VOTE OF CENSURE. [FIRST NIGHT.]

HC Deb 12 February 1884 vol 284 cc684-762

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

I can assure the House that it is with no ordinary feeling of diffidence that I approach the question which I have ventured to place upon the Paper, and I feel that the circumstances which have occurred, and which have only come to our knowledge to-day, in no degree diminish the anxiety with which I take up the question before us. My hon. Friend the Member for Eye (Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett) just now put a Question which elicited from the Prime Minister a confirmation of the melancholy statement which has been circulating in the course of the day, to the effect that the gallant garrison of Sinkat has been entirely destroyed; and it is impossible not to feel that whatever may be the answer which Her Majesty's Government may make to such observations as that which fell from my hon. Friend the Member for Eye—I mean, whatever may be the answer of the Government as to their own responsibility in the matter—it is at least but natural that those who have been watching for a long time past with thrilling interest the proceedings in that unfortunate town should feel anxious, and should be prompted to express themselves warmly on the subject. It had not been my intention to have commenced or prefaced the remarks I have to make by a reference to Sinkat; but I cannot help feeling that, with the words of the Prime Minister last night still ringing in my ears, and with the melancholy foreboding, which, no doubt, was not in his mind at the time, but which the event has justified, that the question of Sinkat was not a question of hours, but was a question that had long been decided, I am justified in doing so. I say, with these words ringing in my ears. I would also refer for a moment to a despatch to be found on page 16 of the Blue Book from Consul Moncrieff—a lamented and gallant public servant, whose loss to the service I am sure all who knew anything of him must feel to be deplorable. In that despatch, dated the 26th of August, there were observations made which impressed us both with the very great importance of the position of Sinkat, and the gallantry of those who were upholding its defence. The Consul, in his despatch, used these words— The Mahdi evidently meant to raise this part of the Soudan, to disturb the Berber road, and to create a diversion; And then he goes on, speaking of the dangers of the situation, to say— There is still some hope, by the gallant conduct of Tewfik Bey, of defending the place if proper provision should be made. Probably one complete battery of artillery, with 500 Infantry, and two or three mitrailleuses, would make Suakim and Tokar secure, if sent at once, to meet the difficulty. Now, Sir, whether those reinforcements ought or ought not to have been sent is a question I may leave to the House and everyone to consider. That will, of course, be treated, and properly treated, by the Government as being a bye point altogether, so far as concerns their responsibility in the matter, unless we can, by some process of reasoning, prove that the Government, the British Government, are in some more or less direct sense responsible for the omission to take proper measures for the protection of these garrisons; and I feel that upon this point the House will naturally expect that I shall offer the principal observations I have to make, in order that we may ascertain for ourselves how far the responsibility of our own Government goes. For, Sir, it cannot have escaped the attention of anyone—in fact, we had it continually paraded before us—that the argument of the Government is this—that inasmuch as they repeatedly, over and over again, have disclaimed all responsibility for the events in the Soudan, therefore they are not responsible for its protection. I admit freely that there were disclaimers, and plenty of them; the papers bristle with them, and I have been almost tempted to count them; but I would point out to the House, and I would point out to the Government, that it is not by disclaiming a responsibility that you can get rid of it. I may take a pistol in my hand and say I am going to fire that pistol into the street, but that I disclaim all responsibility for the consequences; but I do not thereby escape my responsibility. If I do any act, or omit to do any act, which, either by the commission or omission, ends in fatal consequences, I cannot get rid of my responsibility by saying I am not responsible. And so, if the right hon. Gentleman considers that by disclaiming responsibility he can get rid of it, I take issue with him on that point. But I must give some reasons for saying that we are responsible, and have been strictly and seriously responsible, for the proceedings in the Soudan country; and the proofs I have to offer are of two kinds. In the first place they rest upon the nature of the ease, and in the second place upon certain of our own sayings and doings in the matter. With regard to the nature of the case, let me remind the right hon. Gentleman of the arguments of which he and his friends were extremely fond some years ago, when they used to attack the late Government and blame them for outrages and lamentable incidents which occurred within the dominions of the Porte. When those outrages were brought under the notice of the late Government we were frequently obliged to say, however deplorable they might be, that it was not within our power to apply a remedy. The right hon. Gentleman then would say—"You are responsible for these outrages; because you are the Power which maintains the power of Turkey, and therefore you must answer for what the Turkish Government does, or suffers to be done." If that was an argument against the late Government, surely it applies at least equally in the present case. Is the support which we give to Egypt less or more than the support that was given by this country to the Porte? I venture to say there never was a case in which a more complete responsibility was forced upon us by the position which we took up—actually taking the whole government or the greater part of the government into our own hands—than in the case of Egypt. Sir, we have assumed a power in that country which makes us deeply responsible for its protection, whatever may be our disclaimers. I will not ask the House to go back further than the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, but I will ask them to consider what was the result of Tel-el-Kebir. I will not ask them now to consider in what circumstances we went to Egypt, and why we fought that battle; but I will only quote the words of the Government as contained in the Gracious Speech from the Throne on the opening of Parliament last Session—namely, that Her Majesty's troops were sent there in order to put down "a formidable rebellion." Well, Sir, that formidable rebellion was put down, and with it there was put down the Army of Egypt; and not only the Army of Egypt, but there was practically put down the Government of Egypt, which had to be reconstituted, and Her Majesty's Government undertook to reconstitute it. Now, Sir, the charge of reconstituting that Government was materially and in the main committed to the hands of Lord Dufferin; and he, with great ability, taking a view of the whole of the circumstances of the country, laid down a plan for the administration of the country—he laid down its Constitution, made a provision for its civil government and its revenue; but among other things, and, indeed, almost before anything else, he made provision for the reconstitution of the Army of that country. I may say of Lord Dufferin's despatch that the text of it was that, in spite of the events of their past history, it ought to be no difficult task to endow the Egyptian people with a good Government; but the burden of his despatch was that, for some time to come, European assistance in the various Departments would be absolutely necessary; and so we not only established, but the Ruler of the country was induced to adopt, a Constitution which we had promulgated, in every Department of the Government of which we took good care to put European Administrators. Now, what was the nature of Lord Dufferin's proposal for the Army? He argued that it was not necessary, and that it was not desirable for Egypt to have a large Army, and he took notice of the observations of some persons that it was not necessary for Egypt to have an Army at all; but from that he dissented, because, he said, Egypt lay open to the incursions of the neighbouring tribes—wild Bedouins and others on the Southern Frontier, and that it was necessary to make provision against the wild fanatics and impostors who might from time to time make a descent upon it. A force of 6,000 men were, he said, required, not for ordinary warlike purposes, but to keep in check these wild fanatics, and it was to be Egyptian. Having thus constituted his Army, he proceeded to constitute his police, and there, again, he desired that, besides a small and highly-disciplined Army, there should be a Reserve Force; an intelligent, active, and ubiquitous establishment, which was to preserve peace among the Bedouins. Besides these, there were to be other police. I say that Lord Dufferin, in providing a Constitution for Egypt and in dealing with the questions of the Army and the constabulary necessary to protect the country and maintain order, did undertake the responsibility of providing adequately for that purpose. If not, he and the Government who supported him were not discharging their duty to the country or to the Government they had to organize. They were responsible to the people of Egypt, and they were responsible to the people of this country. They were responsible, too, to the other Powers of Europe, from the position we had assumed by taking into our own hands the suppression of the military rebellion and the breaking up of the Egyptian Army and the destruction of the old Egyptian Constitution, and it requires strong proof indeed to lead us to believe that that provision could be made without some reference to the question of the external relations of Egypt. Well, Sir. I have heard it said that a matter which lay entirely outside this was the question of the Soudan, and that, the Soudan being treated altogether separately from Egypt Proper, the Constitution of Lord Dufferin had nothing to do with it. And, moreover, I have seen it stated—I am not sure that something of the kind did not fall from the Attorney General himself within the last two or three days—that the insurrection of the Mahdi and the proceedings in the Soudan were events such as the House and the country had no right to calculate upon, and which, as it were, took them by surprise. But, Sir, that was not the case. The provisions which Lord Dufferin made, and which he thought sufficient to be made, were made with a perfect knowledge that the war had been going on in the Soudan for nearly two years, and was being carried on with energy and success on the part of the Mahdi, who was the instigator. The noble Lord, too, in the course of his despatch, made special reference to the Soudan, and he said— In considering the military establishments of Egypt, I have left out of account the requirements of the Soudan, nor will it be possible to form an accurate estimate of what would meet the requirements until all these disturbances have been suppressed. He knew what these disturbances were, and he knew at the time he was writing the despatch or shortly afterwards what steps were being taken on the part of the Egyptian Government to send a European officer to command in the Soudan, and he had himself frequent conferences with the unfortunate Colonel Hicks, afterwards Hicks Pasha, and it was in consultation with the latter that he made many of the observations which he from time to time transmitted to this country. Lord Dufferin, in the very despatch we are speaking of, argued in this way. He said— Some persons are inclined to recommend Egypt to withdraw altogether from the Soudan, but she can hardly be expected to acquiesce in such a policy. That was not only Lord Dufferin's opinion at that time, but in the last Blue Books laid on the Table you will find a despatch written subsequently in defence ex post facto of the proceedings that were taken under General Hicks to recover the Soudan. He points out also that he had every reason to believe that General Hicks was a man of great judgment and ability, and well fitted for the work he had undertaken. He was told distinctly, it is true, by the Government that he was not to incur any responsibility in this matter, and that, of course, was an instruction which governed him in his conduct, and which induced him repeatedly to tell General Hicks that such was the case. I venture to think that the treatment which General Hicks received, beginning from the time when he was first brought into communication with Lord Dufferin to the time when his life was sacrificed, was one of the most extraordinary character, and amounted to the sacrifice of General Hicks. It is perfectly obvious that there were two courses open to the Egyptian Government in the matter of making war in the Soudan. One course would have been to limit the operations to such portions of the Soudan as they could be sure of succeeding in; the other course was to make proper provision for carrying the expeditions further and giving greater power to them. But neither in the one case nor in the other did General Hicks receive that support from the Government—either the Egyptian Government or Her Majesty's Government—which I consider he had every right to expect. Lord Dufferin, in the despatch to which I referred, wound up his observations upon the state of the Soudan by saying that, in his opinion, it would be desirable to limit their operations to the Eastern portion of the Soudan. That was his opinion, and it was the opinion of General Hicks himself, Sir Evelyn Baring, Sir Edward Malet, General Stephenson, and others. Notwithstanding this fact, a different course of action was forced upon General Hicks against his own judgment and against his own will, and forced—I do not say by the British Government, but forced by the Egyptian Government, while at the same time they withheld from him—they were not able, I dare say, to supply them—the supplies and assistance which he required; and all that was done with the knowledge of the Representatives of Her Majesty's Ministers in Downing Street. Every piece of information was forwarded immediately to Her Majesty's Government, but they did not lift up their voice in order to prevent the mischief which they must have foreseen. General Hicks was in the first instance appointed while Lord Dufferin was at Cairo. It is said he at first refused the appointment, but was afterwards persuaded to take it. At all events he was not dissuaded. Lord Dufferin at that time thought it reasonable that Egypt should object to give up the Soudan; but he held the opinion that it would be wise to abandon Darfour and part of Kordofan. It does not appear whether he gave advice to this effect. He mentions that he had frequent conversation with General Hicks, and seems to have given his advice on various points, though— Being strictly precluded by his instructions from incurring any responsibility in connection with the Soudan Expedition, he could not force the Egyptian Government to adopt Hicks's advice. He had a final interview with him on the morning of the day on which he started, and Was careful to ask him whether he was satisfied with his prospects and the conditions of his engagement, and he told me that he was. Under these circumstances, General Hicks started on his expedition; and it may be noted that he throughout corresponded with, and reported to, the Egyptian authorities through the British; and that Sir Edward Malet or Sir Evelyn Baring always forwarded his communications to Lord Granville. No doubt we disclaimed responsibility; but, at least, we had ample knowledge. Soon afterwards a special bureau was formed in Cairo for the affairs of the Soudan, and Lord Dufferin impressed his opinion on the chief of it. In May, General Hicks reported that he had gained a decisive victory, and the effect was that he could have established Egyptian authority in the districts originally contemplated by Lord Dufferin, though not in Darfour and Kordofan. But he is pressed by the Egyptian Government to go on and attack Kordofan. He appealed for more men and money, and urged Sir Edward Malet to do him the favour of submitting his requests to the Egyptian Government. He gets no help from Sir Edward Malet, who is strictly enjoined—"Take care to offer no advice." At length he is persuaded to undertake the expedition with insufficient means. Matters get worse, and he earnestly appeals to Sir Evelyn Wood, and expresses his conviction that it would be best not to attack Kordofan. He asks for more troops; but General Wood can spare none, because English forces are about to be withdrawn. He advances, and is destroyed. In Egypt 22, at page 27, I find that Sir Edward Malet sends to Lord Granville a communication which he had received from General Hicks, dated Khartoum, June 3, in which he states that during his absence the Mahdi had lost influence, but he had still a considerable number of men with him; and he goes on to say that the forces with him are not nearly sufficient. He points out that every ounce of food will have to be carried a great distance under convoy, and that will leave his available strength under 6,000 men, and that he has not sufficient force for that which he was about to undertake. "Do me the favour," he adds, "to submit this communication to the Egyptian Government." Sir Edward Malet, struck with this, sends it to the Foreign Office, at the same time pointing out that it was impossible for the Egyptian Government to supply the funds demanded for the Soudan, and that the operation ran considerable risk of failure. Under these circumstances, Sir Edward Malet says— The question arises whether General Hicks should be instructed to maintain his present supremacy in the regions between the Blue and White Niles. That was just what Lord Dufferin and Sir Edward Malet and everyone desired. What would anyone expect the Home Government to do under these circumstances? Not, of course, to come forward and take part in expeditions which they considered beyond the strength and interest of Egypt. But it was natural that they should give some opinion or some advice for the purpose of warning the Egyptian Government not to press this excellent officer to undertake what he had not sufficient forces to perform. The following was the answer sent to Sir Edward Malet— Your telegram of 5th instant received on reinforcements in the Soudan. Report decision of Egyptian Government as soon as you can, taking care to offer no advice—but pointing out that the Egyptian Government should clearly make up their mind what their policy is to be; and carefully consider the question in its financial aspects. This method might be extremely convenient for the Government, and, no doubt, when they had given it, their consciences were satisfied. They considered that, having thus liberated themselves, they might leave the Egyptian Government to go on in its own course, while this unfortunate man, General Hicks, was carrying on an unequal struggle with insufficient means and without receiving from Her Majesty's Government either assistance of a material character—which I do not say they ought to have given—I am not expressing an opinion that this was their duty, but it was their duty to have offered advice to the Egyptian Government, which was entirely in their hands—ad- vice which they would no doubt have given if it had been proposed to incur some small expense in rebuilding a city or opening a canal, or in the administration of the judicial system. But when it comes to be a matter of life and death, this Egyptian Government, which was actually in their hands, which they knew they had the management and direction of, was left to itself. It was not worthy of the dignity of the British Government to stand still, wrapt up in what they considered their own irresponsibility, and which has led, I venture to say to them, and which they must feel in their own consciences now, to their being placed in a position of far greater responsibility for the consequences of their inaction than would have been incurred by their reasonable and proper action at the time. There is another telegram, almost more touching than the previous one, from General Hicks. It was sent later in the year, and is to be found at page 83 of the Blue Book No. 122. It is too long to attempt to read to the House; but I earnestly request hon. Members, who have the opportunity of doing so, to read and consider the terrible and plaintive story which General Hicks there tells to Sir Evelyn Wood, who was put by us as the General in command to administer this Army, which was established for the purpose of keeping down fanatical impostors and wild tribes. He received from General Hicks an urgent request— Will you do me the favour of impressing upon the War Minister the necessity of seeing that money is sent to me for the payment of the troops on the Blue Nile? and then he goes on to give a terrible account of the condition of the country and of the men, and the impossibility, if such provision is not sent, of effecting his object. He winds up with this observation— Taking into consideration the whole state of affairs in this country, I am convinced it would he best to keep the two rivers and the Province of Sennaar, and leave Kordofan to settle itself. He had succeeded in establishing himself at an important point. He knew that, without the assistance which he was asking for, and which he could not have, it was impossible for him to effect his object; and when he makes this request, what is the answer he gets? The answer to his representation was made and forwarded on the 13th of August to the British Government; and, among other things, there is a matter which I should draw attention to later on, as to the appointment of the Governor General in Chief. That took place later, and is not, I believe, included in the despatches in the Blue Book. The communication which was made direct to General Hicks from the Khedive was made through some English channel. I am not quite sure what the channel was; but it was in some shape, I presume, in the knowledge of the Government that a telegram was sent direct from the Khedive to General Hicks, appointing him Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and urging him to proceed to Kordofan. What is the answer to that terrible appeal? All that Sir Edward Malet answers is— I enclose a copy of the telegram which I despatched to General Hicks on his appointment as Commander-in-Chief, and in which I informed him that, according to instructions, I am debarred from giving advice to the Egyptian Government with regard to the action to be taken, the policy of the Government being to abstain, as much as possible, from interference with the government of the Soudan. What is the telegram he communicates to General Hicks?— I congratulate you on your appointment as Commander-in-Chief. And then he goes on to say that— Although I am ready to transmit telegrams from the Egyptian Government, I am now debarred from giving advice. Was there ever a more bitter satire? Here was this poor man induced to take the full command of this expedition feeling, in all probability, that there was certain destruction before him, and appealing in a helpless and hopeless manner for troops and money to retreat, at least, from the impossible part of his expedition, and to limit himself to that which was possible. I could quote more passages showing that he appealed for help, that he had asked for troops and supplies and money, and that he could not have any of these things. He gets the cold reply—"We have no advice to give; we have much more care for our responsibility than your safety." The Government would seem to have more regard for their responsibility than their honour. I go back for a moment to what took place here since the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. Her Majesty, having accomplished the objects of her expedition, thought it a necessary course to make a communication to the Foreign Powers by means of a Circular through Lord Granville, and to this House through the Queen's Speech. In the Queen's Speech of last year reference was made to the success of Her Majesty's land and sea forces in putting down a serious rebellion. A slight discussion took place, as is usual, upon the Address, and I ventured to take notice of the expression used in the Speech, "to put down a serious rebellion," and to ask the noble Lord the Secretary of State for War, who was then leading the House, whether it was understood that whenever there was a serious rebellion in Egypt British troops ought to be sent to suppress it, for I pointed out to him that there was even then going on a somewhat serious rebellion. The noble Lord made these remarks— Troubles may arise from time to time in the Soudan, but it is not certain that they will cause disturbance in the Provinces of Lower Egypt; still, circumstances may arise to cause anxiety, and, at all events, to call for the attention of the Government and of the House."—(3 Hansard, [283] 124.) Well, Sir, these disturbances which have occurred since General Hicks's defeat, and, I venture to say, at a considerably earlier time, were calculated to give anxiety for the defence of Lower Egypt. It was one of the main points that was made in the arguments used against the representations in favour of withdrawing from the Soudan, that the defence of Lower Egypt, to a very great extent, depended upon the proper management of the Soudan, and that the defence of Lower Egypt, if the Soudan were left to become a prey to these wild tribes and their fanatical leader, would be both very difficult and extremely expensive. I need not point out that they were bound to see that Egypt Proper was properly protected, and that the fact of neglecting what took place in the Soudan would be to throw upon the Government a much heavier burden than they would otherwise have. So far, I venture to think, the charge I bring against the Government is not merely one of neglect, but one of culpable neglect, of purposed neglect, and purposed neglect is a very serious offence. I do not mean to say that in all the transactions of the Government in the matter of Egypt there has been fault, and that everything has been wrong. It was said the other day that it could hardly be supposed that 14 Gentlemen enjoying the confidence of the Queen and the country could never do anything right. I do not maintain that; but I say throughout these events there has been one fatal fault vitiating all their proceedings—a love of dawdling, a proclaiming their own irresponsibility, and waiting to see if, somehow or other, the crisis would not pass over. I now wish to call attention to what has taken place since the defeat and destruction of General Hicks and his Army. When General Hicks fell the best half of the Egyptian Army was destroyed, and that was the only force which could really be relied upon. It was a very serious loss, and it was one that ought immediately to have awakened the Government to a sense of the extraordinary danger in which Egypt was placed by it, and they ought at once to have taken into their hands—which too late they ultimately did—so much of the administration of Egypt as should enable them to force the Government of Egypt to withdraw, while there was still time, from that which they could not possibly hold. One of the places to which our interest is naturally attracted at the present moment more particularly is Khartoum. What are we told with regard to Khartoum? Lord Granville received on the 9th of January a communication from Sir Evelyn Baring saying that Colonel Coetlogon strongly urged immediate withdrawal, and that if the withdrawal did not take place immediately difficulties would increase, and it might become impossible. The Government had no right to neglect these warnings. They had no right to stand with their arms folded and to say—"Leave matters alone; trust to the Government of Egypt being ready to act." But Her Majesty's Government were going beyond neglect. They were, at the very time of these sufferings and anxieties being brought to their notice, urging forward a step which could not but increase the difficulties and the dangers of the situation. They were actually, at the moment they were receiving these despairing telegrams from General Hicks, proceeding to withdraw Her Majesty's troops from Egypt. They say it would have been wrong to send British or Indian troops to take part in the military operations. I do not raise that question, but that question might fairly be discussed, and there may be something to be said on both sides of it. I wish to bring home to the Government that in that which they were doing they considered themselves responsible for the maintenance of peace and order in Lower Egypt. They have admitted that over and over again. They proved that was their belief, because they did ultimately, under pressure, arrest the departure and the withdrawal of the troops; but at the moment that General Hicks was in his greatest difficulties he communicated with Sir Evelyn Wood. He implored that assistance might be sent to him, and what was the answer? "We cannot send you this assistance; you do not understand our difficulties, and cannot know our position;" and it was explained by Sir Evelyn Wood that it was impossible to send troops of the Egyptian Army to defend the frontier, because the Government contemplated the immediate withdrawal of the troops of Her Majesty from Egypt. The Egyptian Government, whose duty it was to manage these matters, who were responsible for the conduct of the war and for furnishing proper supplies and reinforcements to their Generals, were unable to send forward their Army to the scene of action where it was wanted, because they could not leave Cairo in safety. And why could they not leave Cairo in safety? Because of the imminent withdrawal of Her Majesty's troops. The imminent withdrawal operated in that way; and, in addition to that, I need scarcely say that the knowledge of, and the continual circulation of, the news that the British Government were just about to carry out that withdrawal had a very disastrous moral effect. I might enlarge on other points, but I am unwilling to detain the House. There is one on which, of course, all our minds are fixed—namely, the mission of General Gordon. But on that point I am anxious, on the present occasion, to say little or nothing; and for this reason—General Gordon is now engaged in an attempt of the most gallant and daring character. No one can speak with too much admiration of his courage and self-devotion; no one in this country can fail to sympathize with him and earnestly desire his safety. It would be the greatest possible misfortune if by any words accidentally or carelessly dropped, here or elsewhere, anything were done that could in the slightest degree imperil or destroy the success of his mission. All I will say is, that I trust that the Government are not proceeding in the case of General Gordon as they have done in too many instances; that they are not throwing all the responsibility upon him and leaving none on themselves; that they are not confusing his position and leaving him uncertain as to whose servant he is and to whom he is responsible. I think there has been far too much of that. What is the position of Admiral Hewett? No one knows what is the position of the gallant Admiral, now holding the chief command of our Naval Squadron in the Indian Seas, and who also has received the chief civil and military command at Suakim. What, I ask, are that gallant Admiral's duties, and what is his position both towards Her Majesty's Government and the Egyptian Government? It is clear now that both in the case of General Gordon and Admiral Hewett, Her Majesty's Government have distinctly and unmistakably taken upon themselves responsibilities of the most serious character—responsibilities far greater than those which they would have incurred if they had in time given a word of advice and support to the unfortunate Khedive's Government. I will not dwell on the serious character of the events which are happening in Egypt. What has happened has, it seems to me, both endangered the safety of Lower Egypt itself and devolved considerable risk and responsibility on Her Majesty's Government. But, besides that, look at the result of what you have done within the last few weeks, when Lord Granville came down with his thunder-bolt on the Egyptian Ministry, and insisted on their following his counsels, or rather orders, and withdrawing from the Soudan against their own opinions and protests, by the bold and confident assertion that the true responsibilities in these matters rested not with them but with us. If that was the doctrine of Her Majesty's Government it would have been well if it had been acted upon long ago, when it might have prevented the mischief that has occurred. Now, what has happened? Your breaking up of the Ministry has been the breaking up of the Constitution which you have been so proud of rearing. How will you be able to restore the position of the Egyptian Government after you have so manifestly, so openly, and so rudely shattered it by an interposition of that kind? You have raised questions which it will he long before you have settled—you have greatly enhanced the difficulty of establishing such a state of things as will enable you to withdraw your forces from Egypt. I do not know, indeed, whether you have not brought yourselves under the necessity of immediately adding to them. Already we hear of some additions which have been made to them; but are these all? We await anxiously for the information which the Prime Minister has promised to give us to-night. We wish to know how he reads the responsibilities of England, not only to Egypt, but in the eyes of Europe—responsibilities which Her Majesty's Government not only undertook, but undertook alone, and boasted that they had undertaken alone, and with the assurance that they would be discharged in a manner agreeable to the maintenance of peace and to the prosperity of Egypt. The loss to this country may be serious. Probably we shall see the closing of the great trade route from the equatorial lakes to the Bed Sea; you will see a stimulus given to the Slave Trade; you will see a great check given to the beneficent efforts to open the interior of Africa, in which many feel so deep an interest; and you will have weakened throughout that country, and, perhaps, throughout the civilized world, the prestige of England; and this at the very time when a great impulse is being given to Mahomedanism by the success of a fanatical leader. I will not trespass longer on the attention of the House. I have endeavoured to bring home to the notice of the House, and, as far as I could, to the notice of the Government, that which we feel to be the root of all these difficulties—their own vacillating and inconsistent policy. I trust the House which has so long maintained the Government will remember that it also has its responsibility, which cannot possibly be got rid of by saying we leave these things to the Government in which we have confidence. Your confidence in the Government is now challenged, and you have to consider not whether you desire to support it, but whether you can consistently with your own conscientious views of these grave matters refrain any longer from interfering. The Government have had liberal indulgence from Parliament. The opposition that has been offered to them, although there has been opposition, has always been tempered with a desire, as far as possible, to allow the Government to act on their own responsibility. But this cannot endure for ever. It is our duty to challenge them, and we feel that we should be wanting in our duty to the country and to the Empire if we did not present to the House the issue involved in the Resolution which I now, Sir, with confidence place in your hands. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving his Resolution.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House, having read and considered the Correspondence relating to Egypt, laid upon the Table by Her Majesty's Command, is of opinion that the recent lamentable events in the Soudan are due, in a great measure, to the vacillating and inconsistent policy pursued by Her Majesty's Government."—(Sir Stafford Northcote.)

