One point only in this sinister affair is still a matter for me of much perplexity, and that is to determine the exact amount of responsibility assignable in it to our agent at Cairo and Alexandria. There are passages in Malet's despatches which seem to show that he was looking forward, about the time when the disturbance was first contemplated, to some violent solution of his diplomatic difficulties, and there is no doubt that it had been for some time past part of his argument against the Nationalist Government that it was producing anarchy. Also it is certain that Cookson had connived at the arming of the Maltese British subjects at Alexandria. Still, from that to complicity in a design to create a special riot there is a wide difference, and everything that I know of Malet's character and subsequent conduct in regard to the riot convinces me that he did not know this one at Alexandria was intended. Malet honestly believed in Tewfik as a trustworthy and amiable prince, and accepted whatever tales he told, and his undeception about him after the war I know to have been painfully complete. With regard to Colvin much the same may be said. He was probably as ignorant of the exact plan as he had been of the Khedive's true action the year before at Abdin, though it is difficult to understand that either he or Malet should not have soon afterwards guessed the truth. They had both allied themselves to the party of disorder, and when disorder came they accepted the Khedive's story without any close inquiry because it suited them to accept it, and they made use of it as an argument for what they wanted, the ruin of Nationalist Egypt and armed intervention. That is all the connection with the crime I personally lay at their doors.
What followed may be briefly sketched here before I return to my journal. The immediate effect of the riot was not exactly that which the Khedive and his friends intended. It had been allowed to go much farther than was in their plan, so much farther that the regular army had been obliged to be called in, and instead of discrediting Arabi it so seriously frightened the Levantine population of Alexandria, who were a chicken-hearted community, that they began to look to him as their only