than ever from its old trammels, spread the news rapidly, and men at last could meet and speak fearlessly everywhere in the provinces without the dread of spies or of police interference. All classes were infected with the same happy spirit, Moslems, Christians, Jews, men of all religions and all races, including not a few Europeans of those at all intimately connected with native life. Even the foreign Consuls could not but confess that the new régime was better than the old, that Riaz had made mistakes, and that Arabi, if he had not been wholly right, had at least not been wholly wrong.
Arabi's attitude both towards the Khedive and towards the new Ministers was correct and dignified. He had several interviews with Tewfik which, at any rate on Arabi's side, were of a most cordial character, while with the Sherif and Mahmud Sami (restored as Minister of War) he showed himself perfectly willing, now his work was done and the liberty of the country obtained, to stand aside and leave its development to his civilian friends. All his speeches of that time—and some of them are to be read in the Blue Books—are in this reasonable sense and reveal him as deeply imbued with those lofty and romantic humanitarian views which were a leading feature of his political career. There is not a trace in them of anything but a large-minded sympathy with men of all classes and creeds, nor is it possible to detect unfriendliness even to the European financial control whose beneficial influence on Egypt he, on the contrary, cheerfully acknowledges. The old régime of Turkish absolutism is past and done with—that is the theme of most of the speeches—and a new era of national freedom, peace, and goodwill to all men has begun. On the 2nd of October, a fortnight after Sherif's installation at the Ministry, we find Arabi leaving Cairo with his regiment for Ras-el-Wady amid the universal enthusiasm of a grateful city.
There was only one cloud at that date visible on the Egyptian horizon, the possible hostility of the Sultan to the idea of a Constitution. Abdul