MR. GLADSTONE

Mr. Speaker, we have lost, but we have also gained, by the unfortunate collapse of the debate last week. The Government lost an opportunity—when a contention had been made of the failure of its efforts in Lower Egypt—of showing that they had not failed; but the House have had this advantage, that the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) has been able to make his Motion on the basis of authentic Papers, instead of on newspaper reports. Moreover, they have had this greater advantage, that after the calamities which have recently happened in Egypt, he has felt that those calamities warrant him doing what last week he did not venture to do—namely, to submit a direct issue to the House. Why, what did he submit last week? He submitted that we could not adequately perform our part in Egypt unless we acknowledged our obligations. We have been doing nothing but acknowledging our obligations in the most solemn form. They have been defined and described three times over in the Speeches from the Throne. There was not a word in the debate of last week to tell us what these obligations were. Everything positive, everything binding, was carefully avoided, and the House was invited in the name of a Tote of Censure to discuss a truism and a platitude. But the right hon. Gentleman has now, as I say, plucked up his cour- age and has submitted to us a direct issue of adequate force, for in the terms of his Motion he calls on us to allege that— The recent lamentable events in the Soudan are due, in a great measure, to the vacillating and inconsistent policy pursued by Her Majesty's Government. [Cheers from the Opposition.] Yes; you are ready to cheer those words, or any words, it matters not what, provided only that they are sufficiently condemnatory of Her Majesty's Ministry. [Renewed Opposition cheers.] I am delighted with the frank and truly English response which that affirming; cheer gives to the sentiment I have indicated. I was not sanguine enough to hope for it. I admit that it was in the nature of a decoy offered to hon. Gentlemen; and they took it and cheered it to the echo when I said it did not matter whether the proposal was this or that, provided it was condemnatory. Now, Sir, I put it to the House that there is but one mode in which Her Majesty's Government can meet the Motion. I move no Amendment; I meet it with a direct negative. I say, in the first place, there has been no vacillation; there has been no inconsistency in the policy of Her Majesty's Government; and, Sir, I say more, that no part of the ingenious argument of the right hon. Gentleman has for a moment gone to show that there was either vacillation or inconsistency. I admit that he has condemned our conduct; but he has not attempted to show that one part of our conduct was inconsistent with another part. He has not shown that we hesitated in the adoption of resolutions when the circumstances were laid before us; and the propositions in his Motion do not derive the smallest support from any argument in his speech. The right hon. Gentleman has used arguments in his speech, I admit; but his argument is this, not that we vacillated or flinched—I mean from our own view of the case—not that we were different at one time from what we were at another, but that we adopted a wrong policy; that we refused to strengthen the Egyptian Army for the conquest of the Soudan; that we refused to counsel the Egyptian General in the Soudan; and that we refused to override the Egyptian Government with respect to the Soudan. Sir, these are very serious charges, with which I shall deal, but they have nothing to do with vacillation or inconsistency.

What the right hon. Gentleman calls upon the House to vote is, not that we have had a false policy, but that we have been vacillating and inconsistent in the pursuance of our policy; and, Sir, do you suppose for one moment that these strange inconsistencies between the speech and the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman are due to some accident—that they are due to a want of perception or want of acuteness on the part of the right hon. Gentleman? No, Sir, nothing of the kind; they are due to this—that if the right hon. Gentleman, instead of charging us with vacillation and inconsistency, had plucked up his courage to a higher point, and called upon the House to condemn any particular portion of our policy by a Motion, he would himself have been obliged to declare a policy. But while he, forsooth, charges us with flinching from responsibility, he does not dare to put his objections in a form in which they could receive the judgment of the House, because he knows that if he did he might bind himself to something; whereas the essence of the whole affair is that he shall bind himself to nothing. I must say that the right hon. Gentleman, considering the nature of the case that he had to lay before us, has been very far from extravagant. I have risen somewhat in contravention of my own statement of Parliamentary usage, in a case which is a very broad one, at a time when I am afraid I shall be a loser in a competition which will presently arise in this House between continuing in this House to hear my argument and the fulfilment of a very much more necessary, if not more legitimate purpose. Whether I am justified in the charge I have just made—and I have made a very distinct charge—that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman had nothing whatever to do with his Motion, and that he did not venture to put the upshot of his speech into a Motion, because it would have bound him to a policy, and he was determined not to bind himself to any policy—whether this be so or not, I say that this debate has a wider interest than the mere issue raised between the two Parties. I shall not scruple, as far as my strength permits me, to say to the House all that appears to me of vital importance, in order to re- deem the pledges I have given, to practise no reserve, and to state minutely and particularly those facts that are material to enable the House to judge of our conduct. But I must go beyond that and say that this debate will have the character of a historical debate. Now for the first time is raised a great issue between Parties in this House, but that great issue involves in it something much more important than the victories of Oppositions or the continuance of Ministries; it involves the development of great and useful lessons with regard to rash and unwise interventions. I will, at least, take care that I shall be sufficiently explicit in what I have got to say. It is absolutely necessary to go further back than the right hon. Gentleman has done, and to present, in what I conceive to be its completeness, the case of the Government.

Sir, the situation in Egypt, with or without the aggravation of the Soudan and the increase of the responsibilities which it has brought, is one of the utmost degree of anomaly and inconvenience, and, in some points of view perhaps, even of political danger. How has this situation come about? Where is the root of the mischief? It is the business of the House to censure the Government if they have gone wrong; but it is the business of the House, as the Guardians of the public weal, to search to the very bottom into the causes and origins of great public disaster or of great and serious public inconvenience. Sir, I affirm, and I will show, that the situation in Egypt was not one which we made, but one that we found. I shall show that we have never had an option. [Cries of "Oh, oh!"] I am not prematurely claiming your assent, I am stating what I will show, not what I have shown. I will show that we do not claim those laudations for vigorous initiatives and the like, which have been sweet, perhaps, to the ears of others.

