Egyptian Egyptian journal, the Bosphore Egyptien. Over the turn of the year 1884 hung the lengthening shadow of impending tragedy at Khartoum, which Baring could only watch as a spectator, chafing at the heavy cost of the straining relief force. He cared little that the world imputed to him and to (Sir) Edwin Egerton, his chargé d'affaires during the past summer, futilities which they had had to transmit from London, such as the ‘hope of Her Majesty's Government’ that the trapped hero would ‘remain some time longer at Khartoum’, or Mr. Gladstone's faith in an appeal to ‘the Mahdi's reason’. But, when the worst was known, in the early days of February 1885, he did care profoundly that, against his own judgement, he had sent Gordon to his death.
It was never Baring's way to cry over spilt milk; and insisting, when none remained to be rescued, on effectual evacuation of all the Sudan except Suakin, he turned once more to finance and irrigation. In this (Sir) Colin Scott-Moncrieff, in that (Sir) Edgar Vincent, had forged ahead, in spite, rather than by grace, of Nubar, whose hostility increased towards both and towards Baring who championed them. Nubar continued, however, to work with the latter, in fair accord, in order to lighten the peasant's burden by remission of the corvée for canal clearance. But if he detected any hand put out to touch the sanctuary of the interior his jealousy blazed forth.
Yet it was in this sad summer of 1885 that the dawn broke. The powers, outworn by the importunities of their nationals, consented after all on reasonable terms to a loan of nine millions, wherewith Egypt might pay the indemnities and spend a million on works of irrigation. Unwittingly France further lightened Baring's burden by procuring the dispatch of Sir Henry Drummond Wolff [q. v.] to negotiate with the Sultan a British withdrawal in three years' time. When he came on from Constantinople to Egypt at the end of the year, he absolved Baring from so much responsibility for external affairs that for nearly two years the latter could see to the laying out of his hard-won million which was to bring in cent. per cent. from the land; and he could even think of calling other plans for reform out of abeyance—plans for justice, police, and so forth. Nubar scented danger to the interior and stiffened. He had watched Granville's star pale in London and Salisbury's rise. How would it fare with Baring now? Nubar challenged him in 1887 over the succession to Valentine Baker in the command of the police and affronted him to his face in London, only to discover that, in the everlasting flux of parties, the imperial policy of Great Britain remains ever the same. Once his man was down, Baring compromised the quarrel. There was not money yet for any serious reform at the interior; and also—it was his way.
The dawn brightened. Thanks to new canals and a patched-up barrage, the yield from arable lands steadily swelled a revenue on which no extraordinary call had been made for three years. The Treasury accounts of 1888 all but balanced; in 1889 a surplus appeared; while the victory of (Lord) Grenfell at Toski guaranteed relief from further expenditure on Nubian defence. With luck in avoiding other entanglements Egypt had won her race against bankruptcy and international control. Two years earlier, the British occupation had been stabilized by the Sultan's refusal, at the instigation of France, to ratify the clause of the Wolff Agreement giving right of re-entry after withdrawal; and since then foreign capital had entered Egypt more boldly. With Nubar gone and Riaz in his room, Baring could attend to railways, justice, education, and other matters crying for reform, with money in hand and promise of more. He procured the almost complete abolition of the corvée, and on the advice of (Sir) John Scott [q. v.], constrained Riaz to abolish the ‘brigandage commissions’ which had dealt as courts-martial with agrarian crime, by use of torture and the forbidden kurbash. Now that more and better judges could be paid, he directed official attention to reform of the native courts, and, in 1890, at the price of the resignation of Riaz, had Scott created adviser to the department of Justice. Signs of approval and support had been lavished by Whitehall. He was gazetted C.B. in 1885, K.C.B. in 1887, and G.C.M.G. a twelvemonth later. Force of character, unflinching reasonableness, strength to compromise, and intellectual superiority had already given him dominance over every one in Egypt, his diplomatic colleagues not excepted. The French consul-general, the Marquis de Reversaux, confessed it more candidly than the Quai d'Orsay could approve.
Baring's work was growing under his hand, and his politique de replâtrage was beginning to be forgotten in a policy of perfection. Greater projects were in his mind than were consistent with any immediate realization of the end for which
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