Page:The Egyptian Difficulty and the First Step out of it.djvu/26

 difficulty England is, doubtless, to a great extent the victim of the delicacy of her political conscience. But the fact that the situation is of her own election rather increases than diminishes the obligations attaching to it.

As the result, then, of her own free choice, England is bound to do the work of administrative reconstruction through the instrumentality of an Egyptian government, conformable with existing firmans and with the political state created by them. And inasmuch as it was for the maintenance of this order of things that the British army fought at Tel-el-Kebir, the attitude of the British Government in abjuring any disturbance of it is logical, loyal and consistent.

To what point then in our argument do these considerations bring us?

England has practically no choice as regards staying in Egypt or leaving it; she cannot consistently assume a protectorate over the country, nor annex it. Staying, the obligations of her own greatness, going, the still greater obligations of humanity, impose upon her the constitution of a strong government. And this government she is pledged to construct out of materials which, if they are not to be found in the actual corporeal substance of the existing order, shall yet be in all respects of the same character, consonant with the principle of the order, and compatible with its maintenance.

Now, it has been shown in what precedes that the most important factor in the present composition of