must obviously depend upon the nature of the cause when once it has been ascertained. It generally happens that increasing poverty is the parent of increasing crime. No one with the least knowledge of the country will think that the recent increase of crime in Egypt is due to poverty. There must be some other cause, and, in my opinion, it is not far to seek. It is, I think, to be found in the fact that the law does not inspire sufficient terror to evildoers. Only 43.5 per cent of the crimes committed last year (1906) were punished. In the remaining 56.5 per cent, it was found impossible to discover the criminals, or, if they were discovered, to prove their guilt. I was talking a short time ago to a distinguished Frenchman who was well acquainted with the affairs of Algeria. He explained to me that certain districts lying in the Algerian Hinterland, where military law used to be applied, had recently been brought under the ordinary criminal codes. The comment of one of the principal Algerian Sheikhs on this change was curious. Then,' he said, 'there will be no justice. Witnesses will be required.' I commend this remark to those who are in a hurry to apply Western methods in their entirety to a backward Eastern population. The Sheikh was not in the least struck with the fact that, in the absence of witnesses, an innocent man might possibly be condemned. What struck him was that, as no one could be condemned without witnesses, guilty people would generally escape punishment. This is precisely what is happening in Egypt. I have said over and over again, and I now repeat, that I strongly deprecate any resort to heroic remedies in dealing with this question. There must be no radical change of system. But there should be no delusion as to the time which will be required, or the difficulties which have still to be encoun

tered, before a well-established reign of law can take the place of the arbitrary system under which, until recently, the Egyptians were governed. In the meanwhile, let us by all means do everything that is possible, not merely to improve the Police and the judicial systems, but also, by indirect means, such as education and the establishment of adult reformatories, to diminish crime and check criminal tendencies. But, simultaneously with all this, I trust that criminals will receive adequate punishment when their guilt has been brought home to them. I deprecate the false sentiment which expends all its sympathy on the criminal and reserves none for his victims. I at times observe symptoms which lead me to believe that this sentiment prevails to a somewhat excessive degree in Egypt.

1 Egypt, No. 1 of 1907, p. 85.

CHAPTER LIX

EDUCATION

Educational policy-Obstacles to progress-Want of money-The Pashas-Intellectual awakening of Egypt-The Mosque schoolsPrimary and Secondary education-Progress made in forming the characters of the Egyptians-Female education.

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THE subjects which have so far been treated fall within the domain of material or administrative progress. What, however, has been done in the direction of moral and intellectual progress? Have the English made any endeavour to educate the Egyptians? " Egypt," a high authority on Eastern affairs has said, "has always been the servant of nations." 1 Have the English, as some critics of the baser sort aver, viewed this condition of political degradation with ill-disguised favour? Have they discouraged the acquisition of knowledge, with a view to keeping the Egyptians in a position of servitude to the British nation? Or has a more noble policy been adopted? Have the English, casting aside all feelings based on a mistaken and ignoble egotism, endeavoured to educate the Egyptians and to lead them, so far as was possible, along the path which may possibly end in self-government?

1 Muir, The Caliphate, p. 168.

2 It was not only with surprise, but also with a feeling of keen disappointment, that I read in a work written by M. de Guerville a letter from Sheikh Mohammed Abdou, in which that eminent man appeared to give the weight of his name to insinuations of this sort. He must have known perfectly well that they were wholly devoid of foundation. I had hoped for better things of him.

In the present chapter an attempt will be made to answer these questions. They are of vital importance, not only to the Egyptians themselves, but also to all Europe, and more especially to England. The reason why they are so important is that if ever the Egyptians learn to govern themselves if, in other words, the full execution of the policy of "Egypt for the Egyptians becomes feasible-the Egyptian question will, it may be hoped and presumed, finally cease to be a cause of trouble to Europe, and the British nation will be relieved of an onerous responsibility.

Many years ago, Lord Macaulay asked a pertinent question in connection with the system under which India should be governed. "Are we," he said, "to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may keep them submissive?" His reply was an indignant negative. "Governments, like men," he said, "may buy existence too dear. Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas is a despicable policy both in individuals and in States."1

The English in Egypt have acted on the principle advocated by Macaulay. They may repel, with equal truth and scorn, the insinuation that, for political reasons, they have fostered Egyptian ignorance and subserviency. If a race of Egyptians capable of governing the country without foreign aid has not as yet been formed, the fault does not lie with the English. It must be sought elsewhere, neither need any impartial person go far afield to find where it lies. It lies mainly in the fact that two decades are but a short time in the life of a nation. Material progress may, under certain conditions, be rapid. Moral and intellectual progress must of necessity always be a plant of slow growth. It takes more time to form the mind of a statesman, or even to train a competent administrator,

1 Speech in the House of Commons, July 10, 1833.

than it does to dig a canal or to construct a railway. When the unpromising nature of the raw material on which the English had to work is considered, when it is remembered that for centuries prior to the British occupation the Egyptians were governed under a system eminently calculated to paralyse their intellectual and warp their moral faculties, and when it is further borne in mind that the circumstances under which reform was undertaken were of an exceptionally difficult and complicated nature, it may well be a matter for surprise, not that so little, but that so much progress in the direction of a real Egyptian autonomy has been made in so short a time.

Consider what is generally meant by Europeans when they talk of Egyptian self-government. If they meant that the Egyptians should be allowed to govern themselves according to their own rude lights, the task of educating them in the art of self-government would not merely have been easy; there would have been no necessity that it should have been undertaken. The indigenous art of selfgovernment had already been acquired in 1882, and we know with what results; no European instruction would have been able to improve on its recognised canons. What Europeans mean when they talk of Egyptian self-government is that the Egyptians, far from being allowed to follow the bent of their own unreformed propensities, should only be permitted to govern themselves after the fashion in which Europeans think they ought to be governed.

I am not one of those who think that "any State can be saved, and any political problem solved, by enlightened administration."1 At the

1 This was the view held by Peregrino Rossi, who was subsequently assassinated, during the early struggles for Italian unity.-Trevelyan's Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic, p. 74.