What has been said of India might equally be said of Egypt, mutatis mutandis, but space does not permit of any detail on this theme. Enough to say that the achievements of the short period since 1882, when the British occupation began, in the rescuing of the country from bankruptcy, in the abolition of the hideous tyranny under which the mass of the peasantry had long groaned, in the development of the natural resources of the country, in the introduction of western methods of government and education, in the removal of the peril of returning barbarism which threatened from the Soudan, and in the establishment of a just and equal system of law, is something which it would be hard to match in the records of history.[2]
Both in India and in Egypt lands of ancient civilisation have been rescued from a state of chaos and set upon the path which leads to unity and freedom. And in both countries, if the kind of political liberty which consists in the universal diffusion of a share in the control of government has not yet been established, it is because the peoples of these countries are not yet ready for that, and because the premature establishment of it, by enthroning afresh the old ruling castes, would endanger the far more real gifts of liberty which have been secured—liberty of thought and speech, liberty to enjoy the fruits of a man's own labour, freedom from subjection to merely arbitrary superiors, and the establishment of the elementary rights of the poor as securely as those of the powerful.
Empires, like men, are to be judged by their fruits.
[1] India is dealt with in Chapters III., IV., VI., and Egypt in Chapter VIII. of "The Expansion of Europe."
[2] The causes of the British occupation of Egypt, and the development of Egypt under British control, are discussed in "The Expansion of Europe," Chapter VIII.
V
Lastly, we come to the vast regions inhabited wholly or mainly by backward or primitive peoples. Most of these are territories of comparatively recent acquisition. And it is here, and practically here alone, that the British Empire comes into comparison with the recently created empires of other European states, France, Germany, Italy and Belgium; none of which possess any self-governing colonies, or any extensive lands of ancient civilisation like India, unless the French colonies of Algeria and Annam are to be regarded as falling within the latter category.
The establishment of European control over most of the backward regions of the world has been, for the most part, a very recent and a very rapid development.[1]