We are content to administer the affairs of an Empire of 300,000,000, and as far as we can to keep the enormous interests of that fifth or fourth part of the population of this globe within the limits, already wide enough, which history, Providence, and the genius of the country have assigned to them. But, Sir, it would not have been in keeping with the propriety of things to reverse the attitude which we found occupied by the British Government in Egypt. We inherited from our Predecessors certain engagements—["Oh, oh!" from the Opposition]—see whether I make good my words or not; from those engagements it has never been in our power honourably to escape. Sir, what the country knows is perhaps not much of this case. They know that there was established in Egypt what was termed the Dual Control. But what was the Dual Control? It was the establishment in the heart and centre of Egyptian Government of two great functionaries, the Representatives of two of the greatest nations in the world, who held their office in Egypt, and for Egypt, by a tenure independent of the will of Egypt, and dependent altogether upon the will of the two Governments they represented. For what did these two nations go there? [Cheers.] The right hon. Gentleman can contradict me if I am inaccurate. I say they went there pledged to each other for certain purposes. It was not merely to manage the Revenues in the interests of the bondholders; it was general control, general advice, general support to the Government of Egypt. The late Ruler of Egypt had been displaced, a new Ruler had been put upon the Throne, by the agency, mainly, of the British Government—at any rate, with an essential, and, at least, equal share in the operation. The two Governments had undertaken obligations towards that Ruler, and, in my opinion, those obligations were, when they had once established this extraordinary system, matters strictly and essentially consequential. They could hot possibly have put Tewfik on the Throne and have declined to support him; and they bound themselves to one another to support him, and to support him earnestly. They bound themselves, likewise, to one another, while those were their obligations to him, to maintain the peculiar, and, in a certain sense, exclusive political influence, that these two Powers, and these alone, were to exercise in Egypt. Under these circumstances, it was obvious that we were bound to counsel the Khedive to the best of our ability. I do not speak now of the action of the right hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. Goschen). The right hon. Gentleman knows that my remarks have nothing to do with his proceedings in Egypt. They have no- thing to do with any of the proceeding's of the late Government in the earlier part of its existence. They have to do with the Dual Control established under Lord Salisbury; and my contention is that when we placed independent officers, representative of England and France, to hold office in Egypt, by a tenure in no way dependent on Egypt, we were bound—indeed, Lord Salisbury has always admitted this—to counsel the Khedive to the best of our ability.

The next contention is that if we counselled the Khedive to the best of our ability, we were bound, by every sentiment of honour, to support our counsels by our acts, [Cheers and counter cheers.] It is a singular pleasure to me when I find myself in concurrence, as has happened already once or twice, with hon. Gentlemen opposite. It has been admitted that when difficulties arose in the country—such as the difficulties of the year before last—we were bound to give, by the position we occupied, our advice to the Khedive upon all those difficulties; and, having given that advice, we were bound to support it, by consequent action, to such an extent as circumstances might appear to demand, subject, of course, to the judgment of Parliament. I am not in the habit of going back upon statements of my own; but I must say that all these obligations, and all the difficulties they involved, ought to have been foreseen. I must say that the late Government, when they built up this curious system, did it with their eyes open. They were not unwarned of what would happen. They were not unwarned that the establishment of financial control by a Government must mean political control and must involve political responsibilities. I hope it will not be an unpardonable breach of manners if, happening to recollect what I myself said upon the subject, I read an extract, reported in Hansard on the 6th of March, 1876; not corrected by me, but expressing with substantial accuracy what I said. This was at the very first beginning of this intervention, and no control such as I now speak of was established for some considerable time, I think three years afterwards. This was the warning I ventured to give— I should, therefore, wish to know whether, if the proposition for the appointment of such a Commissioner be entertained, the right hon. Gentleman (that was Lord Beaconsfield) means the appointment of a Commissioner who would really have such an effective control over all arrangements and the mode of accounting for these revenues that he could guarantee to us the receipt of the whole, that it might he applied to the purpose in view? If this is what it does mean, it appears to me that we are only shifting the difficulty one step further; because in that case our Commissioner is to take into his hands the administration of a very important portion of the government of Egypt; so that the measures which we may think necessary as a matter of prudence to cover the proposal which we are to consider may entail upon us still greater difficulties and mix us up still further with a heavier responsibility for a portion of the internal government of Egypt. When we have begun with one portion of the internal government of Egypt we may pass on to another. We may come to occupy the entire ground by a series of degrees not difficult to contemplate, and possibly this may have been in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the other night, when he said that while the people of this country would view the diminution of the Empire with horror, they would see it increased without dissatisfaction."—(3 Hansard, [227] 1452–6.) Thus I ventured to point out what, I do not think, I deserve the smallest credit for pointing out—namely, that these arrangements, then in partial contemplation, afterwards greatly developed and rigidly enforced, did advance from financial to political, and from political to probably territorial responsibilities. I have no charge of ill motives to make against the late Government. In my opinion they committed a great error, of which we are now from day to day bearing the burden. I give them every credit for honourable and upright motives. Though I then disapproved of the means, and now I do not need to say still more deeply lament these means were resorted to; yet I am fully persuaded that the object which the late Government had in view was to secure a better Government for Egypt. Further, I admit that very considerable practical and administrative advantages were secured for the fellaheen by the administration of the Revenue, although I am afraid those were far more than counterbalanced in their political importance by our having imported into the country that fatal and most dangerous idea that it was doomed to be placed under foreign domination, and that Egypt was to be governed and maintained for the benefit of persons beyond its portals. [Lord RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: Hear, hear!] The noble Lord cheers me, and there is very great truth in what I take to be the meaning of that cheer. He probably thinks that Arabi was one who fought against that foreign domination. That is not my view. I think I could give conclusive proof to the contrary; but of this I do not entertain a doubt that Arabi was able to give vigour and extension to his motives by appealing to that hatred of foreign domination; and so long as foreign domination continues in Egypt, the danger will recur from time to time. So far I have said something to show that I do not use idle words when I allege that the situation which we have now in Egypt was, in its root and origin, far beyond the power of such prosaic people as the present Ministers to conceive it was due to higher and more venturesome geniuses, such as those who preceded us. There has been no moment at which it was possible for us, consistently with our honour, to retrace our course; and we must look back as well as forward if we want to place before the English people, the people of the Three Kingdoms all the lessons of this great question which is far greater than the right hon. Gentleman would have us believe.

I have spoken thus far of the situation in Egypt down to the close of the military operations; and I will adopt divisions of time in what I have to say for the purpose of being more intelligible to the House, and depriving myself of the power of using subterfuge, even if I were, which I trust is not the case, inclined to resort to it. The close of the military operations was, I think, on the 21st of September, 1882, the time of the surrender of Damietta, the battle of Tel-el-Kebir having been eight days or something like that before. The right hon. Gentleman has placed the pith of his charge during the 13 months between the surrender of Damietta and the defeat of Hicks Pasha, in November, 1883. He is extremely angry with us because, in our cowardice, our timidity about responsibility, we did not take enough of responsibility for the Soudan. Well, we had to begin with taking a good deal of responsibility upon us. We had taken the responsibility of military operations. The Army was entirely broken up; the institutions of the country were gone. We had before us the work of reconstitution. Our obligation in honour to support the Khedive bound us, in our opinion, to supply him with means of the defence and with some primary means of good government. In those 13 months what was the course we took? We sent to Egypt the very best men of every class and stamp that we could find, from Lord Dufferin to General Gordon, from the first to the last; though I might go back to Sir Edward Malet, but it would be too long to enumerate the list of able, upright, patriotic men who have been serving the interest of Egypt with our concurrence and authority; but from Lord Dufferin to General Gordon they were men as remarkable for their ability and fitness for their work as any men that have ever been in the political service of the British Crown. I am not going to say because they were able men they were responsible for what was done; but I am going to say that, at least, by choosing men of that vigour and masculine force of character, and that consumate skill in affairs, we did not take the course which might be taken by those who were undoubtedly anxious to shirk their proper responsibility. We endeavoured to go to the root of the matter, and to put into action all those reforms which it was clearly necessary we should endeavour to make. If we were bound to support the Khedive, we were bound to support him earnestly—and I am sorry to say that the right hon. Gentleman has been extremely reticent on that subject—and, if we were bound to support the Khedive earnestly, we were bound to have some regard also for his people; and if we endeavoured to give security to his Throne by the constitution of something like an adequate military force, we were bound also to do what we could in seconding what we not only believe, but what we knew, to be his own good, upright, and patriotic intentions for the Government of Egypt and the good of his people. Was nothing done in that period? New tribunals for Natives were organized, and I believe I may say that they are at work—at any rate, the Codes have been for some time completed, and the Judges have been appointed; the legislative institutions—hardly, I admit, worthy of that name—they would, perhaps, be more accurately called consultative institutions, but intended to give some moderate expression to the national life, have been framed, and the scheme has been carried into execution. Elections have taken place, and the Legislative Council met last November at the very epoch of the disaster to General Hicks's force. It will be remembered what grievances there were with regard to the undue employment of foreigners and the non-taxation of foreigners. With respect to the undue employment of foreigners, great efforts have been made, which it may be possible to exhibit more fully in the shape of numerical results at a future stage, largely to cut them down. The non-taxation of foreigners is no easy matter to deal with. It is liable to be met by jealousies in every quarter. However, the actual state of the case is this, that that exceptional and odious practice has been given up, of course, by us, and not by us alone, but by France, Italy, Germany, and Austria—in truth, I believe I may say by nearly every Power in any way concerned. The land survey which the right hon. Gentleman, I think, referred to the other night, has been economized, and what is thought a new and better system for conducting it has been introduced. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman thinks that in our 13 months of occupation we ought to have completed our land survey; but when I reflect that, in the half-century during which I have been a Member of this House, I have been accustomed to hear of successive Votes for the completion of our National Cadastral Survey, it does not seem to me that an excessive term has been occupied in this matter in Egypt. A valuable Report has been made upon irrigation by Mr. Moncrieff, and, I trust, great benefit is to be expected from it. With regard to the constabulary and police, the constabulary was organized in what appeared to be an effective form for its purposes under Baker Pasha. The police is certainly under the most efficient handling we could give it, being in the hands of Mr. Clifford Lloyd. I believe, and have been informed, that the prisons have undergone considerable, at all events initial, reforms. I will not refer to Sanitary Departments, and other matters; but there are several very important matters, such as the debts of the fellaheen, which have not escaped attention, and a Commission has been appointed for the consideration of that question. The slave traffic to which the right hon. Gentleman refers has not been forgotten, and the charge of all measures relating to it has been transferred to what I believe to be the best and most efficient Department—namely, the Department of the Inspector General of Constabulary, with an increase of means, and a better system for including the principal routes now under reformation. The only other point I will mention that is vital to the whole is, that the Army has been organized under the able auspices of Sir Evelyn Wood. All the Reports of officers show that its discipline is as high as, indeed higher than, it was possible or reasonable for us to expect. I have only now to say that instead of having failed in carrying forward these institutions, we were justified in advising Her Majesty to declare in the Speech from the Throne that down to the month of November last, in the execution of this exceedingly heavy and responsible work, she had ample reason to be satisfied with the progress which had been made.

I wish to say two or three words, however, upon the exact position which we hold in Egypt, for it is material that it should be accurately understood. At one moment the right hon. Gentleman cast upon us great responsibility for having shattered the Government of Egypt, which, he said, it may be impossible to replace with dignity and credit before the people. But not many sentences before in his speech he had reproached us with at least equal vigour for not shattering that Government long before. It will be in the recollection of the House when I affirm that again and again he stated how it was our business to have forced upon the Egyptian Government, much earlier than we did, the adoption of principles and methods of action, to which we have been unhappily compelled to resort. In my opinion, this shattering of the Egyptian Government is a very serious matter indeed. It is an essential portion of our policy to uphold the Egyptian Government with all the credit and dignity we can. We bound ourselves to that, and therefore we do not wish to make any demand upon the Egyptian Government except that which necessity requires. But, Sir, as the Power in military occupation of the country, we are after all primarily responsible in those matters which we deem vital to the purpose for which we went there. It is a great mistake to suppose that we have taken out of the hands of the Egyptian Government the whole important administration of the country. We have done nothing of the sort. We have only conveyed to the Egyptian Government, at a serious crisis, a clear knowledge of this fact, that our military occupation entails upon us the obligation and duty—where we have no doubt as to the right and propriety of the thing to be done, or as to its importance—of seeing that, if we are to remain in the country, the course which we recommend shall be adopted. It is true, Sir, that upon all these vital points we have have taken, and shall continue to take, all the power necessary for our purpose. We do not seek more. We should think it wrong to take it. We are under engagements earnestly to support the Khedive. We think it would be a most unfortunate policy were we to show indifference in the matter. We cannot concur with those Gentlemen who say we should sweep the Egyptian Government away, and govern the country by English functionaries. I am not willing to undertake a thing which would result in setting up any sentiment adverse to foreign domination. And though we will firmly and resolutely go up to the point when necessity calls us, we will not willingly go beyond that point. I must remind the House that the difficult, onerous, and inconvenient—some may think it the almost hopeless—task which we have undertaken is that, first, of putting down disorder in Egypt, and then of establishing at least some beginnings of tolerable government. That task is also one of considerable delicacy. It is one which we are executing, not alone on our own behalf, but on behalf, I may say, of civilized mankind. We undertook it with the approval of the Powers of Europe, the highest and most authentic organ of modern Christian civilization; but, having undertaking it at their invitation, or with their concurrence, we must fulfil it as we received it from them. I know sometimes the word "Protectorate" is spoken of. If it is not spoken of in its technical sense, and it is only meant by that that we must have full and plenary power to do what our purpose requires in Egypt, I agree with it. But it is a dangerous word, because it has a technical and a legal meaning. I may remind the House that we have ourselves held a Protectorate. We had a Protectorate over the Ionian Islands, but that Protectorate was imposed upon us by the united voice of the Powers of Europe; and even now Austria, in Bosnia, having taken over the administration of that Province and Herzegovina, has done so by the united voice and invitation of the Powers of Europe. The point is as to sufficiency of control, and it is to that, therefore, that we shall look. We conclude it to be absolutely included in the purpose of our mission, and we should go beyond what the purpose required were we to insist on more than that. I may remind the House of an analogy I think worthy of their notice—I mean the analogy of the Indian Protected States. Now, Sir, in the case of these States, our power is, I may say, absolute; we are under no restraint of European law. Those States are enclavis within our own Dominions; our intervention becomes a matter of absolute practical necessity; but what do we do? We send an agent there, and take care that he shall have all the power necessary for efficiency; but we take care, also, that he shall have no more; and we leave, in its native vigour and its dignity before the people of those countries, the Native Adminisstration, which, depend upon it, they love far more than foreign domination. Pew, indeed, are the peoples so degraded and so lost to every noble sentiment, that it shall be a matter of indifference to them whether they are governed by persons who belong to the same political Constitution with themselves, or whether they are governed by those who come from a remote quarter, with foreign instincts, foreign sympathies, and foreign objects. Such was our case in Egypt until we came to the month of November last year.

Now, I pass to the Soudan, and there I will take three periods—first, the period before the defeat of Hicks; next, the period between the defeat of Hicks and the defeat of Baker; and then the period which, I admit, the House has the right to scrutinize most narrowly—namely, that between the 5th February last week and the 12th February, on which I have the honour of addressing the House. Now, Sir, I directly traverse the assertion of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the period before the defeat of Hicks Pasha. I have already observed that there was not a word of his accusations that bore upon the question of vacillation or inconsistency at all, and I am not now going to discuss his Motion at all. I hope, Sir, I shall not be called to Order, because if I am discussing a matter not contained in the Motion before the House, I am bound to say that the same objection may be taken to every word of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman. Sir, what the right hon. Gentleman charged upon us was false policy. I told you why he does not venture to put it into his Motion? If he did he would be bound to show a true policy. What true policy has he shown to-night? What approach to it, what sketch, what shadow, what outline, what shred or patch to one? It is all very well to say that what we have done is wrong; but, notwithstanding the ingenious efforts of the right hon. Gentleman to shirk pointing out to us anything like a policy, there are certain indications which it is difficult for him to efface from critical remark. He says we are greatly responsible for these disasters, that we cannot—and in this I quite concur—escape responsibility by saying we are not responsible, and then came in his simile of the pistol. He never pointed out to us what the pistol was. He did not explain his own parallel; and I suspect it would rather puzzle him to do so. What the right hon. Gentleman contended was virtually this, that we ought to have taken into our own hands the business of advising Egypt upon the war. He began with saying that we ought to have seen that Egypt was supplied with such an army of her own as would have carried on the war with effect.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

I did not say that we ought to have supplied an army.

