Page:The Egyptian Difficulty and the First Step out of it.djvu/9

Rh of 1879 had in it an original sin which vitiated whatever virtue it might have contained, and of which the perpetuation, marring every experiment, has brought to nought the conferences, missions, and wars lavished upon the patching up of what was in reality a hopelessly bad job from the outset.

The purpose of these pages is to show that such original sin did exist in the solution of 1879; that the sequence of failures which we have recapitulated above has been mainly caused by that sin; that so long as its taint is suffered to remain in the mass under treatment, the conferences, missions, and wars of the future, or whatever other devices the ingenuity of statesmanship may imagine, will fail like those of the past. Finally, we hope to show that it may be eradicated.

How stood the case in the month of June, 1879?

The showy imposture of the reign of Ismail was played out; the tinsel of it was stripped off; the cruelty and the sham of it were mercilessly revealed. It was known to those Powers who were called upon to deal with the case, that the power and prestige of the Khediviate had greatly suffered in the last days of Ismail's reign, nor were indications wanting that his exactions, his reckless financing, and the foreign intervention resulting from it, had created discontent which was already "gnawing the bowels of the commonwealth," and would have openly—declared itself but for Ismail's watchfulness and energy.

The problem therefore which then presented itself for solution was to find a successor for Ismail, in