The Egyptian Problem

216 THE EGYPTIAN PROBLEM
were due to the whole system of government and tration, which was one of divided and ill-defined sibilities. In the Government itself, and in ever 37-department, there were Egyptians who, nomin^ superiors, were in fact merely the servants of jgj^ subordinates. The best Egyptians had grown xrxoff* ^ more reluctant to accept such humiliating Hence there had been a parallel deterioration quality of the Egyptians who were prepared with or under the British.
Where to-day was there a Riaz or a Nubar ? Ministers of that stamp had disappeared, just Englishmen of Lord Cromer's stamp. Egyptian public sometimes held the English responsible for things that were not done at all oia advice. But how was the Egyptian public to It knew that, as Lord Granville laid it down in "bite* days of the Occupation, the Egyptians are abide by British advice. How was it to know advice began and where it stopped ? How was it t>o 1^ whether Egyptian Ministers, who perhaps inspiroci ^ little personal confidence, were to be believed whom, t sheltered themselves behind the alleged wishes of British ? And had not the British themselves subst:i-t.x orders for advice and made subserviency the one ess^r. qualification for office instead of character and iirfcegri
Mutatis mutandis, did not the same apply to IP'a influences ? On this point it would not be fair i:o produce what has been said to me about presont:-influences. I prefer to confine myself to one ioLStrs given to me out of the past. Many Egyptians v encouraged by Lord Cromer to make a stand aga the arbitrary and corrupt tendencies displayed "by ex-Khedive, but they were left to suffer for thei3? j>« when Lord Cromer's successors thought it more j>o: to give Abbas a freer hand, perhaps, as the themselves now suspected, not so much in placate Mm as to give him enough rope to h&ng British official world had steadily cut itself off from any intimate contact with Egyptians, save with those who were prepared to have no opinions of their own.