MR. GLADSTONE

I am speaking now, not of a British Army, but that in our reformatory operations in Egypt we ought to have included the provision of such an army—of such Egyptian Army. Now, I affirm most distinctly that we ought not, and that if we had done so, we should have undertaken what was impossible, what was unreasonable, what was beyond our position of competency, and what was probably unjust. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to point to the smallness of Sir Evelyn Wood's army, and to say that a larger army would have been requisite in order to send to General Hicks the supplies which, when, unhappily, he got into difficulties, he came to want. How were these men to be supplied, Sir? Where were the funds to supply them? Is Egypt so rich a country? Egypt is in financial difficulties. [Sir STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: Now.] Egypt was long ago, when the right hon. Gentleman had to do with it himself, in financial difficulties. The financial difficulties were then the excuse for our most unfortunate intervention. But I say that this was impossible, for Egypt had no means to constitute such an Army.

MR. BOURKE

They were obliged.

MR. GLADSTONE

They found the means of constituting Hicks' Army; but that is not the charge, and I hope when the right hon. Gentleman interrupts me he will not do so for a purpose of forcing me to circumlocution. The charge is that it ought to have been a better and more considerable Army, able to meet the wants of Hicks when he had undertaken this charge. That is the charge which I traverse by a direct denial, and by saying, in the first place, it was impossible to constitute such an Army. Even had it been possible to constitute such an Army, when we received from the Powers of Europe our commission with regard to Egypt, we received no such commission with regard to the Soudan.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

Where is the commission?

MR. GLADSTONE

The commission is in the records of the Conference at Constantinople, immediately before the operations in Egypt; and I may also say that it was quite sufficiently recited in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman to-night, when he spoke of the relations which the Powers of Europe bad assumed towards the work we had in Egypt. In that work, in their view, there was no question of conducting the conquest or re-conquest of the Soudan. But has the right hon. Gentleman made up his mind with regard to the relations between Egypt and the Soudan? Has he ever considered what the Egyptian people think of the Soudan? Is he aware that if there is one thing that the Egyptian has in horror of more than another, it is being called upon to carry on the war in the Soudan? Is he aware that the Army of Sir Evelyn Wood was organized expressly without the obligation to serve in the Soudan? And if he is aware of these things, what does he mean by saying that it was our business to constitute a sufficient Egyptian Army to supply the demands of Hicks Pasha, as these might grow under the necessities of the time, and to enable Egypt to reconquer the Soudan? But what is the case of the Soudan? The other night, when I was referring to a paragraph in which something had been said about the Mahdi, I entirely declined to give any opinion about the Mahdi. I know this—and now I am speaking in conformity with the opinions of the man whom I look upon as by far the highest authority on the subject—I mean the opinions of General Gordon. The Soudan is a vast country, equal in size to France, Germany, and Spain—a desert country, as he states, with a deadly climate, inhabited thinly by sparse and warlike tribes; but still it is the country of those tribes. They love it as their country. The right hon. Gentleman seems to me to have made up his mind—his whole speech shows it—that Egypt is in the right in subjecting that country, and in sending Turks, Circassians, and Anatolians to govern it. Sir, I have not made up my mind to any such thing. I decline to enter into that controversy. We have refused—and I believe the House will approve our refusing—to have anything to do with the reconquest of the Soudan. During all my political life, I am thankful to say that I have never opened my lips in favour of a domination such as that which has been exercised by certain countries upon certain other countries, and I am not going now to begin. I look upon the possession of the Soudan—I will not say as a crime, because that would be going a great deal too far; but I look upon it as the calamity of Egypt. It has been a drain on her treasury; it has been a drain on her men. I believe it is estimated that 100,000 Egyptians have laid down their lives in endeavouring to maintain that barren conquest; and at this moment, when your sympathies have been justly excited on behalf of 500 men in Tokar, and on behalf of 500 men who were in Sinkat, there are 29,000 Egyptian soldiers, or soldiers in the service of the Khedive, scattered over that enormous region. In those circumstances, I utterly repudiate and repel the doctrine of the right hon. Gentleman, that it was our duty to construct a military system for Egypt, by which—I am supposing now that she had the means, which she had not—she would have been able to reestablish in its fulness the reconquest of the Soudan. The right hon. Gentleman has challenged me to-night. I challenge him. He asks us to pronounce on vacillation and inconsistency, and we are ready to pronounce upon it. I ask him to put into a Motion that which was the pith and essence of his speech tonight—namely, that the Egyptian military system ought to have been constituted for the full support of Hicks and the reconquest of the Soudan, and to take the judgment of the House upon it.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

I never said anything of the sort.

MR. GLADSTONE

The right hon. Gentleman does not seem very fond of responsibility as to the meaning of what he says. What were his touching pictures of the inhuman conduct of Sir Edward Malet, who would not give a little advice to General Hicks? Does the right hon. Gentleman think that it was in our power to advise General Hicks as to the conduct of the war without becoming responsible for the war? I say that responsibility for the war directly followed upon our undertaking to advise as to the conduct of it. [Sir STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: Oh, no!] The right hon. Gentleman thinks not. That is the very dignified course he would take. To say, "Hicks, you should march here, and, Hicks, you should march there." Yes; to say here to go and there to advance, and if he advanced and succeeded, we should have the credit; if he advanced and failed—Oh, "No, no!" says the noble Lord (Lord Randolph Churchill) opposite—"we are not at all responsible. We could not advise without becoming responsible." Well, I do not stand alone upon that, because the House will recollect that in the most distinct manner the right hon. Gentleman constructed the first division of his speech upon the insufficiency of the Egyptian Army which we had created, or which it was our duty to create, in order to enable this war to be carried on.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

Or to limit the purpose to which it was to be applied.

MR. GLADSTONE

I will follow the right hon. Gentleman—"or to limit the purpose to which it was to be applied." I examine his words. What do they mean? They mean the shattering of the Egyptian Government. The Egyptian Government was determined to adhere to the whole of the Soudan, and I cannot much blame them. They had been for 60 years in possession of it. They had struggled to hold it. The success of Hicks was remarkable. On almost every occasion he had defeated the Mahdi, and I believe the Egyptian Government would have laughed in our faces if we had attempted to force upon them the abandonment of the Soudan. We had no business to enforce our counsels upon the Egyptian Government, except in cases which we knew to be essential for our purposes in Egypt. How did the right hon. Gentleman know, or how did we know, when the Mahdi was driven back at every point, that the Egyptian Government would not be able to hold its own? He says we ought to have restricted the limits of the shattered Egyptian Government, because it did not conform to our views in giving up what was no essential part of the Egypt in which we interfered. Well, we should have again become responsible for the retention of that part, as we should have given Egypt her charter to that part, and that part would have been just as liable to the fear of foreign domination as the rest. I decline—and let the right hon. Gentleman get the House to censure us for it if he likes—to become a party to maintain that foreign domination. Well, I think I have shown that it was not our mission to deal with the Soudan at all, and if we had advised upon the conduct of the war, we should have inevitably become responsible for a war when Egypt was perfectly impotent to do more than she did, which was to create the army which Hicks Pasha thought sufficient. [Mr. BOURKE: No.] But the right hon. Gentleman read it out, and now a right hon. Gentleman sitting by his side contradicts him. We have every reason to believe that the people of Egypt—not the ruling classes, but the people—detest this war; while we have very great reason to doubt whether this war is based on those considerations of honour, and interest, and just necessity and regard for the welfare of the governed, which alone can render any war tolerable or endurable for a moment in the sight of a Christian.

I think I have pretty well gone through what the right hon. Gentleman has said upon the subject. He referred to Lord Dufferin's opinion about the limits to which the Soudan ought to be restricted, and I refer to that opinion because it is a matter of great weight. I am sorry it did not weigh with the Egyptian Government. It was the opinion of an intelligent friend, though not of a responsible Government, for Lord Dufferin did not speak on our behalf; but the rejection of that opinion, combined with the high estimation in which the Egyptian Government held Lord Dufferin, is a clear proof of the importance which they attached to the holding of the Soudan, and that it was not possible for us to interfere with them until it had been irresistibly shown that for them to attempt to hold the Soudan would be an insane sacrifice of the best interests of Egypt.

Sir, I am very much obliged to the House for the patience with which they have heard me thus far, and I am glad to say that I am making progress. After the defeat of Hicks—this is the second period—our position was entirely changed. We deemed that that defeat—especially when it was followed up by a second defeat—the knowledge of which reached us about three weeks later—was a distinct proof that it was impossible to hold the Soudan in any manner tolerably satisfactory, and that consequently it was our duty to speak frankly and boldly upon the matter, because the Soudan had assumed a question not of £100,000 a-year, as was the old story, but it had assumed a character such as to make it evident that if the struggle were to be continued, it would suck the life-blood from the heart of Egypt.

I will now give the House very rapidly and succinctly the course of events simply by dates. On the 19th November came the first report of the defeat of Hicks. On the 20th November we thought that, supposing that news to be true, we were at once justified in saying to our Agent—"If consulted, recommend the abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits." On the 21st we came to know the defeat of Hicks. There were subsequently rumours casting doubt upon it; but we believed it on the 21st. The Government then had to consider it, and consider the very grave measure of interrupting the course of the withdrawal of our troops, which had, down to that time in all its stages, proceeded with perfect satisfaction. On the 25th we suspended the evacuation of Cairo. On the 26th we found we were, unfortunately, at issue with the Egyptian Government. They were, in the first place, not so certain of the news as we were. In the second place, they were contemplating assistance from the Turkish Government, and that, also, was a very serious question. It was very difficult to deny their right to contemplate assistance from Turkey, and very difficult, under certain circumstances, to deny the right of Turkey to give that assistance. But those were the reasons why we could not proceed peremptorily in the matter. We found they were disposed, if they could, to hold the Soudan, and, at any rate, to wait a while for fuller ascertainment of the facts before they took a positive course. That was on the 26th November. They determined to wait, and take in hand, in some manner, this communication with Turkey, of which I am not sure that we are directly cognizant with the particulars. On the 8th December came the second defeat. That was a heavy blow, succeeding a frightful blow; and on the 12th December the Egyptian Government at length stated that they were ready to be guided by us in respect to the Soudan. Did we vacillate or hesitate? On the 13th December, the very next day, we telegraphed our deliberate decision that the Egyptian Government should withdraw from the Soudan, and should confine its efforts to maintaining the Valley of the Nile as far as Assouan, which is the limit, I think, of Egypt Proper, or, at all events, if there were strong military reasons for their going further, as far as Wadi Hafit, which is farther up the Valley. Well, I am not going to censure Cherif Pasha and his colleagues. Their difficulties were enormous. We know the self-love of a class holding dominions of this kind. But while making every allowance, we found, with deep regret, that on the 22nd December the Egyptian Government were again hesitat- ing. That created a very serious state of affairs. This shattering of the Egyptian Government was the only alternative left. Naturally, we desired to turn to every other alternative rather than resort to it; but we found it impossible to avoid something that an unfriendly critic would describe by that term. On the 4th January our demand was made peremptorily; on the 7th Cherif Pasha resigned; and on the 8th Nubar Pasha was appointed. He was in complete accord with us, and on that day it was perfectly competent to the garrison of Khartoum to retire in safety, and, so far as we know, it is the case now.

Here I have the pleasure of contradicting the statement made by the right bon. Gentleman the Member for King's Lynn, that the abandonment of the Soudan was contrary to the deliberate judgment of the Khedive. If he has read the Papers on the Table of the House, he would have found that, on the contrary, whatever prior leanings the Khedive might have had—and, of course, the prior leaning of a Sovereign is to keep his territory—the deliberate judgment of the Khedive was in complete accord with the policy of Her Majesty's Government. Now, my contention is, that we interfered to require the abandonment of the Soudan as soon as we were justified in carrying up to that point what must be considered as a high-handed proceeding with regard to the interior administration of Egypt. But it may have occurred to many that a long time had elapsed after we had heard of the defeat of Hicks and the time I am now speaking of; and that all this time was lost. That would be an entire and absolute misconception, as I will point out. It was perfectly true, that in the region of political right principle, we were separated during that interval from the Egyptian Government. We at once adopted the policy of withdrawal; we had pressed it first as friendly advice, we pressed it at last as an imperative injunction; but during the whole interval between the first and last stage, there were practical measures in progress upon which we were perfectly agreed, and which must have gone on precisely in the same manner had Nubar Pasha been in office from the first day, instead of Cherif Pasha. We were all agreed that measures should be taken for the extrication of the garrisons. The force of Baker Pasha, which has, unfortunately, been defeated, was organized for that purpose. [Mr. ASHHEAD-BARTLETT: Oh, oh!] The hon. Member, with his supreme authority, scoffs at that statement, and an impression has gone forth that Baker Pasha was sent as a sort of forlorn hope. [Mr. BOURKE: Hear, hear!] The right hon. Gentleman is not aware that my hon. Friend the Under Secretary for India happened to be in Egypt during the organization of this force. [Mr. BOURKE: So was I.] Well, I will back my hon. Friend, with some confidence, in the match if it comes off. I am not going to make an extravagant assertion, but what I am going to say is this—that, when Baker Pasha set out, it will be obvious he was under no military obligation to undertake that business. He was not enlisted for that purpose, and was under no obligation or military service at all, unless he thought it a profitable and hopeful expedition. He was the head of the Constabulary, and a Constabulary is not organized—though the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bourke) seems to think it is—for marching into foreign countries. I have no doubt he was entreated to go. I have no doubt the Egyptian Government greatly desired it; but what I say is, that he was under no military obligation to go, and I say, with the authority of my hon. Friend, that Baker Pasha went with the belief that the means at his command were adequate means for the immediate purpose he had in view. I am going to produce something else; but I produce, in the first instance, my hon. Friend (Mr. J. K. Cross), who is not deficient in the faculty of expressing himself when he has occasion to address the House. Baker Pasha had very great doubts, as I understand, citing my hon. Friend, whether it would be in his power to effect the whole operation of relief from Suakim to Berber, and from Berber to Khartoum; but he was very confident that his means were sufficient for the smaller operation of reaching Sinkat. Here is a telegram of Sir Evelyn Baring, dated February, 2nd 1884, three days only before the calamity which overtook Baker Pasha— Baker telegraphs that he will advance to the relief of Tokar to-morrow, the 3rd, with 3,200 men, and that there is every chance of success. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bourke) will likewise overthrow the authentic official information received from Sir Evelyn Baring. I have shown, then, that during the whole of this time the expedition of Baker Pasha was in preparation and in progress, and that there was a reasonable expectation that that expedition would suffice, if not to get to Khartoum, at any rate to deal with the case of Sinkat and the case of Tokar. Well, that organization removed a practical difficulty for the moment, and prevented its becoming necesary for us to shatter the Egyptian Government at the earlier period, which the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) seems at once emphatically to desire, and resolutely and positively to condemn. That brings me to the 5th of February, and the failure of Baker's efforts.

I have gone through now, I think, all that relates to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, but I must say a few words on the remaining period of five days, on which I admit we are justly open to a careful scrutiny; and here I arrive at the case of General Gordon. General Gordon, in our estimation, is a very great feature in the case. What is General Gordon? He is no common man. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the manner in which he referred to him. I may also say that General Gordon is not alone. Other very able men are with him—one in particular, Colonel Stewart, his seconder and coadjutor—and, in fact, we have acted all along on the principle of obtaining for this difficult Egyptian problem the very best services we could possibly get. It is no exaggeration, in speaking of General Gordon, to say that he is a hero. It is no exaggeration to say that he is a Christian hero. It is no exaggeration to say that in his dealings with Oriental people he is also a genius—that he has a faculty of influence or command, brought about by moral means, for no man in this House hates the unnecessary resort to blood more than General Gordon. He has that faculty which produces effects among those wild Eastern races almost unintelligible to us Western people. Perhaps it maybe said—"If General Gordon has all those gifts, why did you not employ him sooner?" [Opposition cheers.] Again you have fallen into the decoy. You have not taken the least pains to ascertain whether it was possible or not. Now, the suggestion to employ General Gordon in the Soudan was made at a time so early, that it really is not within the limits of the direct responsibility of the present Government. As early as in the month of November, 1882, Sir Charles Wilson recommended the employment of General Gordon; but there were difficulties on both sides. It is very difficult to marry two people when one is averse; but it is still more difficult to marry them when, unfortunately, there is an aversion on both sides—and that, I believe, was found to be the case at that period between the Khedive and General Gordon. However, when it came to the grave period and to the increased responsibility upon us for the affairs of the Soudan that followed Hicks's defeat, then it was again our duty to have regard to the possibility of what might be got through General Gordon.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

Was there anything between these periods?

