Typescript and printed cabinet papers and parliamentary papers on events in Egypt [‎184v] (368/520)

for the last three years vitiated our whole relations with the Egyptians, served as
an irritant by which hostile passions can at any moment be inflamed, and sapped
time after time the influence and good intentions of those statesmen who have been
willing to meet our claims in a reasonable spirit; on the other hand, in my opinion,
its value to us as a guarantee has been overestimated. Whatever may be the final
solution of the problem, our effective guarantees are our military and naval position
in Egypt, and the variously penetrating influences of our forty years moral
predominance in the country.
34. I have been solicitous that my particular proposal that His Majesty’s
Government should recommend to Parliament the termination of the protectorate,
contrary though it may be (except as part of a general bargain) to their expiessed
intentions, should precisely not imply the abandonment of “ almost the entire position
taken up by them.’ In your Lordship's parting interview with Adly Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , after
the negotiations had broken down, you stated that the British policy could only be
executed with Egyptian co-operation which by his intended resignation he was
refusing; and in the final paragraph of the letter to the Sultan of the 3rd December
it was stated that His Majesty's Government were prepared to consider in a spirit
of co-operation any methods which might be suggested for carrying out
the substance of their proposals. I had produced, by silencing the elements of
disruption, the state of affairs which is contemplated in the antepenultimate
paragraph of that letter as the condition of further pTogress towards a settlement;
and in giving the advice which appears to have been so unwelcome I did not feel that
I was acting unharmoniously with your statement and that of His Majesty’s Govern-
?ilent. While making it possible for an Egyptian Government, willing to co-operate,
to take office, I by no means overthrew the principle of negotiation, but left the
majority of the subjects of discussion for eventual settlement by that means, safe
guarding in the meanwhile their present state. But for any negotiation and any
settlement healthy conditions were essential; as it was, the protectorate was a sore
infecting the whole relation of the two countries.
35. Though I had already pointed out that no Egyptian would sign his name to
anything short of independence, His Majesty's Government have expressed surprise
at this statement in my telegram No. 33, have inferred a violent change in Egyptian
sentiment, and have implied that I have been driven to suggest a desperate expedient.
This is not the case. The Egyptians are inherently suspicious of the policy of His
Majesty’s Government, and their suspicions have doubtless increased under the
influence of recent disappointments. ‘ They feel that they negotiate under the
disadvantages of weakness and inexperience and are excessively apprehensive of
unwittingly compromising themselves. To the. extent to which these suspicions have
grown, and are reflected in intractability, their sentiments mav be said to have
changed; but in the sentiment of hostility to the protectorate,‘common to all the
educated and semi-educated classes, there has been no change. This sentiment,
kindled by agitation, provocation, or, occasionally, material grievance, has from time
to time flared up; but it is not at such a time that I should conceivably recommend
to His Majesty s Government the bold and generous concession which I believe to be
a necessary condition to a settlement giving any sure hopes of security and friendship.
I have recommended it at a moment when, the resentment caused by the letter to the
Sultan having subsided, and the forces of subversion having been weakened, it can be
considered, as His Majesty's Government would have desired that it should lie
considered, upon its own merits.
36. His Majesty's Government claim to have gone, in response to my advice,
to the utmost limit of concession, and charge me with having refused to recommend
their liberal proposals to the Sultan and to the Egyptian authorities.
37. I must here shortly recapitulate the advice which I gave, without repeating
the arguments which I advanced in favour of its acceptance.
38. Your Lordship had authorised me to assent to the original programme of
Safwat Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. , of which the main features were :—
(1.) The abolition of martial law.
(2.) Extension of Egyptian control in the administration.
(3.) Constitutional Government.
(4.) The establishment of an Egyptian Ministry for Foreign Affairs
(5.) Recognition of the offer of His Majesty’s Government to abolish the
protectorate, but not of the other provisions of the rejected draft
convention.
39. Of these, the first two had been conceded by the letter to the Sultan of the
3rd December: the third was not open to opposition on the ground of British