Could any government be more paternal than this—it might even be said, more despotic? But countries which depend on irrigation have a natural tendency towards despotism. When water is plentiful they may be as republican and democratic as you please; but when the crisis of scanty water comes they must have a strong hand over them, just as the Roman Republic had to have its Dictator in times of national peril. It speaks well for the good sense of the Egyptians, and it proves their implicit faith, built up by sixteen years’ experience, in the English engineers, that even those stringent regulations were unhesitatingly obeyed, and that breaches of them were so rare as to be almost non-existent. They had their reward; for while 1878 is still remembered as a year of black disaster and distress, in 1900 the cotton crop amounted to no less than 5,250,000 kantars,[5] and the maize crop, in spite of its late sowing, was also very good. Only the rice, a comparatively insignificant item, was sacrificed to its more important rivals. Thanks mainly to the good work done by the completed Barrage, neither the public nor the private finances of Egypt suffered the least shock from a year of unprecedented scarcity of water, even when this was coupled with most unseasonable cold and fogs in September, which considerably diminished the output of cotton. Lord Cromer had indeed good reason to write in 1901:
‘Had it not been for the labours of the eminent hydraulic engineers, who for the last seventeen years have placed their services at the disposal of the Egyptian Government, the most skilful financial assistance would not have availed both to place the Egyptian Treasury in a position of assured solvency and to meet in any adequate degree the constant demands which are the necessary accompaniment of a policy of reform.’
Such are the outlines of the long history of the Barrage, designed by Frenchmen and brought to perfection by Englishmen. Both nations can share in the credit of the work, and it is pleasant to record once more the generous and graceful act by which the chief of the English engineers recognised and acknowledged the merits of his predecessor. Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff discovered Mougel Bey living in obscurity and oblivion, weighed down by poverty and neglect. It was owing to his intercession that the poor old man was rescued from want, and, by means of a pension granted by the Egyptian Government, enabled to spend his remaining days in comfort and honour. Both nations are entitled to be proud of this act of poetic justice, which added a lustre of its own to the glory of the completed Barrage.
CHAPTER VI
THE CORVÉE
From time immemorial the peasantry of Egypt have been liable to the corvée in some form or other. In a country depending for its existence upon the proper maintenance of its dykes, it was only natural that the whole population should turn out to perform the necessary work. But a useful custom very easily degenerated into a galling slavery under Oriental despotism. Rulers with absolute power of life and death over their subjects, who regarded the land they ruled as their own personal property, could not be expected to make much distinction between works carried out for the general good and those designed merely for their own convenience and aggrandisement. The Pyramids and others of the mighty remains of ancient Egypt stand as monuments of the greatness of the Pharaohs, but no less of the miseries of countless generations under the system of forced labour, which is known in our time as the corvée, a term applied sometimes to the forced labour itself, and sometimes to those who perform it.
In the early chapters of the Book of Exodus there is a brief but pregnant description of the sufferings of the Israelites when subjected to the burden.
‘And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:
‘And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.’
‘And Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof. Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein.’