Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/23

Rh practice. Partnership in business may be a wise management of affairs, but partnership in government does not work so well. An alliance of two countries which join to control a third, is a sort of double-headed monster, which has no more place in government than in nature. Nature abhors monsters, and so does wise diplomacy or legislation. Especially a joint action between two countries so jealous of each other as France and England, was sure to result sooner or later in misunderstanding and mischief.

Besides, there was an injustice in the thing to which it is very hard to reconcile our American ideas. To make the best of it, it was an anomalous arrangement — one to which neither England nor France, and least of all America, would submit for an instant. Suppose, because English bankers forty years ago lent money on Pennsylvania bonds, which did not prove very remunerative, England should say "Now we will come in and administer the finances of Pennsylvania for a few years until our bondholders are paid in full, principal and interest, with a liberal commission for collecting bad debts, and after that we will give the control back to you," she would receive an answer that would be quite intelligible. This is the charge that is made against England: that she has used all the weight of her national authority to collect debts, and not even debts owed to herself, but to private capitalists, to speculators, who if they lend money to a State like Egypt at enormous interest, ought at least to take their own risks, and not come to the Government to help them out of a bad bargain, for which they have nobody to blame but themselves.

But I do not quite understand the matter so, nor that the Anglo-French Control was imposed upon Egypt by foreign power without her consent and against her will. It was Ismail Pacha who invited the help of England and France to get him out of his financial difficulties. He had