MR. GLADSTONE

No; but the right hon. Gentleman will fee that I have been contending all along, that, down to the time of Hicks's defeat, we should not have been justified in interfering to take into our own hands the management of the Soudan; and it was already known to us that the Egyptian Government objected to General Gordon. On the 1st of December my noble Friend Lord Granville had reason to believe that he was in a position to offer the services of General Gordon to the Egyptian Government. Unfortunately, they were refused; but not entirely without reason. The reason given was one that did not satisfy us, but still it went far to silence us, as is often the case; and I think the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) will find that to be the ease too. The objection made to us was this—"The Soudan is a country of strong Mohammedan fanaticism. For us to send a Christian as our agent, with a view to govern it, might be a dangerous course, which might cause a still more serious outbreak." We were not satisfied with the reason, but it was difficult to thrust that objection rudely aside, and it caused further delay. That was the offer of Lord Granville on the 1st of December; but we became acquainted with the sentiments of General Gordon, and as time went on the aversion of the Egyptian Government became mitigated, and at last entirely removed. However, it was not until the 16th of January—that is to say, eight days after Nubar Pasha came into office—that they sent to us a request for a qualified officer to undertake the conduct of the evacuation of the Soudan. That was sent to us on the 16th January, and on the 18th General Gordon was on his way to Egypt. At Cairo General Gordon formed his plan. A Taper will be laid on the Table, I believe. We received General Gordon's plan first in the shape of a valuable memorandum of his own; but we have had some doubts whether it was our duty to produce his plan. If we could have produced it to this House, or even to this country alone, it would have been another matter; but the promulgation of that plan through the telegraph in Egypt might have caused its failure. All I will say of it on this occasion—for I would rather not go into particulars about it—is that it was evidently a well-reasoned and considered plan; that it was entirely pacific in its basis; that it proceeded on the belief—a belief which would have been fanatical or presumptuous in my case, or in the case of most of those in this House, but which in the case of General Gordon, with his experience and gifts, was, I believe, neither the one nor the other—not that he certainly must, but that he fairly might hope to, exercise a strong pacific influence by going to the right persons in the Soudan; and it was his desire, quite as much as ours, that this should be done without any resort whatever to violent means. As I have said, General Gordon went not for the purpose of re-conquering the Soudan, or of persuading the Chiefs of the Soudan again to submit themselves to the Egyptian Government. He went for the double purpose of evacuating the country, by the extrication of the Egyptian garrisons, and of reconstituting it by giving back to those Chief's their ancestral powers, which had been withdrawn or suspended during the period of the Egyptian Government. I have told the House already that General Gordon had in view the withdrawal from the country of no less than 29,000 persons paying the military service to Egypt. The House will see how vast was the trust placed in the hands of this remarkable person. We cannot exaggerate the importance we attach to it. We were resolved to do nothing which should interfere with this great pacific scheme, the only scheme which promised a satisfactory solution of the Soudanese difficulty, by at once extricating the garrisons and reconstituting the country upon its old basis and its local privileges. It was our duty, whatever we might feel as to a particular portion of the garrisons, to beware of interfering with Gordon's plans generally, and, before we adopted any scheme that should bear that aspect, to ask whether in his judgment there would or would not be such an interference.

I will now explain to the House what we have been doing during the last seven days. February 5th, when the disaster happened to Baker Pasha, unfortunately found us cut off for a moment from communication with Gordon. He had considered it his duty to take the shortest and swiftest means to convey himself to Khartoum, and that severed him from the telegraph which runs up the course of the river. We resumed the telegraph on the 11th—on the morning of yesterday. We used our utmost endeavours to communicate with him at the earliest moment. We did not wait till we were coming near the time of his possibly reaching Berber, but we sent our messages from the very first moment when we thought there was a chance, being determined to anticipate the possibility of his arrival. We did that on Thursday or Friday of last week, and inquired from him what were his views after Baker Pasha's defeat. We had already taken certain measures. Our first duty was to recollect that the defeat of Baker Pasha altered the position of Suakim, and therefore we took measures, as rapidly as was in our power, to make Suakim safe. We further issued preliminary orders to the British ships that were going up and down the Red Sea, in order to have them in readiness if any action should be found possible and advisable. When Baker Pasha was defeated, the case of Sinkat was hopeless as to military help. It was known for a long time that the garrison had been in extremity. I have read a telegram which acquaints us that Baker Pasha was on the way to its relief, and that he had every hope of succeeding in that relief. No means that we could possibly use could have availed in the slightest degree to bring aid to Sinkat before the time when, unhappily, it fell. That was not a question of difficulty, but of absolute impossibility. There was another mode, as to which, I believe, Admiral Hewett and Sir Evelyn Baring have been in communication. Admiral Hewett has endeavoured to see what could be done by negotiations for the extrication of the garrison. He failed, but this failure only became known to us about 10 o'clock last night. I think it was reasonable and right that he should make the effort in the impossibility of any other effort that could be made. But we were bound to take into view this—would an attempt of relief in that quarter have the effect of endangering, first of all, the precious life of General Gordon, on which the whole hope of the solution of this question was depending? Would it also have the effect of endangering the measures for the extrication of the 29,000 men, who, after all, must be regarded of more weight than the 500 in Sinkat? We have at last heard by telegraph from General Gordon on that subject. Having reached Berber he has received our messages, and we are satisfied, from his replies, that although he does not like the use of military means, yet such an effort as might be made for the relief of Tokar would not, in his view, interfere with the safety or the likelihood of his success. He does not speak with enthusiasm of anything of that kind, but he leaves upon us the entire responsibility of such a proceeding. Under these circumstances we have not hesitated for a moment. Having been put in possession of this, partly by evidence that reached us through Colonel Stewart, and now again since the House met by telegram from General Gordon, we have come to the resolution to gather immediately, with absolutely the utmost promptitude, a force—a British force—at Suakim with the view, if possible, to the relief of Tokar, with the computation of its being sufficient for that purpose if the garrison should be enabled to hold out.

We have acted, therefore, without the smallest hesitation upon our own undivided responsibility for a purpose which implies no departure whatever from our policy in regard to the re-conquest of the Soudan, but with the view of performing what I hope may be regarded as a simple service to humanity, which I am quite sure that this House and the country will not grudge. When I said yesterday that it was not a question of hours, my meaning was this—that our communications with ships would not have been in the slightest degree accelerated by having been made yesterday, and to-day, on the contrary, the position of the ships would enable us to do so. The House will therefore understand that our injunctions and directions have, as I trust, by this time reached the authorities in Egypt, and that their first efforts to give effect to them have probably been by this time taken.

I think I have now stated distinctly what we have been about during the last week, and why we thought it wrong, without any reference to General Gordon, in his great and comprehensive plan, to pursue a purpose which, although one of humanity, and one strongly appealing to the feeling of this country, yet concerned, after all, but a very limited portion of a very difficult and formidable undertaking. I stated that we took preliminary measures with a view to the increase of the force at Suakim. We have moved up troops from Malta in order to be in a condition to put them forward for any purpose of this kind.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

How many?

MR. GLADSTONE

I think it would be very much better that I should not enter upon that. We have had from Admiral Hewett, the best authority on the spot—no doubt he had consulted with others—a very distinct account of what he considered necessary for the relief of Tokar.

SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH

I should not have put the question had it not been told that the number was stated in "another place."

MR. GLADSTONE

I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman means the final or the initial number. I have been speaking of initial measures. If he means the final number, it will be a number somewhat in excess of the number considered by Admiral Hewett to be sufficient for the purpose. I believe it will be 4,000 men. I do not enter into the constituent parts, but I believe that will not be inexact in round numbers.

Now, I have endeavoured to give the reasons why we have acted and why we did not act before. I revert to the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman. I hope it will be thought that I have not shrunk from grappling with it. If the House will vote for it—which, I own, I do not expect—it would be a singular case of voting for a Motion on behalf of which not a single word has been said by the Mover. The right hon. Gentleman made imputations. These imputations, if they imply anything at all—and the right hon. Gentleman seems to say that they did not imply anything at all—imply that he desires and recommends a policy which we think alike opposed to prudence, to humanity, and to justice. I have thus stated the case of the Government; I make, in few words, my final appeal to the House of Commons, and I ask, from your indulgence it may be, but also from your justice, that acquittal which we feel we are entitled to claim.

