EGYPT AS IT IS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 233, 19 October 1877, Page 19

EGYPT AS IT IS.

With few exceptions " Egypt for the Egyptians" is now unmistakably the national aspiration, and no one who knows the countiy doubt that if the Khedive were to proclaim his independence toTnorrow he would be supported by eveiy class of the population. At the same time the totally distinct sentiment of religious fealty to the Caliph has lost none of its force, and in any struggle involving positive peril to Islam, not merely political danger to the Porte — the Arab would infallibly make common cause with the Turk — just as Ireland, if there were no Foreign Enlistment Act would similarly help the Pope. But this impulse of religions sympathy would be quite as strong with both Khedive and Fellahs if the political tie between the two countries were completely rent, and conflicts in no way with the other logic of events which points clearly to that inevitable and not distant consummation. The g.acrous loyalty •with which the Porte's requisition for a contingent has recently been responded to argues nothing against this view of the set of national feeling, nor will it retard by a day the shuffling off of the tributary volte. It would as yet be premature to forecast the outcome of the present war to any of the interests concerned ; but nothing can be more certain in unaccomplished events than that, suffer who may, Egypt will be a gainer in the result. If the Porte escape heavy loss and humiliation the Khedive will have earned the right to new concessions, tending to sever the few remaining fibres of the thread that still binds him to Stamboul ; while in the worst «vent of Turkish dismemberment he may safely count on emerging from the general wreck piloted by British friendship, it may be into complete independence, or at worst— or best — exchanging the costly suzerainty of the Porte for the fostering and disinterested protection of Great Britain, — UPCoan.