I have the honour to enclose a copy of the log and track-chart of H.M.S. Alert and proceedings of H.M.S. Discovery, while absent from June 13 to July 1, 1875.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
J. S. Nares,
Captain.
PURCHASE OF THE SUEZ CANAL SHARES: AN OPPOSITION VIEW (1875).
Source.—Annual Register, 1875; English History, pp. 123–125.
“You will expect,” said Sir William Harcourt at Oxford, on December 30, “that I should say something to you on the subject of the Suez Canal shares. Well, that is a matter on which no prudent politician in our present state of information will hazard a competent opinion. At the same time, after all that has been said on the matter, to be wholly silent would be an affectation of reserve. For my part, if the matter had been allowed to remain in the regions of high policy, I should have been content to abstain from criticising it altogether. I am not unfavourable to a far-seeing and a bold policy in the conduct of great affairs. We have had somewhat too little of that spirit of late. But all reticence upon that score is at an end. The most contradictory and, in some respects, the most absurd surmises with respect to this transaction were afloat some weeks ago. Lord Hartington, at the beginning of this month, invited a declaration from the Government of the real meaning and object of their policy, and Lord Derby accepted the challenge with perfect frankness. Since the speech of the Foreign Secretary the whole aspect of the question has been completely changed both at home and abroad. Up to that time a sort of glamour had invested a very plain business with the unnatural haze that distorts the true proportion of things. There was something Asiatic in this mysterious melodrama. It was like ‘The Thousand and One Nights,’ when, in the midst of the fumes of incense, a shadowy Genie astonished the bewildered spectators. The public mind was dazzled, fascinated, mystified. We had done we did not know exactly what—we were not told precisely why—omne ignotum pro magnifico. The Government maintained an imposing and perplexing silence. But our daily and weekly instructors gave free rein to their imagination. We were told by those who assumed the patronage of the grand arcanum that a great blow had been struck, that a new policy had been inaugurated, and that England had at length resumed her lead among the nations. The Eastern Question had been settled by a coup d’état on the Stock Exchange, and Turkey was abandoned to her fate. Egypt was annexed. The Bulls of England had vanquished the Bears of Russia. Moab was to be our washpot and over Edom we had cast our shoe. France and M. de Lesseps were confounded. We were a very great people; we had done a very big thing, and, to consummate the achievement, a Satrap from Shoreham, attended by a plump of financial Janissaries, was despatched to administer the subject provinces of the English protectorate on the Nile. All this, if somewhat nebulous, was in the grand manner, and if any inquisitive person, like the troublesome little boy on the field of Blenheim, was disposed to ask ‘what good came of it at last,’ we could always answer, like the judicious Kasper—
“‘Why, that I cannot tell,’ said he,
‘But ’twas a glorious victory.’
“We all of us felt some six inches taller than before. We spread our tails like peacocks to the sun, and were as pleased as children at our soap-bubble, iridescent with many hues. But, all of a sudden, this beautiful vision melted away; the Egyptian mirage evaporated; the great political phantasmagoria faded like a dissolving view. There is nothing so delightful as magic, until, in an unhappy moment, the conjuror consents to reveal the apparatus to us by which our senses have been deluded, and shows us how it is done. Lord Derby is a great master of prose, and he has translated the Eastern romance into most pedestrian English. But the Foreign Secretary is a responsible statesman. He has widely warned us against ‘cant’ and against ‘rant,’ and he cannot afford to indulge in the exaggerated visions in which journalists may, with impunity, amuse themselves and their readers. It was not his affair to mystify England, but to reassure Europe; and therefore with that straightforwardness and common sense for which he is eminent, he told us at Edinburgh that the affair which had created so much sensation at home and abroad was not at all the sort of thing it had been represented to be; that, if it had been capable of the construction which had been put upon it, it would have been neither a wise nor a honest transaction. He repudiated with scorn the idea that England aspired to an Egyptian protectorate; they had not reversed their Eastern policy; still less had they contemplated to appropriate the territories of the Khedive as our share in a scramble for general plunder. What had really been accomplished was a very ordinary affair. The Khedive had certain shares in the Suez Canal. So far from being ambitious to get hold of them, Lord Derby would have much preferred that the ruler of Egypt should have kept them in his own hands; but, as he found himself obliged to part with them, the English Government thought it better to purchase them than to let them go elsewhere. They have acquired them, not to give England any special or predominant foreign influence, nor to secure any exclusive advantage, but to keep open a communication for the benefit of all, which to England is of supreme importance. And with these explanations, tendered on the good faith of an English Minister, upon the credit of which Lord Derby justly relies, he tells us that the European Powers are amply satisfied. And so the nine days’ wonder is over, the enchantment is at an end, the chariot of Cinderella relapses into its original pumpkins and mice. Since Lord Derby has so pitilessly dowsed with cold water the heated enthusiasm of visionary journalists, they have never ceased to weep and to wail over the ruins of their pet toy, which has collapsed like a pricked bladder or a broken drum. They beg us to believe that the Foreign Minister does not understand the meaning of his own acts, or the scope of his own policy; that, in spite of all his protestations to the contrary, we are the veritable perfide Albion.
“For my own part I cannot refuse to respond to the appeal of Lord Derby, when he says, ‘We have told Europe what we want, and why we want it, and Europe is in the habit of believing what we say.’ I hope the day will never come when an English Government will be justly charged with saying one thing and meaning another. I therefore gladly take Lord Derby at his word. But now that this grand affair is reduced to the moderate dimensions of a sort of post-office subsidy, we may criticise it in a manner and upon grounds which might in another aspect of the question have been inappropriate. Of course, if this transaction had been really of the magnitude which was represented, the Government would have been deeply responsible for not inviting at once the judgment of Parliament upon a policy which vitally involved the interests and the future of the country, but being what it is, we may well wait a few weeks for fuller explanations of some points which still remain very obscure. There will be no disposition, I imagine, in any quarter to approach the discussion in a spirit of carping or of captious criticism. Upon the main ground by which this purchase is justified—namely, the determination to secure a free passage between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, there will be no conflict of opinion. That is a policy in which England is profoundly interested; and for that, statesmen of all parties will be prepared to make common efforts, and, if necessary, great sacrifices. No one, I think, will contend that even 4,000,000 pounds of money is too large a sum for the accomplishment of such an end. But that which has not hitherto been explained, and what remains to be shown, is in what manner and to what extent this investment really does conduce to that desirable object.”