Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

A third reason is the dependence of the agriculture of Egypt on irrigation. The people, therefore, in any neighbourhood cannot intermit their attention to their shadoofs and canals for the purpose of insurrection, or for any other purpose whatsoever. Were they to do so starvation would ensue. The Government also, being in possession of the river, could at any moment stop the irrigation, by destroying the shadoofs and canals, of a malcontent district.

Here, then, are three reasons, any one of which would, singly, be sufficient to make the Government in Egypt omnipotent. What conceivable chance, then, can the people have, when all the three are, at all times, combined against them? This explains much in the past and present history of the country. Nature had decided that in it there should be no strongholds for petty potentates, no castles for freebooters, no mountain fastnesses for untameable tribes, no difficult districts to harbour insurgent bands; no possibility of getting away from the bank of the river; no possibility of withdrawing attention, for a time, from the most artificial of all forms of agriculture. For long ages the wandering Arab of the desert was the only possible disturber of the peace of this exceptional country. Nature first gave to it, in its singular endowments, the means of union; and then eliminated those physical obstacles to its realization which, elsewhere, for long ages proved insurmountable. The point to be particularly noted here is, that these circumstances have ever given to the Government for the time being every natural facility for uniting the whole country into a single State, and ruling it despotically.

The Delta is no exception, for the branches of the river, and the canals by which this whole district is permeated, and the absence of defensible positions, reduce it, in respect to the points I have been speaking of, to the same condition as that of the long narrow valley above it.

A time may come when the moral force of public opinion will outweigh, and overmatch these natural facilities for establishing, and working a despotism; but there is no indication in the existing condition of the country of such a time being at hand. And that this is the only force that can be of any effect in such a country is demonstrated by its history. In the remote days of its greatness there was in some sort a substitute for it in the priestly municipal aristocracy, or oligarchy, of each city. The priests were the governing class, and supplied the magistracy. They were an united and powerful body. Wealth, religion, knowledge, the habitual deference of the people, made them strong. They thus became, to some considerable extent, a bulwark, behind which, in each separate city, some of the rights of person and of property could find protection from the arbitrary caprices of despotism. In this way something that was in the mind of man was at that time counterworking the consequences of physical arrangements: and this only is the way in which a country so circumstanced can be helped in the future.

Nothing, however, of this kind is now at work in modern Egypt. It has, therefore, but one ground for the hope of escaping from the despotism which so heavily oppresses it, and that is in the chance of external aid, which means the chance that some European power should assume the protectorate of the country. It must, however, be a power in which public opinion is in favour of liberty and political justice, and in which the economical value of security for person and property is understood. The Egyptians themselves desire such a consummation. They know how blessed to them would be the day which should relieve them from the grinding and senseless exactions of an oriental taskmaster, and place them under the sway of good and equal laws. Their wish is that this beneficent protector should be England. They almost expect that it will be. I was asked, why do you not come and take possession of the country? In Egypt this appears the natural conclusion of existing conditions. But a protectorate carried out thoroughly, and unflinchingly, and entirely for Egyptian objects, would be far better for both parties than simple English possession. If we were to make a gain by ruling the country, we should always be tempted to go a little further. We should find it very difficult to stop at any particular point, or to be clean-handed at all, when everything was in our power.

The motives for interference are strong. How saddening is it to the traveller to see the poor good-natured Fellah, his naked limbs scorched by the blazing sun, baling up the water from the river, during the livelong day, for his little plot of ground; and to think that all that will be left to him of its produce will be barely enough to keep himself, and his little ones, in millet-bread and onions; all the rest having been cruelly swept away to support at Cairo unused, and unuseable, palaces and regiments, and to make a Suez Canal for the furtherance of the policy of France, but for the naval and commercial benefit of England, and to build sugar-factories for a trading Khedivé. Of what benefit to the wretched cultivator are all the bounties of Egyptian nature, and all his own heavy moil and toil? This is one of the remorseless, and purposeless oppressions done under the sun, which it would be well that some modern Hercules should arise in his might, and in his hatred of such heartless and stupid injustice, to beat down, and make a full end of. An Egypt, in which every man might reap securely the fruit of his labour, would be a new thing in the world, and a very pleasant thing to look upon. At present, the riches of Egypt mean wealth without measure for one man, and poverty without measure for all the rest of the world.

The case of the poor Fellah is very hard: so also is that of his palm-tree. It came into existence, and grew up to maturity under great difficulties. It was hardly worth while to give it space and water, and to fence it round in its early days; for so soon as it could bear a bunch of fruit, it was to be taxed. Why, then, should the oppressed villager go to the cost of rearing it? He would be only toiling for a domestic despot, or foreign bond-holder. How many a palm-tree that might now be helping to shade a village, and beneath which the children might be playing, and the elders sitting, has by this hard and irrational impost, been prevented from coming into being. And of all the gifts of nature to Egypt, this palm-tree is one of the most characteristic, and of the most useful: its trunk supplies the people with beams; its sap is made into a spirit; its fruit is in some districts a most useful article of food, and everywhere a humble luxury; baskets are made of the flag of its leaf, and from the stem of the leaf beds, chairs, and boxes; its fibres supply materials for ropes and cordage, nets and mats; it has, too, its history in Egypt, for its shaft and crown, first suggested to the dwellers on the banks of the Nile, in some remote age, the pillar and its capital. A wise ruler, whether his wisdom was that of the head, or of the heart, would do everything in his power to induce his people to multiply, throughout the land, what is so highly useful, and in so many ways. But the plan despotic wisdom adopts is to kill the bird that lays the golden egg, and by a process which shall at the same time cause as few as possible of the precious kind to be reared for the future.

Every traveller in the valley of the Nile, who can think and feel, finds his pleasure, at the sight of the graceful form of this beneficent tree, clouded by the unwelcome recollection of the barbarous and death-dealing tax that is laid upon it.

If, when the Turkish empire falls to pieces, England should shrink from undertaking, on her own sole responsibility, the protectorate of Egypt, the great powers of Europe, together with the United States of America, might, as far as Egypt is concerned, assume the lapsed suzerainty of the Porte, and become the protectors of Egypt conjointly.