to Cairo, who should give the "Times" independent news, and Mackenzie Wallace had been thought of for the purpose. But Macdonald, with Scotch caution, would not go to the expense. He was quite satisfied from a business point of view, he said, with the kind of news Scott, their correspondent at Alexandria, was sending them. English people, he said, had only two interests in Egypt, the Suez Canal and their bonds, if they held any, and Scott's views on these two matters were what they wanted. Beyond this they did not care in any special way about the truth. He complimented me all the same on my own letters, which as I was not paid for them they were obliged to me for, and they would always be glad to print whatever more I had to say. But a special correspondent just then was not needed.
I was in correspondence about this time with Allen, the Secretary of the Anti-Slave-Trade Society, a very worthy man but of extremely narrow views. Sir William Muir had taken me to task in the "Times" for having asserted in one of my letters that it was part of the National program in Egypt to suppress what remained of slavery in Egypt, and he had been at the pains to prove by chapter and verse from the Koran, that slavery was and must always be an institution of a religious character with Mohammedans.
Allen, too, I found indignant at the idea of Arabi's being actively in favour of its suppression, which he, Allen, seemed to consider was the sole business of the Society's anti-slavery agents at Cairo. His anger was very much what a master of foxhounds might express at the unauthorized destruction of foxes by a farmer. Mohammedans, he considered, had no business to put down slavery on their own account, or what would become of the Society. This at least was the impression his argument left on me.