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

Sir, the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister has been anxiously looked for by the House and by the country; but I think hon. Gentlemen will be of opinion that, from its beginning to its end, it is most deeply disappointing. In assuming that he had grappled with the charges put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition (Sir Stafford Northcote), he made, in my opinion, a most unwarrantable assumption, because he never either dealt with, or even touched upon, those charges from the beginning to the end of his speech. Sir, I will endeavour, with the indulgence of the House, to follow the Prime Minister as far—and I fear it will not be very far, but as far as may lie in my power—through the very discursive speech which he made. He began, Sir, by taunting my right hon. Friend the Member for King's Lynn (Mr. Bourke) on the Amendment which he moved to the Address, and he ridiculed my right hon. Friend, because he had called upon the Government for a clear and distinct recognition of their obligations. Sir, the obligations of Her Majesty's Government have been very clearly stated; and, if the action of Her Majesty's Government towards those obligations had been as clear as their statements, we should not, perhaps, have had much cause to complain; but when the Prime Minister goes on and declares that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition had failed to prove any charge of vacillation or inconsistency against Her Majesty's Government, I think I can show that, as a matter of fact, a very heavy and serious charge of vacillation and inconsistency lies against Her Majesty's Government, from the statements made by Her Majesty's Ministers themselves to the House. On June 14, 1882, the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister informed the House as to the nature of the conclusions to which Her Majesty's Government had come as to their obligations towards Egypt. He then said that it was their business to indicate the ends they had in view, though not the means by which those ends were to be attained; that those ends had been repeatedly and distinctly stated to be the maintenance of all established rights in Egypt, whether those of the Sultan, of the Khedive, of the Egyptian people, or of the foreign bondholders. By that statement of obligations made on the 14th of June, Her Majesty's Government most distinctly recognized their obligations and responsibility with regard to the tranquillity of the Soudan, and, in the case of disturbance, for the restoration of that tranquillity. That was the formal statement of obligations by the Prime Minister, in June, 1882. But, after this, there was a change; and, to show how rapidly the Government alter their policy, I come to the second statement of obligations, made last August. The Prime Minister said— It is our duty to give Egypt a fair start, and, I believe, to make provision for peace and order there. If we see supplied a military and civil force suitable for the maintenance of that peace and order; if we have placed in control of the country a man in whose justice and benevolence we have confidence; if we know that the administration of justice is under enlightened supervision, and in competent hands; if we have made a reasonable beginning in legislative institutions, into which there is incorporated at least some seeds of freedom and some elements of rectification; then, I think, a state of things may be said to exist in which, undoubtedly, some assumption may be made that our duty is complete."—(3 Hansard, [282] 2202–3.) This speech was made in answer to the junior Member for Newcastle (Mr. John Morley), who, in the absence of any such pledge, was prepared to have resisted the Vote for Sir Evelyn Baring's salary; and the House will observe that there was in that statement not one single word which, by any ingenuity, could be construed into a recognition of any sort of responsibility for the state of the Soudan. The Prime Minister on that occasion, stated, in reply to the hon. Member for Newcastle, the conditions under which he considered it the duty of Her Majesty's Government to evacuate Egypt, which were the formation of an army, the control of the country by the Khedive, and provision for the administration of justice, and for proper legislative institutions. This evening the Prime Minister has told us that all this has been accomplished beyond his expectation; but I ask the right hon. Gentleman, and I ask the Government, why, if the solemn statement of their obligations, under cover of which they obtained the consent of the House of Commons to the salary of Sir Evelyn Baring, have all been fulfilled and carried out, they are in Egypt now? Not a word of the Soudan is there in that second statement. Why are you in the Soudan? Why have you not withdrawn from Egypt? You knew, at the time that you made the second statement, that military operations to a large extent were being carried on in the Soudan by a very large force. You knew the danger of these operations. You knew that these operations might fail and produce disaster, and upset your plans—not even Her Majesty's Government could be so ignorant as not to know that—yet you deliberately excluded any conjunction of circumstances in the Soudan from the circle of circumstances which should control the evacuation of Egypt. Is there no inconsistency in these different statements made in the House itself—the first statement recognizing the responsibility of England in the Soudan, the second excluding all mention of any responsibility, and the third, of to-night, stating that a military force is to be sent to the Soudan? Is there no inconsistency in this? But of all the quotations I like to make in this House, there is one quotation which I like more than any other, and that is to quote from the Speech from the Throne, because the Prime Minister—and I am sorry to say he is followed in this respect by the other Members of the Government—has a practice of saying that any quotation from speeches of his that you make are either incorrect or unauthentic. But to the Speech from the Throne no such qualification can he applied. Addressing Parliament in February, 1883, Her Majesty said— It will be my endeavour to secure that a full provision shall be made for the exigencies of order, for the just representation of the wishes and desires of the population, for ensuring the Khedive's Government, the prosperity and happiness of the Egytian people, and the peace of Europe in the East. Now that all the Soudan is in a conflagration, and no man but Gordon dare venture to go through, I want to know where is the consistency of Her Majesty's Government? In dismissing Parliament in August, the Address from the Throne stated— The constant direction of my efforts to the maintenance of established rights, and to the tranquillity of the East. When we hear of 4,000 men being actually ordered to Suakim, probably followed by 14,000 or 40,000 more, I do not think Her Majesty's Government have been consistent either in their professions or their acts. The right hon. Gentleman proceeded to comment severely on the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, because he had not declared to the House an alternative policy. For my own part, I confess that I should have received with some amount of satisfaction a definite statement of the views of the Leader of the Opposition with respect to the future of Egypt. I believe the time has gone by when concealment of policy advanced electoral prospects. I believe in the magic of putting forward an alternative policy; but what I would ask the Prime Minister is this—What has been the foreign policy of the Liberal Party generally, compared with the pledges it gave to the country? I should be very sorry to see the Leader of the Opposition following the intensely evil example which has been set him by the Prime Minister, of declaring, in the country, the policy which he meant to pursue if in Office, and of pursuing when in Office a policy diametrically opposite. If the Leader of the Opposition thinks proper, at any time, to state a policy to the House, that policy will be abided by and receive the support of the Party when in power. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister endeavoured to fix the responsibility for the present difficulty in the Soudan on the late Advisers of the Crown on account of their having established the Dual Control in Egypt. I am utterly unable to perceive the smallest connection of any sort between the Mahdi and the Dual Control, and it requires the extraordinary powers and mind of the Prime Minister even to suggest such a connection. But I utterly repudiate your charging the late Advisers of the Crown, or the Party which supported them, with the slightest responsibility for the present state of affairs in Egypt on account of the Dual Control. You came into Office; you had gained the confidence of the country by pledging yourselves to a complete and utter reversal of everything your Predecessors had done; and, by making the Dual Control the only exception to that policy, you assumed the whole responsibility, and you divested hon. Members on this side of the smallest responsibility for the continuance of that policy. The Prime Minister said it was not within the power of Her Majesty's Government to abandon the Dual Control. Why, your most trusted Ally—the Ally which you follow with the most slavish devotion—France—she abandoned the Dual Control; and will any Member of the Government, who means to take part in this debate, explain to the House why it was not within the power of Her Majesty's Government to do that which it was open to their Ally, France, to do? The essence of the Dual Control was its duality, and the moment it was repudiated by the one party there was your opportunity. I say your not having got out of it, your having gone out of your way to support it—because that was the object of the war—fixes upon you that which I believe to have been, in its ultimate development, an intense evil to Egypt, and from that responsibility I am certain the people of this country will not absolve you. The Prime Minister called the Dual Control an extraordinary system. When he first came into Office, he praised it; he said it was the one thing done by the late Government of which he did not disapprove, and he declined to take a single step towards impairing its efficiency. Now, Sir, I submit that the Prime Minister has stated with extreme boldness, considering all the facts of the case, that Her Majesty's late Advisers had committed a fatal error when they settled the Dual Control. I think it would be an utter waste of time to discuss that to-day, because the late Advisers of the Crown—speaking of them collectively—are like the Dual Control itself, dead and buried. But Her Majesty's Government committed a far greater error when they brought about the suppression of Arabi for the sake of the Dual Control. That is the point. If you disapproved of control, why did you suppress the movement of Arabi, which was directed against nothing but the Dual Control. You sent an army to Egypt to break down the movement of Arabi in favour of Liberal and National aspirations, and you did this in order to support the Dual Control. To show the inconsistency and the utter vacillation of your policy, it has only to be said that the Dual Control for which you suppressed nothing more or less than a national cause has now ceased to exist. The suppression of Arabi was indeed a blunder. I have never favoured Arabi, as an individual, so much as because Arabi represented a national cause, the nature of that cause being freedom and independence of foreign domination. Why did you suppress it? In order to set up on his logs again the present Khedive of Egypt, who was the creature of the Dual Control. I will not detain the House by any examination of the state of affairs regarding my accusations against the Khedive. I will only say this. At the invitation of the Prime Minister I made some grave charges against the Khedive. The Prime Minister promised he would give those charges his earliest and best attention. For eight months nothing more was heard of those charges, and then the Government put up the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the House of Lords to answer charges I had made in the House of Commons. In the House of Lords I had, of course, no one to reply for me, and I cannot in the House of Commons take the slightest notice of what took place there. I appeal to those hon. Members opposite, who, in their mechanical support of the Government, have not, I hope, lost all idea of justice, to say whether that is the way they would treat an opponent—to make him commit himself to what the Prime Minister calls the tremendous responsibility of making certain charges, and yet never giving him an opportunity of hearing the reply which the defendants of that creature have to make? Is that fair or chivalrous conduct? We had in the House of Lords, the other day, what was called an official denial. Official denials have never had a very high reputation in this House; but since Her Majesty's Government came into Office they have been hopelessly degraded. There was once a Member of Parliament, who is now a Minister of the Crown, who imputed Lord Beacons-field, at a public meeting, as a man who never hardly told the truth except by accident, and who flung at the British Parliament the first lie that entered his head. I should not think of adopting such language in addressing the Chair in this House, for the reason that you, Sir, might consider it un-Parliamentary; but of all the temptations to which human nature is liable, of all the temptations which have assailed human beings from the beginning of the world, none have been more powerful than that which assails me to-night—the temptation to use that quotation against Her Majesty's Government, and to adopt that language as my own. I have triumphantly resisted the temptation, and have, I hope, thereby earned not only the gratitude, but the admiration of Her Majesty's Government. With that remark, I leave the subject of my accusations against the Khedive Tewfik. I cannot help thinking how mortifying it must have been for the Prime Minister to have to defend to-night more elaborately, and with more pains than he has ever been called on to do before, a policy in Egypt which, I venture to think, every hon. Member opposite feels in his heart to have been utterly out of accordance with the principles of the Liberal Party, and with every sentiment hitherto predominant in the English mind. The question of the Soudan is, after all, that which is occupying the attention of the House and of the country. We are not concerned with the Dual Control; and, I regret to say, we are no longer concerned with the fate of Arabi Pasha. The Prime Minister was at endless pains to make out that, from the beginning of the Soudan difficulties, Her Majesty's Government were free from responsibility with respect to Egyptian interference in those quarters. I have no doubt he relied to a great extent on the despatch of the noble Earl the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on May 11, 1883, when the noble Earl used these words— It is unnecessary for me to repeat that Her Majesty's Government are in no way responsible for the operations in the Soudan, which have been undertaken under the authority of the Egyptian Government, or for the appointment or action of General Hicks. Well, what are the facts of the case? The news of the great successes of the Mahdi reached Cairo in November, 1882. Lord Wolseley was at that time in occupation of Cairo, and British soldiers occupied the whole of the Delta. What order there was depended entirely on Lord Wolseley and his soldiers. The Khedive had disbanded the Egyptian Army, and there was absolutely no Army in Egypt. Furthermore, there was not a single policeman in Egypt. Baker Pasha had only just received a commission from the Khedive to commence the formation of the gendarmerie. At that moment, when positively the Ministers could not even wink without the authority of Lord Wolseley, came the news of the defeat of the Egyptian Army in the Soudan; and the Egyptian Government decided to send an army under General Hicks for the protection of their territory. I ask Her Majesty's Government, I ask hon. Members opposite, do they really seriously contend that a Sovereign who depended absolutely, as the Khedive did, for police purposes and for military purposes on a Foreign Ally, and who had absolutely nothing in the nature of military and police himself, could be held responsible for a Military Expedition which he undertook in any other quarter of his territory, or that the Foreign Power, whose military and police supported that Sovereign on his Throne, could divest itself of the inherent responsibility for every act, the smallest or the greatest, which that Sovereign might do? The proposition is so enormous that it is impossible to describe it adequately to the House. I leave it with hon. Members opposite to decide whether, when Her Majesty's Government fruitlessly and foolishly endeavoured to mislead English and Egyptian opinion into the idea that they were not responsible for the despatch of General Hicks, the Khedive was in a position to do anything else but despatch him in accordance with the command of a Foreign Power. General Hicks was commissioned to re-conquer the Soudan and to collect an army for the purpose. He collected that army in Cairo and the neighbourhood; and on the advice and with the assistance of your Agents in Egypt. The most revolting barbarities were resorted to by the Khedive's officials, who positively could not have walked the streets of Cairo without the permission of Lord Wolseley for the collection of that Army. The bravest battalion of the Egyptian Army—the Black regiment under the command of the Black Colonel Abdallah, which was the last of the troops to surrender—was sent in manacles and irons—your foes whom you, the Liberal Government, had conquered, gallant men as they were, were in this way sent by you, or you connived at their being so sent, to the Soudan in order to form the Army of General Hicks. Yet you profess to tell the House of Commons that these atrocities, barbarities, and indignities could be committed by the Khedive, and that the Khedive is to bear the responsibility of them—the Khedive, who, but for Her Majesty's Government, would not have sat on the Throne! I say that proposition is utterly untenable. It is, of course, a proposition which the Government may force down the throats of hon. Members behind them; but I defy them to do the same on this side of the House. The Prime Minister stated that, short of any responsibility for the Soudan, Her Majesty's Government did everything possible for Egypt, and that they sent out the very best men to Egypt. Undoubtedly, the Government sent some very reliable and excellent Agents to Egypt; but they fettered them in every way, and on no single occasion have they followed their advice until too late. You had an excellent man in Sir Charles Wilson, and he, at the time he was in Cairo with Lord Wolseley, advised you to make use of the troops in Egypt in order to bar the route of the Mahdi into Lower Egypt. Suppose you had taken that action then, as your Agent advised, Hicks Pasha, with his 10,000 men, would have been alive; all the barbarism and indignity inflicted on those unfortunate foes of yours would never have been perpetrated; Baker Pasha's Army would have been alive, as would the garrisons of the Soudan. Sir Charles Wilson also advised you to send General Gordon to the Soudan at the time. Why did you not? You need not have sent him with an Army, for you have not done that now. His influence in the Soudan was possibly-greater then than now, because the remembrance of him was more recent. The Prime Minister said he wished to define the exact position which Her Majesty's Government held in Egypt, and he stated that they wished to hold the Egyptian Government in all credit and dignity. He drew an analogy between the position of a Resident in a Native Indian State and the position of the English Agents in Egypt. He said the position of the former was one which did not interfere with the Government, which he stated the people loved, and that that was the position of the British Agent in Egypt. With that proposition I should like to compare your treatment of Cherif Pasha. I will give the House the opinion of Sir Edward Malet, one of the best men you sent to Egypt, with respect to the Government of Cherif Pasha, and the service it was in the power of that Minister to render to Egypt. In September last Sir Edward Malet wrote— It is due to the intelligence and largeness of views of the Ministers that Egypt is likely to become the one well-governed autonomous Mussulman State. Without their authority no reform would be possible, and a clear injustice is committed when it is asserted that the reforms will be carried out, not by them, but in spite of them.…They have undertaken a noble task, which may be beneficent as an example to all Mussulman States.… It is their rule under an honourable and large-minded Prince that makes the future of Egypt hopeful, and allows me to leave the country, after watching it through its darkest hours, with the confident assurance that it will recover from its misfortunes, and ultimately become a prosperous and well-governed State."—[Egypt, No. 1 (1884), p. 27.] Sir Evelyn Baring also wrote— I think the loss of Cherif Pasha will be very detrimental to the country. The Government which, by the confession of your responsible Agents, did hold a position of credit and dignity, and was capable of forming the future of Egypt, is kicked out of Office by you with every mark of ignominy. And why? Because the Government of Cherif Pasha proposed a policy to which at that time you did not consent, but which now you adopt. All the Government of Cherif Pasha wanted to do was to try and hold Khartoum, and to re-open the road between Suakim and Berber, and they wished to concentrate all their efforts on those points. What has Gordon been sent to the Soudan for but to hold Khartoum and to re-open the road between Suakim and Berber? ["Oh, oh!"] Hon. Members could express dissent from what he had said; but General Gordon, who was on his way to Khartoum, had distinctly stated this to be his object, and the language of the Queen's Speech distinctly contemplated the same thing. You at that time, however, insisted on the precipitate abandonment of the Soudan as far as Wady Halfa, and Cherif Pasha's Government resigned rather than carry out that policy. Now, by means of Gordon and Baker Pashas you are carrying out the identical policy which you turned out the Government of Cherif for refusing to adopt. A great point has been made by the Prime Minister of the consent of the Khedive to the policy of the abandonment of the Soudan. He is the one Egyptian whom the Government can produce out of the whole of Egypt as being a consenting party to that policy. This Tewfik, who, as everybody who knows anything on the subject must know, has not a friend in Egypt, and that if England were to withdraw from Egypt he would be unanimously and ignominiously expelled from the country, is the party whose opinion is held up to us as being conclusive and overwhelming. The part which the Khedive played in the matter of General Hicks is as dark and unsatisfactory, and in all probability as criminal, as it was with regard to Arabi Pasha. Before Lord Dufferin left Egypt he expressed the opinion that the expedition of General Hicks would have been successful if he had stopped at a certain point; but the Khedive and the Egyptian Government insisted on his going further, and after he had gained, as we all know he did, a brilliant victory over the Mahdi, and established himself at Sennaar, he was instructed to proceed against Kordofan, with a view to its conquest. That is what General M'Leod says, and I should vastly prefer his statement to that of Her Majesty's Government. What does Sir Samuel Baker say about the expedition of General Hicks? Sir Samuel Baker says—"It was the Egyptian Government that forced Hicks to his doom." It is not I, the Member for Woodstock, who am saying that, but Sir Samuel Baker, brother to General Baker, an authority on the Soudan greater than the noble Lord or the Prime Minister. But who does the House think was Minister of War in Egypt at the time? Omar Lufti, a man suspected by nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Cairo as being in collusion with the Khedive in organizing the massacres at Alexandria. Is not that a singular coincidence? Furthermore—and I state it on the authority of the gentleman who is the depositary of General Hicks's papers—that he undertook the expedition against Kordofan in consequence of a telegram in cypher sent to him by the Khedive, who, with his Government—to repeat the words of Sir Samuel Baker—forced him to his doom. Omar Lufti is not now Minister of War, and if Her Majesty's Government desire anything like prosperity from their efforts in Egypt with respect to the garrisons of the Soudan, I would advise them to eject the Khedive Tewfik from office. The Prime Minister alluded to the position of Her Majesty's Government in Egypt, and compared it with the position of Austria and Bosnia, and referred to a commission which England had received with respect to Egypt from the Powers of Europe. Now, Sir, in the broadest manner, I absolutely deny that there was ever anything in the nature of a commission given to England in this matter from the European Powers, inasmuch as the Government broke up the Conference at Constantinople long before any such commission could have issued. I have no objection to the Government taking up their position there by their own force and will; but I deny absolutely, and repudiate entirely, that they received any commission from the European Powers. That assertion cannot be supported by one tittle of evidence. The position of Her Majesty's Government in Egypt is simply one of broken pledges and abandoned principles. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister has found great fault with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition for having said that it was the duty of the Government to supply the Egyptian Government with an army capable of defending the country. I, however, did not understand the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Stafford Northcote) to make that statement. But what is the reason the Prime Minister gave for the Egyptian Government not having been supplied with a proper army? Financial difficulty! What does financial difficulty mean? It means bondholders. By the statement of the Prime Minister, bondholders prevented an army being provided for the support of General Hicks. In other words, the bondholders murdered Hicks. I am anxious to point out to the House that the Prime Minister has mistaken—I may almost say purposely mistaken—the whole tone of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, because the right hon. Gentleman has not censured the Government for not reconquering the Soudan. What we do censure, or are trying to censure, the Government for is that they did not prevent the attempt to reconquer the Soudan with a force which was obviously inadequate. That is the case against the Government. But what was the original reason for the conquest of the Soudan? It was the suppression of the Slave Trade. During the time of General Gordon that trade was undoubtedly seriously interfered with, and if those efforts had been continued it would have been abolished. But under a Liberal Government, who are responsible for Egypt, the Soudan will once more become the scene of the barbarities of the most awful Slave Trade that ever existed. The Prime Minister has said that he would not be a party to the Circassians, the Pashas, the Turks, the Anatolians reconquering the Soudan. If that be so, why did he allow every ruffian from the slums of Cairo to be sent from Egypt, if he wished to free the Soudan from Turks and Circassians? Is there not some slight inconsistency and vacillation in that? The Prime Minister had said that if they had advised on the Soudan they would have become responsible for the war. But the Government did advise the Egyptian Government, in November, not to attempt the reconquest of the Soudan; and how do they reconcile that with the Prime Minister's statement? Is there no inconsistency there? In November, 1882, the Government gave advice to the Egyptian Government, and did not insist on its being attended to; and in December, 1883, they gave advice, and did insist on that advice being followed. There is, however, this difference—that if they had insisted on their advice being followed at first, they would have saved all the lives that had been lost in the Soudan. I should like to have a more detailed statement of the transactions between Her Majesty's Government and General Gordon than have been given, for it is said there is no inconsistency, no vacillation, in your treatment of him. I am informed, on the highest authority, that General Gordon, in the summer of last year, offered Her Majesty's Government to accept service in the Soudan. The Government telegraphed to him—"The Government decide to accept your offer; wait letter." General Gordon waited for the letter, and in the letter found the words—"The Government decline your services." Is there no vacillation, no inconsistency there? That is a statement which I believe General Gordon is prepared to vouch for. And when you proposed to the Egyptian Government that General Gordon should be sent out on the 1st of December, why did you not insist upon your advice being followed then? General Gordon was a man who had kept all these people under his thumb, and yet you allow the Egyptian Government to make the ridiculous objection that sending out a Christian might alienate the tribes. And yet you now send him out to pacify the tribes. Is there no inconsistency, no vacillation there? I know why—every-one knows why—the Egyptian Government did not like to have General Gordon. It is because he knew too much about the Egyptian Government—he knew that the Khedive was a man utterly unworthy to govern the country. That is shown by the conditions under which General Gordon accepted service—namely, that he should serve under the English Government, and not under the Khedive, whom he would not even see. The Egyptian Government knew the estimation in which they were held by General Gordon, and therefore it is that they did not wish to employ General Gordon. The reason they gave to Her Majesty's Government, and which appears to satisfy the Prime Minister, is one of the most empty and ludicrous that could be put forward. General Gordon had plainly expressed his opinion as to the Egyptian Government; and if you throw doubt upon his statements, you should not have given him the position you have conferred upon him. Either he speaks the truth, or else he is not fit to be entrusted with dictatorial power. Then the Prime Minister made another most extraordi- nary statement—that General Gordon had drawn up a most valuable Memorandum in reference to his plans in the Soudan, and he feared to produce it to the House, in case it might interfere with General Gordon's mission. I appeal to hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House as to whether it is likely that the disclosure of a document from General Gordon now would be likely to reach the Mahdi in time to interfere with the operations of General Gordon? No, Sir; I will tell you the reason he did not read the Memorandum of General Gordon—because he does not want the Pashas of Cairo to know the plans, because the men from whom the assassination of General Gordon is likely to proceed are not the Mahdi's followers, but the Pashas of Cairo. The Prime Minister has stated that on the 7th the Government did not act in the matter of the beleaguered garrisons, because they believed Baker Pasha would be successful. But the troops under Baker Pasha were only policemen and blacks who had been coerced into serving. On the 7th that force was annihilated. The Prime Minister now says that it had been known for a longtime that the case of Sinkat was hopeless. Yes; it had been known for a long time; for on December 18 the Government were informed that the town had very little ammunition or provisions, and was besieged by the Mahdi's forces. Tewfik Bey, who was in command of the garrison, was one of the few heroes—I may say, indeed, the only hero—produced in Egypt. Consul General Monorieff, writing to the Egyptian Government, on the 24th of August, spoke in the highest terms with regard to Tewfik Bey. The General knew the position of this brave man at Sinkat, and the British Government knew his position, for, from the 24th of August up to now, accounts have been regularly received on the condition of the place; but though British ships were in the neighbourhood, and a British force was within four or five days' journey of Sinkat, the British Government never moved hand or foot to rescue that unfortunate officer. I ask the House to contrast the treatment of Tewfik Bey by the Government with the treatment of Tewfik the Khedive in Cairo. The Prime Minister said we could not take steps before to rescue Sinkat or Tokar, because it might en- danger the life of General Gordon. I venture to say that if there is any man in the world who would hear that statement with horror, absolute horror, it is General Gordon. He would consider himself disgraced by having such a statement made concerning him. General Gordon is like Marshal Ney, the "bravest of the brave," and yet we are told that he would not risk his life for the sake of saving a brave General and a garrison. Never did a Government perpetrate such an insult against anyone. As to the enormous trouble the Government have taken to communicate with General Gordon in reference to these garrisons, I believe every person in this country could have told the Prime Minister that General Gordon had no objection to his making an effort to relieve the besieged garrisons. This garrison of Tokar is probably now in the position of Sinkat, with this difference, that within 15 miles of the place there are a certain number of British ships fully armed and equipped. I would appeal to hon. Members whether it would not be in the power of those in command to equip a naval brigade to take measures to provide the beleaguered garrison of Tokar with provisions? In order to show its unfortunate condition, I would ask the attention of hon. Members to a letter, dated the 13th of December, from the Commandant, complaining that his letters had not been answered or taken into account—that their hopes were in the hand of God, as he saw no help from anyone—asking that a force should be sent at once, and that it was no use writing complimentary letters if, at the end, they were to be in the hands of the enemy. This letter was written on the 13th of December; and on the 12th of February the Prime Minister of England, on whom alone the rescue of these men depended, at last made up his mind to send British troops. And yet the Government dare to stand up at that Table and say that, with facts such as those before the public, there has been no vacillation in the Councils of the Government. A statement of that kind is enough, in my opinion, to justify 50 Votes of Censure. Now, they knew that the orders had come too late; and it almost seems as if God had permitted those garrisons to be filled with such an excess of gallantry in order that the measure of your iniquities might be filled up, and that the cup of your crimes might overflow. The policy of the Government has been one of "Too late." Too late is an awful cry. Prom time immemorial it has heralded and proclaimed the slaughter of routed armies, the flight of dethroned Monarchs, the crash of falling Empires. Wherever human blood has been poured out in torrents, wherever human misery has been accumulated in mountains, wherever disasters have occurred which have shaken the world to its very centre, there, stright and swift, up to heaven or down to hell, has always gone the appalling cry "Too late—too late!" The Opposition cannot but move a Vote of Censure on a Government whose motto is "Too late." The Liberals will act wisely in being chary of giving support to a Government whose motto is "Too late," and the people of this country will undoubtedly repudiate a Government whose motto is invariably "Too late."

