the elections of 1880 had carried him into power, had cooled down everywhere, and in official circles had given place to ideas of imperial coercion, especially in the case of the Nationalists of Ireland, which were by no means of good augury in regard to Egypt. The Cabinet was divided into two sections of opinion. The great Whig leaders who controlled the chief departments of the Administration, Hartington, Northbrook, Childers, and the rest were all for strong measures, Gladstone, with Harcourt and Bright, almost alone for conciliation, and the general feeling of the country was violent against all "lawlessness" everywhere. The Habeas Corpus Act had been suspended in Ireland, and Parnell and a score more of the Nationalist members of Parliament were actually shut up, untried, in Kilmainham Gaol. Business in the House of Commons was being obstructed by the remainder of the Irish members, and the very name of Nationalism to the Liberal Party had become a byword and reproach. The atmosphere of Westminster and the public offices was therefore not at all favourable to my propaganda of nationalism on the Nile. The only persons really interested in Egypt were those few who held Egyptian bonds, and these had been persuaded by Colvin's manipulation of the Press that Arabi and the National Party were a set of fanatical incendiaries who would burn down the Stock Exchange if they could get the chance, and who had already succeeded in lowering the value of securities and making dividends precarious.
At the Foreign Office the position about Egypt was this. Granville, old and deaf and very idle, finding himself relieved from the incubus of Gambetta's forward policy, was following his instinct of doing nothing and letting things settle themselves as placidly as circumstances would allow him. He did not want to intervene or to take action hostile to the Nationalists or, indeed, action of any kind. He did not even give himself the trouble to read the despatches, and he left the work of learning what was going on to his private secretaries, and more especially to the Under-Secretary of State, Sir Charles Dilke, who was able to sift the news for him and set before him such facts as he selected, and such views as suited