"My heart of an old Swiss patriot bleeds now at the most unjust of all international interventions. The country is entirely united in favour of its honest leader, sprung, like the fellahin, from the *limon du Nil* (the black mud of the Nile). The Egyptian people has loyally accepted its debt contracted for it by an unscrupulous despot, one who in sixteen years squandered more than three hundred millions sterling to fill his own pockets, the pockets of the diplomacy, high and low, and of the Semitic and Nazarene usurers.... A peaceful revolution has been accompanied by and with the will of the nation. Not a single act unbecoming a scrupulous government has taken place during the great change effected. But Europe, interested more in the dealers in stocks and shares than in the aspirations of a people, sends her fleets. Why? Because the Chamber of Representatives found it proper to claim the right of discussing the Budget! Where is the crime?... Suppose a Minister of your Queen, having a disagreement with her, were to receive news that a powerful combined fleet of the Catholic Powers would go to Ireland and pacify it? Even so the analogy is not complete. Egypt is quiet. Not a European or Christian can complain. Would not the position be intolerable?... Arabi is wise and tranquil, awaiting the future like a sage of ancient times. The army, the country, the towns are with him. The French Consul-General has been a silent member. Sir E. Malet has been *cassant, parti pris inconciliant*, sowing fear in Cairo, instead of reassuring the people. You have no idea, my dear sir, of the abominable lies every day telegraphed to the 'Times,' 'Standard,' 'Daily News,' by the telegraphic agencies.... Well, never a word, not an insult from the population—we have been and are as quiet here as an English congregation on a Sunday in Regent's Park. The fleets are expected to-morrow."
Other letters of a later date will show it in its later stages. The supreme injustice of the attack being made on them by England, the country above all others which had been associated in their minds with a traditional love of liberty and of those humanitarian doctrines of which she had been the apostle, revolted men's minds and roused in them feelings of anger foreign to their natural attitude. Under constant threat of violence, now from England, now at English instigation from the Sultan, and knowing not whom to trust and fearing everywhere betrayal, it is not surprising that wild ideas prevailed even among those who had been soberest hitherto in their expression. At the same time it is not a little remarkable what few mistakes were made in action by the leaders under circumstances of such extreme and constantly changing difficulty, and the closer one examines these the more they redound to their credit. Nothing but the desperate shifts of our agents, when one after another their treacherous expedients had failed them and they found themselves faced with a disgraceful diplomatic defeat, to bring about a violent solution through the guns of the fleet, forced the Egyptians at last from their calm attitude and enabled our Foreign Office to claim a victory.