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Their camp, and laboring the low tent up- We knew not love, we knew not jar,

From The Fortnightly Review. FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN EGYPT.

Now it is certain that, if M. de Lesseps had applied his spirit of perseverance, his clear foresight, his power of unravelling the future of international relations — in a word, his genius, towards the conception and execution of any other idea, of whatsoever nature, in any other quarter of the

THE Suez Canal question presents so many different aspects that the treatment of it might easily assume encyclopædic proportions. The political and geograph ical chronicles of the isthmus, and the attempts made in ancient times to open a ↓ globe, he would not have reaped the passage through it, constitute the history of civilization itself. The Isthmus of Suez is the best standpoint for the observation of humanity in its childhood. The scientific and economic records of the nineteenth century find their most interesting chapters in the works of the canal, in the modifications in the construction of vessels brought about by its navigation, as well as in the changes consequently effected in the great currents of commerce. The waters of the world, in their distribution over the surface of the globe and their movements in the basins which confine and direct them, have been the cause of human civilization, and have determined, by conditions which we can examine, the march of its commerce and its industry. The great valleys of the globe have been the main routes of human genius; and the basins of the great rivers, the offspring of nature, saw the birth of that commerce which has enriched the world. It has been reserved for our age to behold man in his turn creating, as it were, a new basin of a mighty stream, and thus completing the system of river routes which has ever strongly influenced the civilized societies of mankind.

popular fame and national affection which in his green old age reward the efforts of his earlier years. In Panama M. de Lesseps would never have achieved the national grandeur which none now deny him, and of which he laid the foundations between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. And the reason is that Egypt has always filled, and still fills, every imagination in France, and that the traditions of France, ever revived by new events, incessantly carry her thoughts back to the banks of the Nile. Thus, when M. de Lesseps was seen planting upon this spot the banner of his noble enterprise, he was deemed to be France herself in one phase of her natural evolution. The idea of the Suez Canal is a French idea, carried out in a land where France has played a great and glorious part; and nothing could efface from the French mind the conviction that there is a national dignity to be upheld in all that affects the great work to which M. de Lesseps has bound his name.

There is, moreover, a particular virtue which adds to the nobility of the idea as it is conceived in France that the scheme of piercing the Isthmus of Suez has been considered a grand peace-bear

It would be a mistake to see in the construction of a maritime canal by an illusing conception. In the eyes of those who trious Frenchman the only cause, or even from a distance followed M. de Lesseps the chief cause, of the interest taken by in his career, it seemed like another link France in all that touches the water-way. added to the blessed and beneficent chain M. Ferdinand de Lesseps is one of the which binds peoples together in order to glories of France; the country knows make them associates, allies, and friends. that the total value of the nation is aug- A grand idea of peace, that was at the mented by the fact that she counts him same time a French idea, of which the among her sons. He has shared his per- nation felt proud such was the concepsonal renown with his fatherland, and tion which prevailed in France concerning every one in France feels that whatever the communication to be established be happens to him attains the proportions of tween the two seas. It has sometimes! a national event. In thinking of him, been said that the French make war for men spontaneously repeat the saying of an idea, and they have often seemed to Terence concerning mankind: "Naught welcome the reproach with a certain satisthat affects him is indifferent to us." | faction. Not every one, they think, is

capable of having so robust a faith in his | indubitable that improvements would have

ideas, and they were proud to think that
they were deemed capable of forgetting
their interests for the sake of a noble
passion. Horace has said:

O cives, cives, quærenda pecunia primum est;
Virtus post nummos.

been made in the methods by which the Anglo-French influence worked, if the policy of the two countries had been directed in some other way during the mournful period of Arabi's attempt at revolution. Common action on the part of France and England would have led to a more speedy result, and one better for both the two powers, than that which was produced by the isolated action of England. But two faults were committed, both of which lie heavy upon the two nations. The policy of England was uncertain; it oscillated between a Turkish intervention, an intervention of the two powers, and an isolated intervention. The policy of France was timid; it made pre

In France men were ready to believe that the world reversed the phrase when applying it to them, and said of them, nummi post virtutem. But it is equally true to say that France makes peace for an idea. Peace it was that she sought to make by the Suez Canal. This water in the midst of the lands, this inner sea of the ancient civilization, she converted into an ocean which reached out to, and with a new arm touched, the Indian Ocean. Istence of being European, instead of bethat idea of peace which was to be caught as in a fisherman's net and brought up from the depths of the Suez Canal, is that now changed for an idea of war? Will that cause which was to bring the nations together result in estranging them from each other? It is impossible, I will not say to desire, but even to suppose, for a single moment, that it can be so.

