the course of his laborious career made many friends, but also many enemies, as all politicians do. His enemies have not failed to spread calumnies about him and to invent stories. I will only cite two: First, that concerning his nationality. His political adversaries, in the interest of their cause, successively reproached him with being an English and a German subject! These allegations, the object of which was to discredit him in the course of his negotiations for Judicial Reform by contesting, though he was a Minister of the Khedive, his Egyptian nationality, have been since recognized as being without any foundation. Another legend relates to his supposed immense fortune. The most calumnious and fantastic assertions have been made with regard to this, generally by people who were interested in tarnishing the memory of an adversary by leaving it to be understood that such great wealth could only have been acquired by unlawful means. They did not hesitate to say and write that he possessed more than four millions sterling. Although I have not condescended up to now to reply to calumnies which have appeared in newspapers, there is no reason why I should not give you, for your personal information, the precise facts and figures.

At his death my father left a fortune of £155,000, having settled upon my mother during his lifetime a personal fortune amounting to an equal sum. Thus the four millions, at which the most moderate estimators valued what he possessed, were not in reality more than about £300,000. This is a fact which can easily be verified, for the Deed of Partition of his inheritance—there being children who were minors among the heirs—was registered at the Mixed Tribunal at Cairo.

It is equally easy to show the sources from which this fortune was derived. It consisted of donations, which he had received from the Khedive in recompense for services rendered, and of an exceptionally fortunate investment of a part of these donations.

By the résumé which I have given of his career, you will see the importance of the services he rendered to his country and the results obtained by his various negotiations. The Khedive did not fail to recompense him, as he had recompensed others of his Ministers, and as the British Parliament has recently done for Lord Cromer by voting him a donation of £50,000. Thus he received, upon the successful result of the negotiations relating to the Suez Canal, the Firman of 1867 and the Judicial Reform, various recompenses consisting of sums of money, of a property of nine hundred acres, and of a house in Alexandria—the whole being of the value of about £80,000.

My father had the fortunate inspiration, at the creation of the Cairo Water Company, of which he was President, to invest an important part of this sum, £25,000, in shares of the Company; and this investment alone sufficed to raise his fortune to the sum I have indicated, for it is a matter of public knowledge that the Cairo Water Company's shares had gone up to ten times their value at the date of Nubar Pasha's death.

I will end by begging you to excuse my having written you so long a letter, but your offer of rectification proves your anxiety to be impartial and has authorized my doing so. Thanking you in advance, therefore, for the corrections which my information will enable you to make, I beg you will accept, Sir, etc.,

Boghos Nubar.

Note.—I am glad to have obtained Boghos Pasha's permission to publish the whole of this interesting letter, and regret that I cannot, at the late date of my receiving it, make any alteration in the text of this edition, such as he at first suggested. I think, however, that the letter, published in full, will be found more satisfactory than a mere omission of the passages it corrects could possibly have been.

W. S. B.

[APPENDIX V]
Note as to the Berlin Congress.

It has been pointed out by Mr. Lucy, in the Westminster Gazette, that the account given in the text, page 34, of the quarrel between M. Waddington and Lord Salisbury, at the Berlin Congress, is manifestly incorrect, inasmuch as it was the Anglo-Russian agreement of 31st May, not the Cyprus Convention with Turkey of 4th June, that was published by the Globe newspaper through the instrumentality of Marvin, the Cyprus Convention being issued in the ordinary way. The confusion between the two instruments in the text is undeniable and needs correction. At the same time the result of as full an enquiry as I have been able to make into the affair, by a reference to contemporary documents, is not such as to make me doubt the substantial truth of the story. What seems precisely to have happened is this:

Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury, before entering the Congress, had concluded two separate agreements, both secret, regarding Ottoman affairs—the one with Russia, the other with Turkey. These while conceding something to Russia, would, they thought, conjointly secure the integrity of the Sultan's dominions on the Asiatic side against further aggression. The agreement with Russia recognized her permanent possession of Batum, but was more than counterbalanced, in their opinion, by the second Convention, unknown to the Russian Government as to the rest of the world, guaranteeing the remainder of his Asiatic dominions under English protection to the Sultan. The two treaties were drafted at the Foreign Office almost simultaneously, and by accident or negligence that with Russia became known, the very day it was signed, to M. Charles Marvin, a poor journalist and teacher of languages, who had been taken on as extra Writer for his knowledge of Russian in the Treaty Department at the Foreign Office. Marvin, who was wretchedly underpaid at the rate of tenpence an hour, had been intrusted with the copying of the agreement, and yielded to the temptation of betraying a summary of it to his employers in the Press. This was on the 31st May, a fortnight before the Congress met.

