Egypt in the fact that Malet had been for years his private secretary and devoted servant in the profession.
Nothing, therefore, was really done of what I had been told at Downing Street to expect, not even those few words of goodwill in Parliament which Gladstone had begged Arabi to wait for. By a synchronism, tragic for Egypt, the crisis at Cairo, so long worked up to, coincided exactly with that other crisis which had also been impending in Ireland. There a régime of threats and coercion under Forster, the Chief Secretary, had been tried all through the winter. Members of Parliament had been imprisoned without trial, and the arts of police despotism had been put into more rigorous practice than for many years, and without any result of pacification. Gladstone had persuaded his Cabinet to try conciliatory measures. According to a secret arrangement made with Parnell, the Irish leader, while he was in gaol at Kilmainham, and known as the Kilmainham treaty, Parnell and his political friend, Dillon, had been released; and, as a consequence, Forster on the 2nd of May resigned his office and attacked the Government for their pusillanimity in the House of Commons. The very same day, 2nd May, had been fixed for a Ministerial statement about Egypt, on a motion made by Lord De la Warr in the House of Lords, and I find the following entry in my journal:
"May 2.—Met Lord De la Warr at the House of Lords. He took me in, and I expected to hear the promised statement about Egypt, but heard instead Lord Granville's announcement of Mr. Forster's resignation in Ireland. A good deal of excitement. Lord Granville seemed rather shy and badgered. Lord Salisbury interrupted once or twice.... I heard Rosebery say a few words in a very impressive and dignified manner, etc., etc. Egyptian affairs are put off as of no importance." Ireland for the next few weeks drove out all English interest in Egypt, so much so that when on the 6th I took Mohammed Abdu's important letter, explaining the Circassian plot, to Morley, he refused to publish it on the ground of its length, and that "nobody cared about Egypt."