the instance of Lord Granville, and Sir | the Prime Minister withdraw this Bill, Charles Rivers Wilson had stated that and do not let him come there and ask there was no grounds for believing in £25,000 to glorify this Profession, which the complicity of Arabi; but, on the was kept up for the purpose of destroycontrary, from the evidence adduced for ing mankind. He did not want to dethe prosecution, a very good case might prive Lords Alcester and Wolseley of the have been made for the defence; and he tribute of affection which might be paid (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) stood up and ac- to them by those who approved of these cused the Khedive of being the guilty warlike deeds. Let them have a penny party, just as his right hon. Friend subscription-a national subscription, accused Arabi, but with this difference- headed by Tracy Turnerelli. [Laughter.] that if he were proved to be wrong he The House laughed; but he assured would apologize to the House, which hon. Members that they would collect a his right hon. Friend had not done. large amount. Where was the hon. At the Royal Academy banquet, Lord Member for Aylesbury (Mr. G. Russell), Alcester said— who wrote an article last week against the Whigs, and went into the Government this week? He said "I wish to refute a statement which has been widely circulated. It has been said that the attack on the forts of Alexandria was in consequence of the massacre. Nothing can be more false." This was the first time he ever heard of a man publicly accusing himself of falsehood, for the statement was made on Lord Alcester's own authority. Lord Alcester might be a man of very great qualities indeed; but he did not think a man who went up and down the country making statements like these had such qualities that they ought to give him £25,000 of the public money. Already he was in receipt of something like £2,000 a-year, which was pretty good pay. But, even if Lord Alcester was the bravest man, and the greatest Admiral, and the greatest after-dinner speaker that ever lived, he would object to this grant. It was all very well to get up and say-"Oh, why do you object to these poor men geting their money; they are only the instruments of a policy? Do not visit the sins of the Government upon them." But he did not hold with that. He said they could not separate these deeds and the doers of them from the policy under which these deeds were carried out. If they glorified deeds they glorified the policy which led to those deeds, and that was the way in which it was looked at by the country at large, in spite of their hair-splitting; and he was not prepared to glorify these deeds of blood. He was delighted to hear the Prime Minister at Stafford House quote the words of Garibaldi, in which he expressed his pain and horror that it should be necessary that one portion of mankind should be set aside to have for their profession the business of destroying the other. Let "The Egyptian Campaign may, after all, do us no permanent injury, and for the moment it has done us unquestionable good. It has improved Mr. Gladstone's position with the timid and respectable, who, oddly enough, are usually the most bellicose, and it has made him for the moment popular with the London mob." The London mob who, a few years ago, used to break his windows! The converted Jingoes, now his most devoted followers! Let them have this subscription. It would pay well. They would have Archbishops subscribing to it; his hon. Friend the President of the Peace Society would subscribe to it, and all the old women. The London mob would give their pennies. That was far better than coming to the House and calling on those who objected to these proceedings to pay their quota. He should take every opportunity of opposing the Bill, or any other of a similar nature, to show his detestation of the policy which led to these proceedings. He would conclude by quoting the words of the right hon. Gentleman, delivered three years ago when he was on the Mid Lothian campaign. They were noble words. They filled him with admiration at the time, and he adhered to them now. The present Prime Minister was condemning with that noble eloquence of which he was an unrivalled master attacks upon weak and helpless nationalities, and he said "Before God and before man, we can assert, every one of us, that we have no share in these proceedings, and every man can exempt himself from any participation in acts which he regards that no trifling or secondary considerations will stand in our way in order to pursuade our countrymen to arrive at a proper estimate of a as mischievous and ruinous, and should resolve results." policy so unhappy and so mischievous in its | so, if the massacres were instigated by the Khedive's orders and carried on under his favour and toleration, and if Following the example set by the Prime Minister, he now took the step of opposing this Bill, which was nothing more or less than to glorify the policy which he then so ably condemned. MR. ILLINGWORTH seconded the LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL said, that when the Bill came before the House in another form he himself voted for it, because he looked upon it not as any particular compliment to Lord Alcester, but as a tribute rendered by Parliament to the British Navy. The House would recollect that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who took part in the discussion, was quite unable to give any satisfactory explanation of Lord Alcester's speech. The statement of Lord Alcester that he bombarded Alexandria in consequence of the massacres he accepted as literally true, and as the blunt, outspoken words of an honest sailor, who was perfectly decided that, under no circumstances, should the truth be kept back from his countrymen. If those riots were the cause of the bombardment of Alexandria, and if for that bombardment the House was now asked to vote that sum, he really thought it became a serious question for them to consider whether it would be in accordance either with precedent or public policy to proceed hastily with the Bill? He acknowledged that Parliament had generally rewarded Generals and Admirals for pre-eminent services; but it took into account not only whether the services themselves were glorious, but whether the origin out of which those services arose was also glorious. His hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) had made an accusation, not without the most ample proof, against the Khedive of being the