Section of the Suez Canal.
Singularly enough, it has been contended that the opening of the Suez Canal has injured both English and Egyptian interests—English interests, because it has economised tonnage, saved time, or in other words, minimised interest on capital, injured our entrepôt trade, and brought about our occupation of Egypt, with all the heavy expenditure, loss of life, and international complications which that fact has involved; Egyptian interests, because the Government of that country has had to pay large indemnities to the Suez Canal Company, and has really profited by the success of the enterprise to a much less extent than it ought to have done, had it not very improvidently sacrificed the royalties to which it was entitled under the original agreement.
It is, no doubt, unfortunate that our occupation of Egypt, and the inglorious campaigns in the Soudan, should have been entailed upon us by our interest in keeping open the canal, but the statistics of our trade with the East conclusively prove that the canal has had an important share in the enormous development that has occurred since it was opened. The movement has, however, been aided by other influences, and more especially by the opening of telegraph lines, the improvements that have been effected in steamships and marine engines, the smaller commissions accepted by merchants or agents, the lower rates of freight, the reduced charges for insurance, and many collateral changes, that have all tended, in a greater or less degree, to facilitate commerce and navigation.
Whether or no M. de Lesseps and his allies have conferred any substantial advantages on England by their completion of the Suez Canal, it is quite beyond controversy that the English people have not rendered much aid in the promotion of that great waterway. The part which England took when the preliminary arrangements were being made in 1856 is one of which many Englishmen are now a little ashamed. England was invited to co-operate in the project at an early stage. Not only did we refuse co-operation, but we refused it with that species of incivility of which we are occasionally guilty when we have our insular prejudices offended. The canal was first of all, opposed by the British Government, as such. Lord Palmerston was then Prime Minister. On the 8th of July, 1857, he declared the opposition to be—(1) that the construction of the canal would tend to the more easy separation of Egypt from Turkey, and would, therefore, be in direct violation of a policy “supported by war and the Treaty of Paris”; and (2) that there were “remote speculations with regard to easier access to our Indian possessions, only requiring to be indistinctly shadowed forth to be fully appreciated,” which rendered the canal undesirable. How much better it would have been for the memory of genial “old Pam,” if, in announcing his judgment, he had recollected the rule that “you should never give your reasons.” History is rapidly made in the nineteenth century. It is not in the least discreditable to Palmerston that he should have failed to realise how completely his anticipations would be falsified by events. No one at that time could have foreseen that, in less than thirty years from that date, the Suez Canal would not only have become an accomplished fact, but would have become perhaps the most successful industrial enterprise of modern times; that it would have revolutionised our shipping and transit trades; and that our Indian and Australian possessions would have participated in its advantages to an enormous degree. Prescience of this kind is given to few men. But while the lack of this ability to discern the “coming events” which “throw their shadows before” is not common, so neither is the example of the representative of a great nation describing as a “bubble,” and denouncing with all the eloquence and power at his command, an enterprise which has conferred upon his country, as the first maritime power in the world, advantages which generally transcend those that are enjoyed by any other country.
But Lord Palmerston is very far from being a monopolist of this discredit. Robert Stephenson was at this time one of the leading English engineers. As the great son of a great father, he enjoyed vast influence, honourably and justly acquired, and employed, with one exception, discriminatingly and in a manner worthy of its possessor. That exception was the position which he took up in reference to the Suez Canal. Appointed to represent England on a commission of experts instructed to report on the question of isthmian transit, Stephenson satisfied himself that the idea of a canal was impracticable, and reported against it. So far, Stephenson was quite alone. His two colleagues on the commission—M. Talabot, representing France, and M. Negrelli, representing Austria—were both in favour of the canal in preference to the railroad which Stephenson recommended.[157] His brother engineers in England appear to have stood loyally by Stephenson. They gave very little countenance to M. de Lesseps or his scheme. Both were, indeed, denounced from platform and press in the most unsparing manner. The leading daily journals, which write in haste, and the sober, scholarly quarterlies, which are supposed to write at leisure and after much reflection, were alike opposed to it. The Edinburgh Review spoke of it as “utterly impracticable,” and urged that, “the available population or resources of Egypt could not execute such a work in a hundred years;” that “an army of foreign navvies would be required to keep in repair such a work, with its locks, viaducts, steam engines, and a floating capital hardly inferior to the original outlay”; that “a vessel in Aden harbour would rather take 3l. per ton for England, if allowed to go viâ the Cape, than she would take 5l. if forced to go through the canal”; that if the principles on which the Great Eastern, was then being built, were sound,[158] there was “an end, not only of the canal, but the Red Sea may again be restored to its pristine solitude, undisturbed even by the weekly visit of the passing steamers”; and, finally, that until different experiences were at command, “the Suez Canal may fairly be relegated among the questions diseuses which may interest and amuse, but can hardly ever benefit mankind.”[159]
So also the ‘Quarterly Review,’ which believed the scheme to be “commercially unsound,” and set forth a number of objections to it in categorical form. The great expense of building the masonry harbours at the two outlets of the canal, the difficulties and dangers of the navigation of the Red Sea, the cost of the embankments and the expense of maintenance, the “probability of steamers like the Great Eastern being built to perform the voyage round the Cape to the island of Ceylon in less time than would be occupied in performing that through the Suez Canal,”[160] and the impossibility of ensuring the maintenance of the canal and necessary locks in proper working condition, were marshalled in battle array as a phalanx of obstacles that could not be overcome. But the opponents of the canal went further, and declared that, as a vessel using the canal would take about three days to get through,[161] would require one day to coal, and another to sail from Pelusium to the meridian of Alexandria, the saving on goods, as compared with the railway, would only be one to two days, while on passengers and mails there would be a loss of four to five days.
The British shipping interest have had some reason to complain of the way in which they have been treated from first to last by the Suez Canal Company. It is perfectly true that England did not contribute anything to the building of the canal, but English shipping has provided the shareholders with much the larger part of their revenue. France, which practically owns the canal, only contributes from 6 to 9 per cent. of its income, as against from 75 to 80 per cent. of the whole contributed by Great Britain. The shipowners of the latter country not unnaturally thought, some years ago, that they should have a larger share in the management of the canal, and threatened the construction of a rival waterway if the existing canal were not deepened, and other arrangements made for facilitating the shipping that used it. After a good deal of negotiation between the canal company and the shipowners, a commission was appointed in 1884 to determine what new measures, in respect of works and navigation, should be undertaken to enable the ship canal to meet fully the exigencies of a traffic exceeding 10,000,000 tons per annum. Its report was presented in February 1885. The commission considered three methods of increasing the carrying capacity of the canal, namely:—(1) widening the existing canal; (2) construction of a second canal; and (3) doubling the capacity of the canal by a combination of the first two methods.