"London, *March 20th*, 1882. "The kindness with which your Lordship was good enough to listen to me on certain points of the political situation in Egypt, encourages me to offer you the following suggestions for your further consideration: "If I rightly understood your Lordship, Her Majesty's Government are not desirous of precipitating matters in that direction, but would be willing to accept a peaceable solution, could such be found, of the question in dispute between the Control and the Egyptian Government, and would only resort in the last instance to force were the political interests of England to be seriously impaired, or international engagements actually broken by the National Party now in power. "Now, I am sufficiently well acquainted with the views of that party, or, at least, of their most prominent leaders, to be able to speak positively to the fact that there is nothing nearer to their wishes than a good understanding with Her Majesty's Government. Indeed, I have the authority of Arabi Bey to assure your Lordship that, if addressed in a friendly manner, he will use his utmost influence with his party, and it is very great, to allay the bitter feelings which have arisen between the Egyptians and the English and other officials employed in the country, and that he would meet half-way any negotiations which may be entered into with a view to a peaceable arrangement. He has begged me, however, to lay before you the difficulties of the position in which he is placed by the attitude of personal hostility displayed towards him by the English Controller-General, and to a certain extent also by Her Majesty's Minister. "Sir Auckland Colvin, as your Lordship is well aware, has taken a prominent political part in the various ministerial changes, and in what it is perhaps necessary to call the revolution, which the last six months have witnessed in Egypt. On the 9th of September it was he who advised the Khedive to arrest and shoot this very Arabi Bey, now Minister of War; and he has taken no pains to conceal the fact, having himself, as I understand, communicated the details of what then happened to the English newspapers. It is also well known to the Egyptians that he has been and still is in communication with the press in a sense hostile to the National Party, and especially to the army, and that on the occasion of Sherif Pasha's resignation he unreservedly stated his intention to 'use every means in his power to ruin the National Party and bring about intervention.' If these things were known only to Arabi, he might, he assures me, overlook them; but, unfortunately, they are matters of public notoriety, a fact which makes it impossible for him to show himself on terms of intimacy with their author. "Of Sir Edward Malet he has expressed himself less decidedly, but still partly in the same sense. It has been a misfortune of Sir Edward's position with the Egyptians that his visit to Constantinople closely coincided with the strong advocacy of Turkish intervention which the English press displayed last autumn, and I am myself convinced that the French Government are responsible for the belief, which is ineradicable in all minds at Cairo, that he has at various times suggested military action. I know, myself, that this is untrue, and that Sir Edward has, on the contrary, deprecated any such solution of his difficulties; but certain facts remain, which lend a colour to the idea. Thus to the very date of the assembling of the Egyptian Chamber he refused to recognize the National demand for Constitutional Government as a serious matter; again, he joined Sir Auckland Colvin in displaying a marked partisanship for Sherif in his quarrel with the deputies; and he has since given offence by expressing his belief in a story, wholly unfounded and peculiarly irritating to those deputies, namely, that their President, Sultan Pasha, a man universally respected, had been personally insulted by Arabi. "Be this as it may, it is certain both Sir Edward Malet and Sir Auckland Colvin, instead of being in a position to advise and restrain are practically 'in Coventry' with the Egyptian Government. They are shut out from all true sources of information regarding their plans, and are compelled to leave the field open to intriguers of other nationalities who have no interest in advising moderation or desire to avert a rupture. "If your Lordship should find that there is any reason in my argument thus stated, I may perhaps be permitted to make the following suggestion. "The National Ministers are now engaged in preparing a series of grave complaints against the working of the system established by England and France and sanctioned by the Control, some of which complaints are certainly well founded. They are willing to approach the inquiry in a moderate and friendly spirit, but they will certainly approach it in a hostile one if the Control and diplomacy continue hostile. The matters in dispute are largely matters of fact which, if justice is to be observed and an undoubted moral standing ground acquired by Her Majesty's Government, should be examined in an absolutely impartial mood and on the evidence no less of the Egyptians than of the Europeans. That evidence, I submit, it is out of the reach of Her Majesty's representatives, diplomatic and financial, to procure, and that impartiality will certainly be suspected in their case by the Egyptians. Would it not then be advisable, during the six months which must elapse before the Egyptian Parliament reassembles and the conflict be engaged, to send something in the nature of a commission of inquiry to examine into the facts complained of in a friendly spirit, the only spirit which can possibly avert disaster."
To continue from my diary I find that on the 16th I wrote, with Sabunji's help as scribe, a long letter to Arabi, telling him that I was asking for a Commission to be appointed and that I was in good hopes, but entreating him to be cautious; and also to Gregory, who was still at Cairo. The situation in Egypt then was that the Chamber of Delegates, having insisted upon the right they had claimed to vote that half of the Budget which was not affected to the payment of the interest on the debt, a new Leyha, or organic law, granting a Constitution on European models had been signed, as we have seen, by the Khedive and published. The Ministers had also presented to the Chamber of Deputies a list of practical reforms, all of which were much needed and most of which have since, after many years, been carried out. Which done, the Chamber had been adjourned till the autumn. Absolute tranquillity had meanwhile prevailed throughout the country, and the sole cause of quarrel with Europe was the financial one of the vote, a dispute which could not become acute for at least six months, when the next new budget would be framed. There is not the smallest doubt that if Colvin had been induced to join his French colleague, de Blignières, in retiring from Egypt, and my suggestion of the Commission had been adopted, things
in Egypt would have quieted down and all cause for armed intervention would have disappeared. The Egyptian Ministry desired nothing more than to live at peace with the whole world and to come to an understanding with the Dual Governments on all disputed questions.
On 20th March I lunched at Button's to meet his uncle, Robert Bourke, who was to bring forward the Egyptian question next week formally in Parliament. With him was another Tory member, Montague Guest, who