ملف من أوراق مطبوعة مصنفة تحت عنوان "التفاوض المصري" بين كرزون وعدلي باشا والوفد المصري [ظ‎‎٨‎٥] (١٧٨/١٧٠)

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to be chief of the King’s Cabinet. The King had desired to appoint him last year, but
I understand that Adly Pasha prevented it, foreseeing that the result might he to shift
the political centre from the Ministry to the Palace. When, after Sarwat Pasha took
office, the King renewed his other to Nessim Pasha, the latter was most unwilling to
accept, and proposed conditions which he imagined would not he entertained ; they
were, however, agreed to (though I am told that they have not in fact been fulfilled),
and Nessim Pasha entered the King’s service. His Majesty has made full use of the
loyalty of this strict and conservative statesman. I have reason to know that
Nessim Pasha feels the embarrassment of his position, hut he is supported by his
devotion to the throne and his genuine d slike for the favouritism which characterises
the Sarwat Administration, and from which, when Prime Minister, he was himselt
sternly averse.
About the time when the Sarwat Ministry took office there were indications that
the Zaghlulists, deprived of any weighty leadership, w r ere attempting to establish
contact with Adly Pasha ; they met with no success and then made overtures to
Nessim Pasha, but there is no reason to suppose that he gave them any encouragement.
When, however, he was appointed to the Palace, it was part of his duty of establishing
the position of the throne to place the King in contact with all sections of opinion, and
during the latter pnrt of the summer deputations and petitions to the Palace by members
of the Zaghlulist Party became noticeably frequent. I was assured that, though the
King, being above parties, could not turn away any Egyptians from his door, no
encouragement was being given to the Zaghlulists.
I regret that, in the face of cumulative evidence to the contrary, I am no longer
able to accept these assurances. At the King’s accession-day reception on the
9th October, His Majesty took occasion openly to rebuke mudirs for having, as he
alleged, used their influence in favour of the Adly Party, and I understand that he
received the present so-called leader of the Wafd, a certain Saadi-el-Masri Be) 7 , with
marked cordiality. I hear on all hands that emissaries of the Palace proclaim
pro-Zaghlulist sentiments and are in close touch with Zaghlulist newspapers; in a
recent issue of the Zaghlulist “ Liberte,” whose suspension by the Ministry was the
chief immediate cause of a recent crisis, the photographs of the King and Mme. Zaghlul
appeared in conspicuous juxtaposition, and an evidently inspired .-irticle congratulated
His Majesty on the courage which he must have required in order, f >r political reasons,
to have concealed so long from the people his real opinions.
His Majesty, of course, has no Zaghlulist sympathies ; Zaghlul Pasha, he i*
confident, is well out of the way, and the moment he has chosen for encouraging
Zaghlul’s Party is significantly the moment when the party’s fortunes are clearly
waning and those of the Adly Party are in the ascendant.
The logic of events forces me to the conclusion that the dominant motive of the
King’s actioi.s has been jealousy of any rival power, whether in an organ of Government,
an individual statesman, or a member of his ow 7 n family, and that, for him, to be above
parties is to ride upon their nicely-balanced dissensions.
It is in these circumstances that Sarwat Pasha is about to ask the King to sign a
Constitution. I understand that the King’s present intention is to reply that he is
unable to sign a Constitution drawn up by an unrepresentative body of men, and that
he proposes to refer the matter to another body, representative of all shades of political
opinion and of every liberal profession, having only this in common, that they will all be
nominated by His Majesty, or, more correctly speaking, by the Ministry which he
intends to bring into office. This refusal would have the double result of Sarwat's
resigning and the promulgation of the Constitution being delayed. I am informed
by Mohammed Sherei’i Pasha, who was recently charged by the King to form a Court
or Conservative Party, but failed to discover its elements, that the view which he was
to expound was that Egypt is not yet lipe for parliamentary institutions, and that a
year or two of firm autocracy is still required. Tnere is indeed much to be said for this
view, but I see little prospect of a firm autocracy maintaining itself in the Egypt of
to-day without external support, and our experience of the exercise of personal power
by other rulers of the dynasty of Mohammed Aly suggests that it would not be used
for the benefit of the people of Egypt.
The resignation of Sarwat Pasha wmuld be followed, I understand, according to the
King’s intentions, by a Tewfik Nessim Ministry, formed of very much the same group
which composed his previous Ministry. Administratively they might well be better
than the present Government, but I distrust the political implications.
A vicious element in the present situation in Egypt, so far as we are directly con
cerned, appears to me to lie in the maintenance of martial law, which in itself seems most
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