Sir GEORGE CAMPBELL

and Mr. MARRIOTT rising together, and both declining to give way, Mr. SPEAKER called upon the former.

SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL

, who had the following Amendment on the Paper:— That this House is of opinion that material aid to the Khedive of Egypt should not he indefinitely prolonged; that the proper administration and protection of the country should he the first charge on the revenues before the creditors of the late Khedive are paid; and that the demands of Foreign moneylenders should not he enforced by seizure of the lands of the Egyptians by Foreign tribunals, regardless of Native laws and customs, and uncontrolled by any Egyptian Legislature, said, although he had always been against any interference of the Government in the affairs of Egypt, he should not support the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Stafford Northcote). He had long ago warned the Government of the danger in which they were involving themselves by their action in Egypt. The late Government began by assuming, as they had, a joint control with Prance; and he believed that the present Government might have withdrawn with honour and safety from their embarrassing position in that country at the moment when the French withdrew. But they had taken a different course, and the result was that they had now undoubtedly got into a deplorable hole. However, he could not lend a hand to hon. Gentlemen opposite in pushing the Government still further into the hole, but would rather wish to help them out of their dilemma if he possibly could. In India, sometimes an elephant would get into a quicksand, and then they threw faggots to the elephant, who was sagacious enough to make a pathway with them to enable him to get out of the hole. The Prime Minister was like an elephant in such a predicament. He had been urged too far by his riders; and now he (Sir George Campbell) would be glad to throw him a faggot or two to help him out. He understood that the Government wished to oppose the Vote of Censure with a direct negative, and, therefore, he should not move his Amendment. He certainly hoped that they would not yield to shrieks of panic, and allow themselves to be led into what might be eventually a great and disastrous war, if they were led far in the direction in which hon. Gentlemen opposite would lead them. The danger to the Soudan garrisons had been well known for months; but he was not aware that there had been a suggestion from the Conservative Party in favour of sending a British Army, until Her Majesty's Government was placed in a dilemma. It was then, and then only, that this intense interest in the garrisons was shown by hon. Gentlemen opposite. He was glad that Her Majesty's Government had found it possible to undertake the rescue the lives of the gallant garrison of Tokar; but the case of Sinkat had been very hopeless, it being only a week since the failure of the expedition which Baker Pasha undertook with hopes of success. He hoped that the attempt to save the garrison of Tokar would be successful; but, at the same time, he strongly recommended them to be very careful not to despise the enemy about to be encountered too much, and not to send against him anything like a mere scratch force, but only a thoroughly equipped force on which they could fully rely. He earnestly hoped that the Government would not embark in any large operations, or enter on a great war in the Soudan, but would rest content with rescuing the garrisons. He protested against going to war with the Mahdi. He objected to a war of Christianity against Mahomedanism in the Soudan, for he saw no reason for it. They had taken into their bosom Jews, Infidels, and heretics, and they must not take any prejudice against a people because they were Mahomedans. The idea of entering into a war for the sake of religion was to be thoroughly deprecated; no distinction should be made in this case between men according to whether they were Christians or Mahomedans. After all, there was strong reason for supposing that two-thirds of the garrisons were people of the Soudan, who would probably be very glad to join the Mahdi; and he saw no reason why they should not be permitted and encouraged to join the Mahdi, who was, for the time at all events, the Representative of the Native element in the Soudan. He recommended that we should get out of Egypt as soon as we possibly could, and cease to interfere with the country at all. We had had no quarrel with the Mahdi, and the sooner we got out of it the better. It was to be hoped that those who wished to get away might be safely withdrawn from Khartoum, and that then we should be able to leave Egypt. The mission of General Gordon was one of peace, and as such it had his heartiest wishes for its success; but he was still very much inclined to think that in the end the Government would have to bring back Arabi. If it turned out to be necessary to do that, he trusted that Her Majesty's Government would not be deterred by any fears of the interests of the bondholders and the creditors of the last Khedive from doing that justice to the people of Egypt which they always professed it was their wish to do. He hoped that they would carry out the policy of Egypt for the Egyptians. In dealing with Orientals half measures were utterly useless; it was useless to establish a Protectorate; we must either take over Egypt ourselves, or allow the Egyptians to rule it for themselves, and the latter alternative was the one that ought to be chosen, although hon. Gentlemen opposite held the contrary view. The Government thought they were benefiting the Egyptians by introducing judicial reforms. He rather doubted whether the introduction of a number of lawyers would be gratefully received by the people; if, in the result, the people were deprived of their land it would certainly not be received in that spirit. He hoped in what arrangements the Government might ultimately make their aim would be to secure Egypt for the Egyptians and not for the bondholders.

