Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/57

 Perronet Thompson no option of engaging the Wahabees—Arabs of the Desert—with an army of Sepoys, while the English Government of 1883 left it to the option of Generals Hicks and Baker to engage the Soudan Arabs with an army of Egyptians who appear to be much lower in the scale of soldiers than Outram placed them. Napoleon used to say there were only two sorts of troops—good and bad. The Egyptians have proved themselves to belong to the latter category. Till lately little or nothing seems to have been known about them. The words I allude to are these:—

"'I have often wondered what would have been the change (if any) in my father's career if he had been successful at Beni Bou Ali, as he deserved, after all the pains he took, and the coolness and science with which he endeavoured to check the Arab attack—and would have done so if the wretched Sepoys had only stood. But when they turned and fled at the approach of the enemy the chance was lost as completely as when a fencer's sword breaks in making a tour de force. I may be contradicted by the assertion that the Imâm's troops in the field were not all natives of Maskat. If so, they were Arabs of a different breed from the Wahabees of Beni Bou Ali, who were a warlike and religious sect of Mahometan reformers, something like Cromwell's party as opposed to the Royalists. It strikes me to be a mistake to call the natives of the Soudan 'Arabs,' who are, strictly speaking, natives of Arabia and not Africa. They may be"