"Then we shall recognize the full value of Cyprus. The marvellous excitement, caused at home and abroad, by this latest scrap of annexation shows the way the popular wind blows—the reaction of the melancholy policy which restored and ruined Corfu. We do not wish to make the Mediterranean an 'English lake;' but it is, and ever will be, our highway to India and to Indo-China; and we reasonably object to its becoming a French lake or a Russian lake. And England wants secure ports and stations for her guardhouses, the ironclads. Candia and Mitylene would not oppose the hoisting of the Union Jack. These acquisitions must be unpopular at first—they will cost money, and men will die of fever. The Turks, who occupied three centuries of misrule in making the noble islands howling wildernesses, will clamour as they now do for the 'surplus revenues' produced by British blood and gold. Rome was not built in a day, nor will Cyprus be restored in a week. But our energy and industry must at last prevail. We will clean out harbours, raise cities, and drain away malaria. We are not justified in failing where our crusading ancestors succeeded so grandly.
"As regards Egypt we are beginning only now to appreciate the grand results brought about by the great high-minded Ali Pasha and his successors. We want from her nothing but the free right of transit and transport; but we are resolved that the great highway of nations shall not be barricaded by her or by others. Meanwhile, the absolute independence of Egypt has become a necessity. Her connection with Turkey is an unmixed and unmitigated evil. She wants all her hands; and yet she was compelled to send a large contingent to the last Russo-Turkish campaign. When the Turks are freely allowed wholesale 'repudiation,' the Nile Valley must pay her usurious creditors the uttermost farthing of a public debt individually contracted. She wants all her money, and she should, in common justice, be freed from her heavy tribute, and from the heavier benevolences and douceurs which perpetually find their way to the Seraglio, or rather into ministerial pockets. And Egypt is at present, despite the rose-water reports of officials, who take a personal pride in writing, not the truth but what is wished to be the truth, far from comfortable. Abyssinia has placed her between the horns of a dilemma. She must either grant or not grant a port to the barbarous and bloodthirsty Nestorians called Christians. In the former case, the only imports will be arms and ammunition, especially the latter, for Johannes, the Emperor, has thousands of breech-loaders, but no cartridges. In the latter case she will be in a state of chronic war with her turbulent neighbour, who is ever threatening her inland frontier.
"And Egypt has lately offended the moral sense of Europe by a peculiarly retrograde Mohammedan measure—the systematic revival of the import slave-trade. England has a manner of convention with her for suppressing it: but the provisions of 1877 should be made more stringent. She has now reached that point of civilization when she can afford to proclaim a total abolition of compulsory labour, the full and immediate emancipation of the 'chattel.' Slaves and eunuchs, the latter denounced by Islamism, are mere articles of luxury for pashas and beys. I will not deny that when the infamous revival of trade in human beings was brought to their notice, her Ministry addressed a circular letter to the Mudirs or provincial Governors, and appointed a director for its suppression. But this, again, was the Eastern trick of poudre aux yeux. The director went up the Nile, and the slaves came down the Red Sea. Then the director, having apparently done enough for a rose-water report, retired to his winter quarters at Cairo, and the slaves returned to the Nile. Meanwhile the Ministry, whilst permitting this shameful traffic, has systematically neglected the gold and silver placers discovered on the Midian coast, and evidently extending far southwards; in fact, the old Ophir and Havilah. In Turkish Arabia (the vilayet province of Yemen, near Sana'a), a new digging has been discovered, and, with true Oriental exaggeration, has been proclaimed 'one of the richest in the world.' But in the hands of the Turkish Government even a diamond-mine, a Golconda, would be a losing affair; it can be worked with profit only by European heads and hands. Meanwhile Egypt must recover her prestige by abolishing slavery and by exploiting her mineral wealth.
"To conclude. Poets are sometimes prophets; and we have a specimen in the forecast of Camoens, which dates from the year of grace 1572—
'Those fierce projectiles, of our days the work,
Murderous engines, dire artilleries,
Against Byzantine walls, where dwells the Turk,
Should long ago have belcht their batteries.
Oh, hurl it back, in forest caves to lurk,
Where Caspian crests and steppes of Scythia freeze,
That Turkish ogre-progeny multiplied
By potent Europe's policy and pride.'
"What also wrote Torquato Tasso, only a few years after Camoens?
'For if the Christian Princes ever strive
To win fair Greece out of the tyrant's hands,
And those usurping Ismaelites deprive
Of woeful Thrace, which now captived stands;
You must from realms and sea the Turks forth drive,
As Godfrey chased them from Judah's lands,' etc.
Amen, and so be it!
"R. F. B.