frighten the Egyptians out of their attitude of resistance to England, and that as to Arabi, if he could not be lured on ship-board and sent to Constantinople, the Commissioner should invite him to a friendly conference, and there shoot him, if necessary, with his own hand. The suggestion was so like the advice Colvin had given to the Khedive, and had boasted that he gave, nine months before, that there is nothing improbable in its having been again entertained. A Commissioner was consequently asked for at Constantinople, and one Dervish Pasha was chosen, a man of character and antecedents exactly corresponding to those required for such a job, and despatched to Cairo.
The excellent Morley, in an enthusiastic paragraph describing the arrival of this new Ottoman deus ex machina, grows almost lyrical in his praise.
"The Egyptian crisis," he says, "has reached its culminating point, and at last it seems that there is a man at Cairo capable of controlling events.
There is something very impressive in the calm immovable dignity of Dervish Pasha, who is emphatically the man of the situation. After all the shiftings and twistings of diplomatists and the pitiful exhibition of weakness on the part of the leading actors in this Egyptian drama, it is an immense relief to find one 'still strong man' who, by the mere force of his personal presence, can make every one bow to his will.
Nothing can be more striking than his assertion of authority, and nothing more skilful than his casual reference to the massacre of the Mamelukes. Dervish is a man of iron, and Arabi may well quail before his eye. One saucy word, and his head would roll upon the carpet.
Dervish is quite capable of 'manipulating' Arabi, not in the Western but in the Eastern sense of that word. In this strong resolute Ottoman it seems probable that the revolution in Egypt has found its master."