Page:The Egyptian Difficulty and the First Step out of it.djvu/30

 last year. After the second omission the Grand Vizier wrote to Tewfik to expostulate, and the answer was that he was so much occupied about the cholera that he "forgot it." To "forget" to salute the Klialif on such solemn occasions is the worst form of lèse majesté. At the last Bairam, Tewfik sent a most effusive message to the Sultan; but it was so exaggerated in its terms, that when it was contrasted with the previous omissions, it was simply set down to apprehensions on account of the break-up of the London Conference a few days before, and was regarded as a clumsy attempt to make his peace with the Sultan, in a moment of misgiving as regards the stability of his own position.

All these things we have deemed it necessary to explain, in order to show that the antipathy of the Sultan to Tewfik rests upon grounds which preclude any possibility of reconciliation.

Therefore, while Tewfik remains on the throne of Egypt the sovereign government will always encourage intrigues against him; and whatever importance, relatively speaking, British opinion may attach to these intrigues, they will always have a disturbing influence, will detract from the efficiency of the administration, and, more or less, jeopardise the maintenance of tranquillity.

If Tewfik were a man of any power in himself, or if there were any imperative reason, from a British point of view, why Tewfik, and no one else, should occupy the Egyptian throne, it might be resolved to make the best of the hostility of the sovereign