'I possess the draft of a full memorandum of Ollivier's conversation which I sent to Lord Granville, and which represented his private protests to Lesseps and his argument to the Khedive. Ollivier, who was more English than French in the matter, accepted the position that by the Khedival decree of August 14th England had been substituted for the Khedive in all measures for the re-establishment of order in Egypt, and that it was under this decree that we occupied the ends of the Canal as the delegates of the Khedive; therefore there was no violation of the neutrality, and when the Canal Company on August 19th set up as a new Great Power, and addressed to the Khedive a diplomatic note, their arguments became nonsensical, inasmuch as they virtually argued that the Khedive himself had violated his own neutrality by an internal act. Moreover, the neutrality of the Canal had never been declared at all. The word "neutral" was indeed found in the original concession, but it evidently meant that the Company was not to give to one Power an advantage not given to others as regards trade and passage. Lesseps had set up the Canal as a new Great Power, whereas it was only an Egyptian Limited Company.
'Even, however, if the Canal had been neutral, Ollivier would have argued against the Company that the suppression of an internal rebellion in the Khedive's name, at his request, was not war or violation of neutrality. It was the duty of the Khedive to suppress rebellion, and the duty of the Canal as an Egyptian Company to aid, and not to impede, as it had impeded, the lawful action of the Egyptian ruler through his representatives. It had not been contended by the Porte, as the overlord of the Khedive, that the Khedive had not power to delegate authority to England to suppress Arabi's rebellion. The Porte had delegated to France power to suppress the rebellion in Syria in 1860 in its name. Lesseps seemed to think that it was within the power of the Khedive to delegate to him sovereignty over the Canal, and not in his power to delegate to anybody else the suppression of a rebellion.'
A casual reference at this point recalls the fact that the Khedive's dethroned predecessor was still moving about the world and capable of causing trouble. Sir Charles went abroad for his autumn vacation:
'In Paris' (in the middle of October) 'I found a letter from Lord Granville as to a visit which the ex-Khedive Ismail proposed to pay to London. Lord Granville said that the Government could not object to his "coming to this country. But at this moment his arrival would be misunderstood, and any civilities, which in other circumstances they would be desirous to show to His Highness, would lead to misconstruction."' [Footnote: 'In November, 1883, the ex-Khedive had come to London, and when asked to see him, at his wish, I at first refused, but as, after he clearly understood that I knew him to be a rascal, he wished to see me "all the same," I saw him privately at Lady Marian Alford's house in Kensington; but he had little to say, and seemed very stupid.' ]
'I was at this time in correspondence with my friend d'Estournelles, [Footnote: Baron d'Estournelles de Constant.] who was Acting Resident at Tunis, as to the capitulations. In the course of his letter d'Estournelles expressed his bitter regret that France had not gone to Egypt with us.'
When Sir Charles came back to London from France on October 20th, the
Cabinet was still vacillating as to its Egyptian policy:
'I had found on my return that nothing had been done towards setting up such an Egyptian Army as could take the place of our own, although Sir Charles Wilson, Colonel Valentine Baker, Baring, [Footnote: Major Evelyn Baring, afterwards Lord Cromer, was then Financial Member of Council in India. Sir Charles Wilson (Colonel Wilson) must not be confounded with Sir Charles Rivers Wilson. Colonel Valentine Baker was head of the Egyptian Gendarmerie.] and others, had written memoranda upon the subject. Baring, in the course of his memorandum, strongly defended the honesty, humanity, and conscience of the Khedive, and opposed annexation and protectorate. On the whole, Baring's memorandum was a better one than that of his relative Lord Northbrook, or that of Lord Dufferin, which afterwards attracted much attention. Chamberlain and I discussed on Saturday, October 21st, a letter to me from Labouchere, in which the latter seemed to take a different view from that recorded above. Labouchere said that the dissatisfaction with the Egyptian policy was growing, that we seemed to be administering Egypt mainly for the good of the bondholders. He was a bondholder, so it could not be said that he was personally prejudiced against such a policy. But he was sure that it would not go down.
'He went on to recommend the policy which I was in fact maintaining— namely, that we should warn off other Powers, hand Egypt over to the Egyptians, but, establishing our own influence over the Canal, remain masters of the position so far as we needed to do so. Chamberlain wrote on Labouchere's letter: "I am convinced the war was submitted to rather than approved by Radicals, and, unless we can snub the bondholders in our reorganization scheme, we may suffer for it. I have written a long paper upon the subject, and sent it to Mr. G. I have arranged for a copy to be sent you."'
A further Cabinet held on Saturday, October 21st, "decided" (so Sir Charles noted in his Diary at the moment) "to be very civil to the French —too civil by half, I think. They rejected a complicated scheme of Lord Granville's, and substituted a single English (not to be so expressed) controller (not to be so called)."
At this moment the autumn Session was approaching, in which the thorny subject of reforming Parliamentary procedure must be disposed of, and the Cabinet were preoccupied with this till 6 p.m. on October 23rd. They