MR. E. STANHOPE

said, he could not help feeling great sympathy for the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, who lamented the line of policy which the Prime Minister had adopted, but who nevertheless was going to vote for him. Moreover, the hon. Gentleman had prepared a speech on Egypt which had nothing to do with the Motion under discussion, and it was absolutely necessary for the hon. Member to place an Amendment on the Paper in order to justify his speech. He was afraid that it was not the first time the hon. Member had found himself one of a small minority in that House; but he thought that on this occasion the hon. Gentleman formed part of so small a minority that he was well advised in not pushing his Amendment forward, but in contenting himself with the remarks he had just addressed to the House. In common with a number of Members on that (the Opposition) side of the House, he (Mr. Stanhope) had listened that night with a deep sense of humiliation to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. From the beginning to the end of that most remarkable and lengthy speech there was an attempt to evade responsibility, and to endeavour to persuade the country that responsibility did not rest upon him. As he listened to that speech he could not help thinking what would have been said by a former Colleague of the right hon. Gentleman if he had been still in that House and had heard that speech—he meant Lord Palmerston. He should like to know what Lord Palmerston would have said, when he was Prime Minister, if he had known that men's lives were absolutely at stake, and that there was a beleaguered garrison within 15 miles of the reach of British forces, whom those British forces could have immediately relieved. Would Lord Palmerston have consulted anybody? Would he have hesitated one moment? Would he have spent 20 days in telegrams, or would he at once have proceeded to action? He (Mr. Stanhope) confessed, for his own part, that Lord Palmerston would have speedily dis- posed of the legal quibbles which the Attorney General expressed some time ago. Would he not have set aside the subtle casuistry of the Prime Minister? He would have acted from a sense of what was necessary in the interests of this country to maintain its honour and dignity. He believed the speech of the Prime Minister would always be regretted as a speech the most unworthy of a great occasion which the right hon. Gentleman had ever delivered. He believed he was right in saying that there were great issues before the country. He believed he was right in saying that at this moment men's lives were trembling in the balance, and yet the right hon. Gentleman thought it a fitting moment to get up and devote a considerable portion of his speech to all manner of side issues and to what he himself called laying decoys for cheers. Surely such a thing was quite out of place on such an occasion. The right hon. Gentleman had devoted three-quarters of an hour in the early portion of his speech to the discussion of subjects which had not the most remote connection with the question before the House, and in endeavouring to divert the House and the country from the plain issue before them. The right hon. Gentleman professed to be glad that a plain issue had been raised, but one-half of his speech was devoted to an endeavour to divert the mind of the House entirely from that plain issue he professed himself so anxious to obtain. The right hon. Gentleman, in the first place, went back a very long way into ancient history, and, in order to prevent full attention being paid to that portion of the speech which he (Mr. Stanhope) believed to be of the greatest possible importance at this moment, the right hon. Gentleman endeavoured to direct the mind of the House rather to the conduct of the late Government, and to pointing out that the events now passing in Egypt were not due to anything he or his Government had done; but that the late Government—the Government of Lord Beaconsfield—were entirely responsible for what had recently taken place. The right hon. Gentleman traced everything that had taken place lately to the establishment of the Dual Control. He (Mr. Stanhope) at once and absolutely refused to follow the right hon. Gentleman into any such devious path. That allegation of the right hon. Gentleman had been very often answered in that House, and if necessary it could be answered again. He would, however, put this to the House—suppose they granted and admitted that the late Government were as bad as they had been painted, and as guilty as the right hon. Gentleman liked to describe them—supposing that, for the purposes of the present debate, everything the present Government had to do was in consequence of the misconduct of the late Government, still the House ought not to have their attention diverted from the main question now before them, which was the responsibility of the present Government, and how had that Government discharged that responsibility? In the first place, there was an attempt on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to argue that he and his Government were not responsible for what had taken place in the Soudan, and that, at any rate, at the outset of the events which were the main subjects of the present discussion, Her Majesty's Government were not responsible. He (Mr. Stanhope) utterly denied that the right hon. Gentleman could evade for a single moment that responsibility. They had been and were, as a matter of fact, the Government of Egypt for the time being, and they could not evade that responsibility. His right hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Stafford Northcote), in a most temperate part of his most temperate speech, had pointed out clearly the reasons why Her Majesty's Government must be held responsible for what had taken place in the Soudan. He did not observe that any one of the arguments his right hon. Friend had put forward had been fairly grappled by the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. His right hon. Friend pointed out that, at the outset of these proceedings, Lord Dufferin, the trusted agent of the Government, did recognize that the English Government were responsible for what took place in the Soudan. His right hon. Friend had quoted what Lord Dufferin had said, and although it was quite true that Her Majesty's Government did not follow Lord Dufferin's advice, there was not the smallest atom of evidence to show that at any time they repudiated his suggestion, that it was their duty, and that they ought at once to be prepared to discharge that duty, to make preparations for enunciating a policy which would settle the whole question of the Soudan. Further than that, after the declaration on the part of the Government that they had no responsibility in the Soudan, they, nevertheless, practically accepted the whole of the responsibility. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister said that, in what the right hon. Member for North Devon had said, he was urging upon the country and upon the House that Her Majesty's Government ought to have attempted the reconquest of the Soudan. Nothing could have been further from the intention of his right hon. Friend than to suggest such a policy, and there was not the smallest ground for the attempt made by the Prime Minister to attribute such a suggestion to the right hon. Gentleman. He now passed from their general responsibility and came to the time when Colonel Hicks was sent by the English Government into the Soudan. They must all of them admit that Her Majesty's Government took the utmost possible pains to explain on paper, both to the Egyptian Government and the country, that they would not accept any responsibility for Colonel Hicks's expedition. He (Mr. Stanhope) contended, however, that it was utterly impossible for them, at any time, to evade it. Colonel Hicks's expedition was practically settled with the assent not only of Her Majesty's Representatives, but with that of the Government of this country. They had absolute control over the number of men Colonel Hicks was to take with him, and over the amount of money which the Egyptian Government were to spend upon the expedition. The Financial Adviser of the Egyptian Government was entirely in their confidence, acting under their instructions, and was present at the Cabinet Council which determined upon the expedition. What was it that Her Majesty's Government did? They interfered whenever they were wanted to interfere; and they abstained from interfering where their interference was imperatively called for. Colonel Hicks saw through it all. He saw through the thin veil which Her Majesty's Government interposed between themselves and their responsibility, and the result was that Colonel Hicks insisted upon communicating with the Egyptian Government, not directly, but through the agents of Her Majesty's Government. He should like to apply one simple test. Could the English Government have stopped the expedition of Colonel Hicks from setting out? Of course they could. Why did they not do it? When Colonel Hicks had had considerable success, could they then have stopped him? Of course they could; and it would have been better if they had at once stopped the expedition of Colonel Hicks instead of plunging into the deserts of Kordofan. But they allowed Colonel Hicks to go. He started, an Englishman leading a large body of troops among a population who recognized that the presence of an Englishman leading those troops among them meant that the English Government intended to assert their power in that region. Then came the time when Colonel Hicks asked to be reinforced. When Hicks Pasha telegraphed that he must have the support of the English Government, and said— Unless you put pressure upon the English Government it is utterly impossible to carry out the expedition with success, Her Majesty's Government did nothing-Having allowed him to start, having had the opportunity of preventing him if they had chosen, they shut him altogether out of their minds, and did not allow the possible fate of that gallant officer to influence their policy in the Soudan. What did they know about Colonel Hicks's probable chances? Lord Dufferin had given them full information. Lord Dufferin told them that Colonel Hicks was leading a body of raw, undisciplined, and disheartened troops, whom he had every reason to believe were utterly untrustworthy. They knew that the Government of Egypt itself was entirely exhausted, both in regard to money and men. They knew that they never intended to support Colonel Hicks, and yet they allowed him to make this expedition into a distant country, when they knew that his defeat must have an important effect upon the Government they were endeavouring to set up in Egypt. On the mere chance of his success they allowed him to start; and they shut their eyes to all the possible consequences, and excluded the whole question of the Soudan from their policy. Lord Dufferin had told them that they ought to prepare a policy for the Soudan in the event of Colonel Hicks's success, and there was nothing to prevent their preparing a policy in the very possible event of Colonel Hicks's failure. Their preparation was this—In the first place, when troops were wanted, they began to withdraw their forces from Egypt, and they announced their policy of withdrawal from the country by the curious irony of fate, at the precise moment when Colonel Hicks was annihilated. Their further preparation was to give most careful instructions to the Government of Egypt that the force of constabulary, which, after all, they might want to use for warlike purposes in Egypt, was not to be drilled as soldiers. On the 19th of November they had their first warning, and their first warning was that if Colonel Hicks happened to be defeated, the probability was that they could not hold Khartoum, and that their hold of the Government of Egypt and the whole of the Soudan was so uncertain that it was difficult to say at what part of the Nile Valley the victorious forces of the Mahdi would be stopped. It was after that solemn warning that they took their first decision, and the answer Her Majesty's Government gave was, he (Mr. Stanhope) thought, worthy of a few moments study by the House. Her Majesty's Government said—"If consulted." That was how they began the telegram. It was a very curious remark in itself. Of course they were going to be consulted, for the Government of Egypt consulted them at every point of their policy. He did not say that they had always followed the advice of Her Majesty's Government when they got it, but there could not be the slightest doubt that the Government of Egypt did consult the Government of this country at every point of their policy. Then, "if consulted," what was to happen? Were they to say they were not responsible for the government of the Soudan, that they declined to give any advice, and refused to make any suggestion? No; but the telegram said—"If consulted, recommend the abandonment of the Soudan within certain limits." He asked the House to note those words. It was a thoroughly sensible telegram for the purpose of evading responsibility. The telegram itself was made so vague that whatever happened Her Majesty's Government would probably be able to slip out of the recommendation they made. He ventured to say that from that very moment, if it had never occurred before, Her Majesty's Government became absolutely responsible for what was taking place in the Soudan, because they had given the Egyptian Government a recommendation in a most important document leading them to suppose that, if the recognition of England was worth anything, Her Majesty's Government were prepared to support them. On the 22nd of December there came a report of the defeat of Hicks Pasha. What did the Government of this country do? From the 23rd of December, at any rate, until the 19th of January, they did absolutely nothing. What did they know? They knew perfectly well the condition of the garrisons. As his noble Friend the Member for Woodstock (Lord Randolph Churchill) had pointed out with great force, warnings as to the condition of the East of the Soudan came continually from time to time last year. Her Majesty's Government knew perfectly well that there were in Sinkat 1,000 women and children besides the garrison. They knew, also, that there was a garrison in Tokar under the gallant Tewfik Bey; and, further, that there was a garrison in Khartoum. As early as the 6th of September they were told that Tokar and Sinkat might have to be abandoned at any time. On the 8th of December they had the painful warning which the noble Lord had quoted. On the 19th of December there was a further telegram from Admiral Hewett, telling the Government that the garrisons of those two places could not hold out long, and must soon be compelled to abandon their posts. On the 26th of December they were solemnly warned that the Egyptian Forces were utterly and entirely inadequate, and that if they wanted to rescue the garrisons they must take steps for themselves. They had reports as to the terrible straits to which the garrisons were reduced—how they had eaten everything they had at hand; how they had been reduced step by step, until at last they had to eat such leaves of trees as they were able to gather for the purpose of sustaining themselves. With all these warnings month after month, Her Majesty's Government did nothing at all. It was quite true that they allowed the Government of Egypt to send General Baker; but they sent General Baker without an army, with a body of men who had not been organized for the purpose of an army, but who had been expressly organized not to be an army. In addition, General Baker had a few Black troops. Sir Evelyn Baring told them all about those Black troops at the time he said that the Black troops might fight, but the matter was doubtful. That was not very encouraging. Then, again, there were only four companies of them, numbering about 400 men; so that, practically, General Baker had an army of about 400 men composed of Black troops, about whose fighting qualities there was some doubt. Yet those were all that could be relied upon to support General Baker in the exceedingly difficult and dangerous service he had entered upon. But did Her Majesty's Government support General Baker? Of course, he did not speak of material support. Her Majesty's Government never gave material support to their friends; but he meant moral support—that sort of moral support Sir Evelyn Baring asked for when he expressed a hope that, if the troops were withdrawn, the Government would give a moral support to the Khedive Tewfik in carrying on the Government of Egypt. Did they give even that? The course they adopted was absolutely to paralyze the action of General Baker by announcing publicly the abandonment of the Soudan. He would detain the House for a moment by reading the opinion of General Gordon. What did General Gordon say? He said—"There is one subject on which I cannot imagine anyone can differ." General Gordon did not understand Her Majesty's Government when he said that; he had had no experience of them. General Gordon said— There is one subject on which I cannot imagine anyone can differ, and that is the impolicy of announcing our intention of evacuating Khartoum. Even if we were bound to do so we should have said nothing about it. The moment it is known that we have given up the game every man will go over to the Mahdi. All men worship the rising sun. That was the encouragement Her Majesty's Government gave to Baker Pasha. That statement was absolutely sufficient, in his (Mr. Stanhope's) opinion, to ensure the failure of Baker Pasha's mission; and it was absolutely impossible, therefore, for the Government at this time of day to shrink from the responsibility of what Baker Pasha did, or to say that they had no substantial ground for believing that Baker Pasha's mission could possibly be attended by failure. What had Her Majesty's Government done since then? They had sent out General Gordon. Every man on that side of the House wished as much as hon. Members on the other side that that noble spirit, that almost solitary man, tracing his way across the Desert in order to endeavour to the utmost of his power to carry out the policy of the Government, should be absolutely and completely successful. He wished to ask a question of the Government in reference to General Gordon, and it was this—when did they first consult General Gordon? General Gordon was an officer about whom the Prime Minister could not say too much that night. They all know that he was thoroughly acquainted with the affairs of the Soudan. When did Her Majesty's Government consult him? Was it really true that the first consultation they had with General Gordon was a few days before they sent him out to carry out their policy in the Soudan? He (Mr. Stanhope) did not intend to dwell any further that night upon the unfortunate garrison of Sinkat. They had all of them heard with feelings of terrible distress of the unfortunate fate of that gallant garrison. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister told them that its relief was absolutely hopeless. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman when it became hopeless? Was it for a single moment pretended that from the 19th of November, when they first heard of the defeat of the Mahdi in another part of the Soudan, the relief of that garrison was at all beyond hope? They knew perfectly well that it was not. It was in the belief that it could be effected if General Baker was allowed to go, and yet they allowed General Baker to go with a force that was known to be utterly inadequate for the release of the garrison. They allowed him to go to what was the certain destruction of his force. Now, at the last moment they had authorized an expedition to Tokar. Why did they not send out an expedition before? The Prime Minister said the reason they did not send it before was that they wished to consult General Gordon, and they wanted to know if the sending out of an expedition would endanger the safety of Gene- ral Gordon. In the first place, he should like to know why they did not ask General Gordon when he was here in this country whether the despatch of a force under General Baker for the purpose of relieving the garrison was likely to endanger his safety when he was proceeding to Khartoum; and he should like to know how the situation was altered? General Baker was going with their consent to relieve this garrison, yet, when General Baker was defeated, they waited, forsooth, for precious days and weeks before they allowed a force to go out to accomplish the object for which they had permitted General Baker to go. He (Mr. Stanhope) confessed that it seemed to him all the evidence they had before them showed an utter indifference on the part of Her Majesty's Government to the safety of those garrisons which they might have relieved. But the country was not indifferent. The country knew that they still had resources which would enable them to relieve these unfortunate garrisons, if it was only right that they should be relieved. What the country would demand of Her Majesty's Government was this—when they talked of rendering special services to the cause of humanity by sending out on the 12th of February a small military force for the purpose of relieving Tokar, why did they not weeks ago take similar steps, which every man know ought to be taken, in order to save these unfortunate men, women, and children from being massacred as the consequence of their policy? He came now to consider the earlier policy of Her Majesty's Government in the Soudan. He had been much amused by one argument which the Prime Minister put forward. The right hon. Gentleman said—"You cannot blame us for what we have done in the Soudan, as we have got the very best men, and sent them there, beginning with Lord Dufferin, and going down to General Gordon." The right hon. Gentleman said further—"Can you tell us where we could have found better men?" Why, of course not; but the matter for consideration was not only the men they sent, but the instructions that were given to them, and the support Her Majesty's Government were willing to afford to them in carrying out the necessary policy they ought to pursue. In November they were told that the Egyptian Government had arrived at a decision as to their policy in the Soudan; that the Egyptian Government had determined that they would endeavour to try and hold Khartoum; and, further than that, that it was necessary to open out the route between Berber and Suakim. The answer of Her Majesty's Government was the same as usual. It was that the responsibility must entirely rest upon the Egyptian Government, who must rely upon their own resources. Her Majesty's Government knew perfectly well that the Egyptian Government had no resources left. It had used up all its men; it had used up all its money; and it could not form an army without the consent of the English Government; nor could it raise money for the purpose of sending out an army without their consent. It was, therefore, perfectly clear that the Egyptian Government could do nothing without the approval of Her Majesty's Government. They did not give that approval, and they did nothing themselves. On the 3rd of December a conference was held between Sir Evelyn Baring, General Sir Evelyn Wood, and General Stephenson to consider the best policy that could be adopted in regard to the Soudan. They recommended the opening out of the Berber and Suakim route just as the Egyptian Government had done, and they told Her Majesty's Government that that was the best means of saving the lives of the garrison. That was to say, that their own officers, the men most competent to advise Her Majesty's Government as to what was the best policy to adopt, did advise them that the opening out of the Berber and Suakim route was the only course they ought to adopt. What was the answer of Her Majesty's Government? On the 13th of December they said they were determined to send no troops whatever, and they told the Egyptian Government that they might not spend a single shilling except for the relief of the garrisons. They added that they would relieve the sea-port garrisons unless Turkey were called upon and undertook that duty by taking charge of the whole government of the Soudan. He was much surprised when he heard that declaration on the part of Her Majesty's Government. He should have thought that if there was one thing this country was pledged to Egypt, to Europe, and the rest of the world to do, it was to attempt the suppression of the Slave Trade in the Soudan. They had told Europe that there was nothing they had so much at heart as the suppression of the Slave Trade throughout the Soudan, and the means by which that object was to be attained was pointed out over and over again in the Papers which had been laid upon the Table. Nevertheless, Her Majesty's Government declared their readiness to hand over this great object which they had at heart to the great anti-human species of humanity. Passing over that, he came to this fact—that for 18 months Her Majesty's Government did nothing except advise the Egyptian Government. They certainly gave them plenty of advice. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister talked about abstaining from giving advice, but he (Mr. Stanhope) should like to read a short passage which appeared in a despatch from Sir Evelyn Baring, dated December 8, describing the policy hitherto adopted towards Egypt. Sir Evelyn Baring said— I wish to explain to your Lordships the attitude hitherto adopted towards the Egyptian Government in dealing with the affairs of the Soudan. I have given them every assistance I can legitimately afford in minor matters, and I have occasionally, in the course of conversation with Cherif Pasha and others, made a few suggestions on points of secondary importance. But I have at the same time clearly explained to them that the whole responsibility for the course of affairs in the Soudan must rest with the Khedive and his Ministers. That was the policy Sir Evelyn Baring thought it necessary to adopt in pursuance of his instructions, and he did give advice, when they turned to him and said— You are advising us every day on points which are of considerable importance, but they do not touch the main point of our policy, and we now call on you to advise on the much larger matters which are involved in the questions concerning the Soudan. He had read with great approbation and assent the speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. Forster) about the middle of December, when the right hon. Gentleman told the country very plainly that Her Majesty's Government could not govern Egypt by merely giving good advice, but that they must go beyond giving good advice and insist upon that advice being followed. The Government had apparently now reached that stage, and accordingly there was a despatch on the 4th of January intimating that the advice they had given to the Egyptian Government must be adopted. First of all, there was an intention and desire on the part of Her Majesty's Government to ignore the Soudan altogether; the second stage was that of giving good advice over and over again to the Egyptian Government; the third stage was that of insisting upon that advice being followed; but the great complaint he made was that they were in this, as in everything else, a great deal too late. Her Majesty's Government were bound, as the Prime Minister admitted, by every sentiment of honour to support their advice by their acts; and yet they delayed until the last possible moment, until they were too late to insist upon the advice they gave to the Egyptian Government being followed by them. On this ground he thought the House was entitled to say that the conduct of Her Majesty's Government in regard to the Soudan had not only been inconsistent, but vacillating to the last degree. There were, it seemed to him, speaking for himself, two things which the country demanded of the Government at the present time. They had at the very last moment, almost at the 12th hour, recognized in a small degree their responsibility, and authorized the sending out of a force for the purpose of relieving one garrison that happily might chance still to be able to maintain itself. But that was not nearly enough. On the contrary, he was satisfied that the country demanded further of them that they should carry out the policy the Egyptian Government originally recommended—the policy which their own officers told them was the only one that could be safely and consistently adopted—namely, that of opening out the route between Berber and Suakim, and further that they should give active support to General Gordon by showing that the English power was paramount and supreme. There was one further step which the country expected from Her Majesty's Government, and that was that they should strengthen the Government at Cairo. Certainly they had recognized, but only too tardily, that, after all, the great evil was at Cairo itself. Long ago General Gordon said that the strength of the insurrection in the Soudan was because of the weakness at Cairo. At the very first moment of Arabi's defeat that was obvious to everyone. Everybody saw it except Her Majesty's Government themselves, and they had, unhappily, refused to recognize it. The Natives of Egypt perfectly understood it. Europe was prepared to acquiesce in their decision, and yet their whole policy had been to minimize to every extent in their power the responsibility which justly and rightly devolved upon them from the moment of the defeat of Arabi. They ignored their responsibility, and when they could not do so they threw it upon the Egyptian Government. Let the House take as an example the treatment by Her Majesty's Government of the Khedive himself. They always interfered with the Khedive when they were not wanted to do so, and they never interfered with his Government when he wanted them to interfere. It was a most ingenious policy by which they could throw all the blame on the Government of Egypt, and get any credit, if there was any credit, for themselves. Foreign countries had long ago seen through all that, and they were prepared not only to attach to Her Majesty's Government all responsibility for everything that had taken place in Egypt, but they were prepared also to blame them for any faults of omission and commission by the Government. Their policy in this respect had every possible disadvantage. It broke down, in the first instance, from a circumstance which no doubt was a very unfortunate one to them and to everyone else. It broke down, in the first place, from the unfortunate visitation of the cholera; but that would not have been an unmixed evil if it had only taught the Government the lesson that it would not do hastily to withdraw their troops from Egypt before they had established a Government that would stand after the troops were withdrawn. The Prime Minister told them a good deal in regard to what had been done as to the establishment of institutions in Egypt, but the Judges who had been established there as one of those institutions ran away when the cholera came, and had not gone back since. When the Prime Minister announced at the Mansion House on the 9th of November that Her Majesty's Government had arrived at the conclusion that the time had come for withdrawing British troops from Egypt, did he tell his hearers that the objects for which they went to Egypt had been secured? Not a bit of it. He told the country that Her Majesty's Government desired to withdraw the troops in order that the experiment might be made in Egypt whether the Egyptian Government could carry on the government for themselves. Now, he (Mr. Stanhope) would ask if that was the spirit in which this great question should be approached? He ventured to say that there should be no attempt to withdraw the troops from Egypt solely on the ground of trying an experiment, but that the troops should only be withdrawn when there was a well-founded assurance that there would be a good Government in that country, and that the protection of the Suez Canal could be absolutely secured. They must now recognize for themselves that the real Minister of Egypt at the present moment was the Prime Minister of England; but they could not withdraw their troops by constantly proclaiming to the world that they were going to withdraw them. The only way of extricating themselves from the difficulties which surrounded them was by establishing a strong Government in Cairo—a Government that would last when Her Majesty's Government had really withdrawn their troops from the country. He had said that he had no desire to minimize the difficulties which Her Majesty's Government had to encounter when they undertook to interfere with the Government of Egypt. Financial, legal, and international obligations beset them at every turn. Any Government that desired to be leniently judged in regard to their difficulties ought to show that they were able to lead, and not only to drift. Two policies were from the first open to the Government, and two policies only. They might have adopted that policy which was recommended in such graceful terms by one of their own Colleagues—they might have allowed the Egyptians to "stew in their own juice." But they knew the country would never stand that for one moment. They might, on the other hand, take the full responsibility of the policy which devolved upon them in Egypt, and England would have supported them, whatever their Radical supporters might have said. But they did nothing of the kind. The policy of the Government had been half- hearted, the result of divided Councils. It was never continuous; it was generally unintelligible; and, even when intelligible, it was thoroughly disheartening to their friends. It deserved to fail, and it had failed. The time had come when failure did not only mean danger and humiliation, but it had now become vital to the interests and honour of England and the future of Egypt. Neglected opportunities, evaded responsibilities, excited the ridicule of Europe, and their callous indifference to human suffering until it was too late to afford effectual relief had excited the contempt of the country. In the words of the Prime Minister, they had "added to abnegated duty a chapter of perpetrated wrong."

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Sir Wilfrid Lawson.)

Motion agreed to.

Debate adjourned till Thursday.