For some days after this Marvin seems to have remained on unsuspected at the Foreign Office, it being imagined at first that it was perhaps Count Schouvalof himself, the Russian ambassador in London, who had given the information to the Press. Later, seeing that the summary was no more than a summary, and had appeared in one newspaper only, the Globe, it was resolved to deny it; and Lord Salisbury had little difficulty in persuading the House of Lords and the country that it lacked authenticity. In answer to a question put to him about it by Lord Grey, Lord Salisbury declared roundly "the statement to which the noble Earl refers, and other statements that have been made that I have seen, are wholly unauthenticated and are not deserving of the confidence of your Lordship's House."

Nevertheless, the incident raised a suspicion of England's good faith abroad, and, doubtless was the cause of the declaration, mentioned in the text, being demanded of the Ambassadors at the first sitting of the Congress. This must have been subscribed to by Lords Beaconsfield and Salisbury on the 13th June, the other dates being:

The Agreement with Russia, signed in London, 31st May.

The Globe summary, published in the evening of the same day, 31st May.

Lord Salisbury's denial in the House of Lords, 3rd June.

First sitting of the Berlin Congress, 13th June.

Publication by the Globe of the full text of the Agreement, on evening of 14th June.

Lord Beaconsfield's and Lord Salisbury's discomfiture must consequently have been still more sudden than in my account of it when the news became public property at Berlin on the 15th; and doubtless the sensation caused there was primarily on account of the Agreement, not of the Convention, which latter was not published till 8th July. All the same I still adhere to my recollection of the letter shown me at Simla that it was the Cyprus Convention that was the main cause of M. Waddington's resentment, and of Lord Salisbury's concession to him about Tunis and the rest. That it was so is confirmed to me by a passage in my diary of 1884, when, being at Constantinople and having just had a conversation with Count Corti on the subject, I made the following entry. It must be remembered that the Count had been Italian ambassador at the Berlin Congress, and was actually ambassador to the Sultan at the date of the conversation; nor was he other than a friendly witness, for he was always regarded as an Anglomane and ally of our British diplomacy.

"October 26. Count Corti came to take us in a steam launch to Therapia. We had luncheon with the Wyndhams, and called on the Noailles (at the English and French Embassies).... On our way back to Constantinople Count Corti entertained us with stories of the Berlin Congress and of Lord Salisbury's antics there. Disraeli and Salisbury had gone there quite on their high horse to curb the territorial ambitions of Russia, and the publication of the secret convention for the acquisition of Cyprus was a great shock to everybody. Salisbury broke it gently to Waddington before the news was published, and Waddington consulted his colleagues, it being generally agreed that there was no middle course between going to war and saying nothing. 'Il faut la guerre ou se taire.' But the publication was a great blow to Disraeli, who took to his bed and did not appear for four or five days. Lord Salisbury, however, brazened it out, and came to the Congress with an air of defiance. There was no rupture between him and Waddington, and they remained on apparently friendly terms, but Waddington had his revenge. He was sitting one day with Salisbury, and, the conversation leading that way, Waddington asked what the English Government would say to France taking Tunis, and Salisbury said he did not see the harm. Whereupon Waddington communicated this to Paris, and on his return the French ambassador in London was instructed to write to Lord Salisbury reminding him of his words. Thus Salisbury was caught. 'But,' said Corti, 'if he had known anything of his business he would have declined to answer the note officially and would have pleaded a private conversation.' He did not believe that any arrangement of condominium was come to between Salisbury and Waddington at that time, though I told him, without mentioning names, of the letter Lytton had shown me. Corti is interesting diplomatically, as he has been to more congresses than any man in Europe."

This entry, which is a contemporary record of Count Corti's recollection of the incident, five years after it happened, shows that the two secret agreements had remained closely connected in his mind as the cause of Waddington's displeasure. They certainly were present in the Duke of Richmond's mind when, representing the Foreign Office on 17th June, in answer to a further question about the authenticity of the full text of the Anglo-Russian Agreement, he said "as an explanation of the policy of Her Majesty's Government it is incomplete and therefore inaccurate," for this incompleteness can only be understood as an allusion to the Cyprus Convention in 1878, and the seizure of Tunis by France in 1881, which after all is the important matter. Some day, no doubt, the whole incident will be made clear by a publication of the secret records at the Foreign Office or at the Quai d'Orsay. In the meantime we may accept it as probable that, finding the Russian Agreement divulged, Lord Salisbury resolved to make a clean breast also of the other Agreement, and, in Count Corti's words, broke gently to M. Waddington the existence also of a Convention with Turkey. One thing I am certain of in my recollection, that the letter shown me at Simla described the quarrel and the terms obtained in the reconciliation with M. Waddington.

The Cyprus Convention was published in London on the 9th July, having been signed on the 4th June, but there is evidence of its having been in Lord Beaconsfield's thoughts at least three months earlier, for Lord Derby, speaking in the Lords, 18th July, gave it as his reason for leaving the Cabinet in March that the policy of the Government had become such, that it was already, at that date, being considered necessary "to seize and occupy the island of Cyprus."

W. S. B.

[APPENDIX VI]
THE WIND AND THE WHIRLWIND

A Poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Published 1883