It is true that Egypt has much more to show for her money than Turkey. If she has gone deeply in debt, and contracted heavy foreign loans, she can at least point to great public works for the permanent good of Egypt; although in the construction of some of these she has anticipated, if not the wants of the country, at least its resources for many years to come.
For example, at the First Cataract, I found men at work upon a railroad that is designed to extend to Khartoum, the capital of Soudan, and the point of junction of the Blue and the White Nile! In the latter part of its course to this point, it is to cross the desert; as it must still farther, if carried eastward, as projected, to Massowah on the Red Sea! These are gigantic projects, but about as necessary to the present commerce of Egypt as would be a railway to the very heart of Africa.
But all the money has not gone in this way. The Khedive has had the ambition to make of Egypt a great African Empire, by adding to it vast regions in the interior. For this he has sent repeated expeditions up the Nile, and is in a continual conflict with his barbarous neighbors, and has at last got into a serious war with Abyssinia.
But even this is not all. Not satisfied with managing the affairs of government, the Khedive, with that restless spirit which characterizes him, is deeply involved in all sorts of private enterprises. He is a speculator on a gigantic scale, going into every sort of mercantile adventure. He is a great real estate operator. He owns whole squares in the new parts of Cairo and Alexandria, on which he is constantly building houses, besides buying houses built by others. He builds hotels and opera houses, and runs steamboats and railroads, like a royal Jim Fisk. The steamer on which we crossed the Mediterranean from Constantinople to Alexandria, belonged to the Khedive, and the railroad that brought us to Cairo, and the hotel in which we were lodged, and the steamer in which we went up the Nile.
Nor is he limited in his enterprises to steamers and railroads. He is a great cotton and sugar planter. He owns a large part of the land in Egypt, on which he has any number of plantations. His immense sugar factories, on which he has expended millions of pounds, may be seen all along the valley of the Nile; and he exports cotton by the shipload from the port of Alexandria.
A man who is thus "up to his eyes" in speculation, who tries to do everything himself, must do many things badly, or at least imperfectly. He cannot possibly supervise every detail of administration, and his agents have not the stimulus of a personal interest to make the most of their opportunity. I asked very often, when up the Nile, if these great sugar factories which I saw paid, and was uniformly answered "No;" but that they would pay in private hands, if managed by those who had a personal stake in saving every needless expense, and increasing every possible source of income. But the Khedive is cheated on every side, and in a hundred ways. And even if there were not actual fraud, the system is one which necessarily involves immense waste and loss. Here in Cairo I find it the universal opinion that almost all the Khedive's speculations have been gigantic failures, and that they are at the bottom of the trouble which now threatens the country.
Such is the present financial condition of the Khedive and of Egypt. I couple the two together; although an attempt is made to distinguish them, and we hear that although Egypt is nearly bankrupt, yet that the Khedive is personally "the richest man in the world!" But the accounts are so mixed that it is very difficult to separate them. There is no doubt that the Khedive has immense possessions in his hands; but he is, at the same time, to use a commercial phrase, enormously "extended;" he is loaded with debt, and has to borrow money at ruinous rates; and if his estate were suddenly wound up, and a "receiver" appointed to administer upon it, it is extremely doubtful what would be the "assets" left.
Such an administrator has appeared. Mr. Cave has just come out from England, to try and straighten out the Khedive's affairs. But he has a great task before him. Wise heads here doubt whether his mission will come to anything, whether indeed he will be allowed to get at the "bottom facts," or to make anything more than a superficial examination, as the basis of a "whitewashing report" which may bolster up Egyptian credit in Paris and London.
But if he does come to know "the truth and the whole truth," then I predict that he will either abandon the case in despair, or he will have to recommend to the Khedive, as the only salvation for him, a more sweeping and radical reform than the latter has yet dreamed of. It requires some degree of moral courage to talk to a sovereign as to a private individual; to speak to him as if he were a prodigal son who had wasted his substance in riotous living; to tell him to moderate his desires, and restrain his ambition, and to live a quiet and sober life; and to "live within his means." But this he must do, or it is easy to see where this brilliant financiering will end.
If Mr. Cave can persuade the Khedive to restrain his extravagance; to stop building palaces (he has now more than he can possibly use); and to give up, once for all, as the follies of his youth, his grand schemes of annexing the whole interior of Africa, as he has already annexed Nubia and Soudan; and to "back out" as gracefully as he can (although it is a very awkward business), of his war with Abyssinia; and then to follow up the good course he has begun with his Suez Canal shares, by selling all his stock in every commercial company (for one man must not try to absorb all the industry of a kingdom); if he can persuade him to sell all the railways in Egypt; and to sell every steamship on the Mediterranean, except such as may be needed for the use of the government; and every boat on the Nile except a yacht or two for his private pleasure; to sell all his hotels and theatres; his sugar factories and cotton plantations; and abandoning all his private speculations, to be content with being simply the ruler of Egypt, and attending to the affairs of government, which are quite enough to occupy the thoughts of "a mind capacious of such things;" then he may succeed in righting up the ship. Otherwise I fear the Khedive will follow the fate of his master the Sultan.
But impending bankruptcy is not the worst feature in Egypt. There is something more rotten in the State than bad financial management. It is the want of justice established by law, which shall protect the rights of the people. At present, liberty there is none; the government is an absolute despotism, as much as it was three thousand years ago. The system under which the Israelites groaned, and for which God brought the plagues upon Egypt, is in full force to-day. The Khedive has obtained great credit abroad by the expeditions of Sir Samuel Baker and others up the Nile, which were said to be designed to break up the slave trade. But what signifies destroying slavery in the interior of Africa, when a system still more intolerable exists in Egypt itself? It is not called slavery; it is simply forced labor, which, being interpreted, means that when the Khedive wants ten thousand men to dig a canal or build a railroad, he sends into the requisite number of villages, and "conscripts" them en masse, just as he conscripts his soldiers (taking them away from their little farms, perhaps, at the very moment when their labor is most needed), and sets them to work for himself, under taskmasters, driving them to work under the goad of the lash, or, if need be, at the point of the bayonet. For this labor, thus cruelly exacted, they receive absolutely nothing – neither pay nor food. A man who has constructed some of the greatest works of Modern Egypt, said to me, as we were riding over the Delta, "I built this railroad. I had under me twenty thousand men – all forced labor. In return for their labor, I gave them —water!" "But surely you paid them wages?" "No." "But at least you gave them food?" "No." "But how did they live?" "The women worked on the land, and brought them bread and rice." "But suppose they failed to bring food, what became of the workmen?" "They starved." And not only were they forced to work without pay and without food, but were often