The policy which has been persistently pursued by the Egyptian Government of recent years has, therefore, been to endeavour, by a variety of indirect but perfectly legitimate means, to maintain the small proprietors in the possession of their holdings, and, whilst affording all reasonable facilities for the employment of European capital in land development, to do nothing which would tend towards ousting Egyptian proprietors and substituting Europeans in their places.

Of these means, the improvement in the system of irrigation has perhaps been the most important and the most productive of result. The establishment of an Agricultural Bank, which has advanced sums amounting in the aggregate to about £9,000,000 in small sums to the fellaheen, and of Agricultural and Horticultural Societies, which have been the means of spreading a knowledge of scientific agriculture and horticulture, and have also facilitated the purchase by the cultivators of good seed and of manure, have also been potent influences acting in the same direction.1

2

There can be no doubt that these efforts have been crowned with success. On January 1, 1907, only 665,226 acres were held by 6021 foreign landowners, as against 4,765,546 acres held by 1,224,560 Egyptian proprietors. Of the latter, the holdings of 1,081,348 proprietors were of less than 5 acres in extent; the holdings of 132,198 varied from 5 to 50 acres, thus leaving 11,054

1 Full descriptions of the creation and working both of the Agricultural Bank and of the Agricultural and Horticultural Societies are given in the Annual Reports which have been laid before Parliament.

2 For further details up to December 31, 1905 see Egypt, No. 1 of 1907, p. 50. A great deal of the land now held by foreigners belongs to Land Companies. It will eventually be sold. One of the highest authorities on this subject in Egypt (the late M. Felix Suares) assured me that he was convinced that, before many years had passed, almost the whole of the land in Egypt would be in the hands of Egyptians.

proprietors of more than 50 acres. It may, I think, be confidently stated that the danger, which Lord Dufferin apprehended, has been averted.

Finance is often considered a repellent subject, and, because it is repellent, it has gained a reputation for being more difficult to understand than is really the case. There are, indeed, some few economic and currency questions which are abstruse, but the difficulty of understanding even these has been in no small degree increased by the cloud of words with which writers on subjects of this sort often surround issues in themselves simple. One merit of the Egyptian financial situation was this, that no semi-insoluble economic problem lurked between the leaves of the Budget. The Finance Minister had not, as in India, to deal with a congested population, of whom a large percentage were in normal times living on the verge of starvation. He never had to refer to the pages of Malthus or Mill, of Ricardo or Bastiat. complications arising from a bewildering political situation had done a good deal to obscure the problems which he had to solve, and to hinder their solution. But, in truth, all that was required in Egypt, in order to understand the situation, was a knowledge of arithmetic, patience to unravel the cumbersome system of accounts which was the offspring of internationalism, and a sturdy recognition of the fact that neither an individual nor a State can with impunity go on living for an indefinite period above his or its income.

The

The main facts relating to Egyptian finance, when once the thread of the international labyrinth had been found, were, in fact, very simple; when

1 I use the past tense because, with the practical abolition of the Caisse de la Dette, the financial situation, and notably the system of accounts, has been very greatly simplified.

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they were understood, they were not uninteresting. Nothing," as Lord Milner truly says, "in this strange land is commonplace." The subject cannot surely be devoid of interest when it is remembered that the difference between the magic words surplus and deficit meant whether the Egyptian cultivator was, or was not, to be allowed to reap the fruits of his labour; whether, after supplying the wants of the State, he was to be left with barely enough to keep body and soul together, or whether he was to enjoy some degree of rustic ease; whether he was to be eternally condemned to live in a wretched mud hut, or whether he might have an opportunity given to him of improving his dwelling-house; whether he should or should not have water supplied to his fields in due season; whether his disputes with his neighbours should be settled by a judge who decided them on principles of law, or whether he should be left to the callous caprice of some individual ignorant of law and cognisant only of bakhshish; whether, if he were ill, he should be able to go to a well-kept hospital, or whether he should be unable to obtain any better medical assistance than that which could be given to his watch-dog or his donkey; whether a school, in which something useful could be learnt, should be provided for his children, or whether they should be left in the hands of teachers whose highest knowledge consisted in being able to intone a few texts, which they themselves only half understood, from the Koran; whether, if he suffered from mental aberration, he should be properly treated in a well-kept Lunatic Asylum, or whether he should be chained to a post and undergo the treatment of a wild beast; whether he could travel from one part of the country to another, or communicate with his friends by post or telegraph, at a reasonable or only at a prohibitive cost; in fact, whether he, and the

ten millions of Egyptians who were like him, were or were not to have a chance afforded to them of taking a few steps upwards on the ladder of moral and material improvement.

This, and much more, is implied when it is stated that the British and Egyptian financiers arrested bankruptcy, turned a deficit into a surplus, relieved taxation, increased the revenue, controlled the expenditure, and raised Egyptian credit to a level only second to that of France and England. All the other reforms which were effected flow from this one fact, that the financial administration of Egypt has been honest, and that the country, being by nature endowed with great recuperative power, and being inhabited by an industrious population, responded to the honesty of its rulers. It It may be doubted whether in any other country such a remarkable transformation has been made in so short a time.

CHAPTER LIV

IRRIGATION

Nature's bounty to Egypt-The work of the Pharaohs - Turkish neglect-Progress under British guidance-Programme of the future-Causes of the progress - Qualifications of the officers selected-Absence of international obstruction-Loan of £1,800,000 -Support of the public-Importance of the work.

"IF you dispute Providence and Destiny," says an ancient author, "you can find many things in human affairs and nature that you would suppose might be much better performed in this or that way; as, for instance, that Egypt should have plenty of rain of its own without being irrigated from the land of Ethiopia." It may be doubted whether nowadays any one would be inclined to dispute Providence and Destiny on this ground. Indeed, the extraordinary fertility for which Egypt has from time immemorial been famous, which made Homer apply to it the epithet of Ceidwpos, and which led Juvenal to sing of the divitis ostia Nili, is mainly due to the fact that its fields are not irrigated by the rain which falls within its own confines, but by the vast stores of water which sweep down the Nile from the centre of Africa. In no other country in the world may the agriculturist be so surely guaranteed against the accidents and vicissitudes of the seasons. It is true that if the Nile is unusually high or low, the

1 Strabo, Book iv. c. i.