The mistakes of French policy in Egypt have obscured minds upon both sides of the Channel; but whatever those errors may have been, the fact remains estab. lished as firm as ever that the AngloFrench alliance, in the Mediterranean as elsewhere, is the surest pledge of the world's peace, and can best give unlimited scope to the economic progress of the two countries. The idea of an Egypt developing all its natural riches under the benevolent eye of France and England in close alliance is a political conception of the highest rank, which by the extension of its results should produce the most salutary effects upon the whole body politic of Europe. It has often been sought to give a form to this idea, and the policy which has been called the policy of the condominium has been, whatever may have been said of it, a happy phase of the Anglo-French alliance. do not mean to say that the condominium was a necessary form of it, and one can easily understand that the alliance in Egypt might take another shape. It is

ing and remaining Anglo-French alone; and at the end it committed the error of abdicating, at the moment when it ought to have acted. These two faults produced their consequences; England has undertaken a task which will give her very great anxieties, and she has not, from the point of view of Anglo-Indian interests, more security or more tranquillity, for a short or long term, than if her power had been shared at the same time as her difficulties. France, in drawing back, has been unable to explain the reasons, and, so to speak, the conditions of her withdrawal; and at the present time she seems to be in danger of losing that moral influence which she never meant to abandon, when she thought that she was only holding aloof, for her ally's advantage, from a political movement in which she believed she could leave the initiative to England. The political idea which has guided the conduct of France was wrong, but it was honest; it contained nothing adverse to the policy of the intimate alliance, the entente cordiale, between France and England. Thus it is with profound astonishment that we in France have seen the English press use towards us most outrageous expressions. Wounds have been inflicted which attempts must be made to heal. Those who have caused them are without excuse; and it is as true to say that they have failed in patriotism towards their own

nation.

country as in decency towards a great | highway of civilization ought to be traversed with equal liberty, and in equal security, by all the nations of the universe; and if this be true when speaking of all peoples, is it not still more true of France than of any other country?

There is but one means of repairing the evil which the two countries did by the faultiness of their foreign policy in Egypt. England suffers, and will suffer, from the indecision which she showed at In the future of the commercial relathe beginning, and the disadvantages of tions of England and India, there is one her isolated position imposing on her an problem which concerns much that is unexcessive responsibility. France suffers, known; that is, the financial problem. If and will suffer, from its impolitic resolve the coinage of the United States of not to interfere, and from what has been America is the same as that of Great considered an abandonment of its natural Britain, that is not true of the coinage of ally. It is on the soil of the Isthmus of India. India is a country with a silver Suez, in the settlement of the question of currency, and the adjustment of Anglothe canal, that the basis of a harmonious Indian commerce is extremely difficult policy must be found. France only ex-now, and may become still more so, by pects this, that her name and moral influ- reason of the difference of money. Unless ence should still serve the cause of civil- care be taken, the movement of Angloization in Egypt, without hurting England, American business will tend more and but without being hurt by her. Whether more to the detriment of Anglo-Indian France in Egypt be the guest of the khe- business, and the United States will take dive or of the empress of India, she has the place of India as the intermediaries a right to be treated with the considera- of English commerce with China. It is tion due to an ally and friend. In return in the power of France to re-establish the for this respect, England will find in equilibrium; having the same currency France a support which she will certainly as India, she can bring back, viâ Suez, to need some day, to prevent her influence Europe all that might escape by way of from giving way before those eclipses America and California. France, then, which should always be looked for in Ori- has a like interest with England in the ental politics. But how is this mainte- development, possibly boundless, of the nance of the name of France at its due relations of India with England and the moral height to be achieved, concurrently continent of Europe. Even now Burmah with the increased political harmony of sends her rice to Italy; even now the the two nations? By respecting the name | culture of wheat is making considerable of France in the Suez Canal, by showing progress in India. England and the contithat England has in view only the claims nent of Europe will always have need of of justice, and is not pursuing a policy of foreign corn; and in the same way as the ill-conceived egotism in all that concerns ancient world had its granaries beyond that international and pacific road which Europe, in Africa, so do we modern peois the creation of a great Frenchman, in ples have ours also beyond Europe, in spite of the strenuous opposition of a America, at the present time, but we can great Englishman. The Suez Canal is have them in India. It is, perhaps, we the highway to India; it is an open route might even say certainly, an unpleasant which England has the greatest interest fact for European agriculture; and the in seeing frequented by all Europe, and duty of the governments and peoples of especially by France. Has England ever old Europe is to deliver agriculture from dreamt of shutting India within its own the fetters of a legislation which in many confines, of closing Bombay or Calcutta countries is out of date. But whatever against the industry and commerce of the opinion may be held upon the extent and world? Is not her colonial policy the effects of the agricultural conflict raging policy of the greatest possible amount of between ancient Europe and the rest of liberty? England cannot dream of cut- the universe, whatever ideas of legislative ting off India at Port Said. The grand reforms on behalf of agriculture and