*Napier to Blunt, Oct. 20th*: "It is believed the Egyptian Government will try to quash the trial altogether, and that the chief prisoners will be directed to leave the country. I have not sufficient facts at my command to form a judgment on this point, but I think it not unlikely."
And again from Broadley, just arrived at Cairo:
*Broadley to Blunt, Oct. 20th*: "Borelli Bey, the Government prosecutor, admitted frankly that the Egyptian Government had no law or procedure to go by, but suggested we should agree as to a procedure. He admitted the members of the Court were dummies and incompetent. He hoped I should smooth the Sultan and let down Tewfik as *doucement* as possible."
*Napier to Blunt, Oct. 20th*: "I think now we can guarantee a clean breast of the whole facts. It is as much as the Khedive's throne is worth to allow the trial to proceed."
The chief danger we had to face was a desire, not yet extinct at the Foreign Office, still by hook or crook to establish some criminal charge against Arabi which should justify his death. Chenery writes to me 21st October: "Among important people there is a strong feeling against him [Arabi] on the alleged ground that he was concerned with, or connived at, the massacre in Alexandria. The matter will almost certainly come up at the trial." This danger, however, did not at Cairo seem a pressing one, and certainly it was one that the prosecution was least likely to touch, the Khedive himself being there the culprit. Nothing is more noticeable in the interrogatories than the pains taken by the members of the Court to avoid questions tending in that direction and the absence on that point of all evidence which could incriminate any one. It was one, however, of