author of these massacres. If that were Sir Wilfrid Lawson the bombardment of Alexandria took place in consequence of those massacres, then he wanted the House to ask-"Is the origin of those services which are now under consideration so glorious as to allow the House to proceed further in this matter without more inquiry?" The Khedive, it must be recollected, was not only our ally but our puppet; he was absolutely and entirely in our hands and at our mercy. It seemed to him, then, that it was impossible for Her Majesty's Government for a very long time back to escape the responsi bility of any of the acts of the Khedive; and, more than that, if there was one intimate confident and friend of the Khedive during the progress of these matters it was the Consul General at Cairo, Sir Edward Malet, who, as they knew, was one of the most capable men in the Diplomatic Service, and they knew further that a capable diplomatist engaged in the East would always be aware of everything that was going on and immediately contemplated by the ruling Powers. They were thus put in a rather curious position, if these premises were accepted. He believed it could be proved that the massacre at Alexandria was the work of the Khedive. He believed it as strongly as his hon. Friend (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) did, and that belief rested on primiâ facie grounds in the proceedings connected with the trial of Arabi Pasha. If the proceedings against that man had been carried out to the extreme length, much of the evidence might have led them to form a widely different opinion of the merits of the proposal now before the House. He had reason to believe that when Lord Dufferin arrived at Cairo this evidence was laid before him, and he asked whether it could be proved in a Court of Law or satisfactorily to the Government? The reply was that if Lord Dufferin would give safe conduct and a pledge of British protection to any witnesses who might come forward to prove the truth of these charges such witnesses would be forthcoming; and so alarmed was Lord Dufferin at the case laid before him, so grea twere the names involved in this most dark intrigue, that Lord Dufferin shrank from giving that safe conduct, and declined to take the responsibility upon himself. massacre of his own subjects at Alexandria. He did not think the Prime Minister was inclined to treat this matter lightly. On the contrary, he thought the right hon. Gentleman would be in ment and from his own sense of justice He (Lord Randolph | tial evidence connecting the Khedive, as Churchill) was not going to prejudice it appeared to him, directly with the the case of the National Party in Egypt, of Arabi and his fellow-exiles, or of the unfortunate Suleiman Sami, now under sentence of death, by putting in what documents and evidence he possessed; but he was prepared to make-clined, for the credit of his own Governand honestly believed he could substantiate this charge-that the author of the massacres at Alexandria was the Khedive of Egypt, our puppet and ally. On the 3rd of June, after the arrival of Dervish Pasha, the Sultan's Envoy in Egypt, it was apparently necessary that the Khedive should be able to show a case against Arabi Pasha, and prejudice him in the eyes of the Foreign Powers, and he sent the following telegram in cypher to Omar Lufti, the Governor of Alexandria: : "Arabi has guaranteed public safety, and published it in the newspapers, and has made himself responsible for the consequences. If he succeeds in his guarantee the Powers will trust him, and our considerations will be gone. waters, men's minds are excited, and quarrels are not far off between Europeans and Arabs. Now, therefore, choose for yourself whether you will serve Arabi in his guarantee, or whether you will serve us." The Fleets of the Powers are in Alexandrian Again, some days before the riots the Khedive sent his cousin to Alexandria, receiving him secretly each time before and after his return, and on the day of the riots his cousin and his confident were in the city. On the 9th of June, two days before the riots, and six days after the telegram to which he had referred, the Khedive, after consultation with Dervish Pacha, sent for Omar Lufti by special train, and after conferring with him at great length sent him back to Alexandria on the same day. Moreover, he sent for Ahmed Khandeel, the Prefect of Police, and sounded him as to whether he would be instrumental in instigating the riots in Alexandria. As the House was aware, Ahmed Khandeel had been tried on a charge of being concerned in the riot, but no one had been allowed to go near him; whereas Omar Lufti, who was Governor of Alexandria during the riots, had been rewarded for his distinguished services at that time-Omar Lufti, under whom alone the whole police of Alexandria was placed. There were other facts all tending in the same direction and constituting a long chain of circumstan such a charge having been made on both sides of the House, and an assurance having been given that the charge. could be substantiated before a proper tribunal-to direct a Parliamentary Inquiry to be made into the subject, or an inquiry conducted by Englishmen in order to see whether the charge was false or well-founded. In his opinion, after the statements that had been made on both sides of the House, it was absolutely necessary that some such inquiry should take place. He was bound to say himself, holding the opinions he did with respect to these riots, and this bombardment of Alexandria, he did not at all see his way towards contributing to giving the sanction of Parliament-for the matter involved no personal question about Lord Alcester-to a military act the origin of which, instead of being glorious, was simply disgraceful. Under these circumstances, and voting only for the purpose of delay until these matters were cleared up, he could not oppose the Motion of the hon. Baronet. COLONEL NORTH said, he thought they had come there to discuss the Vote to Lord Alcester; but it appeared they had been brought together to make an attack on the Egyptian policy of Her Majesty's Government. The hon. Member for Carlisle had stated that Lord Alcester received a large sum already from the country. He received £1,000 a-year as a Lord of the Admiralty, for which he performed the duties attached to that office, and the half-pay of his rank-the same as all other naval officers In former times these occasions were considered gala days, and in discussing Votes of this kind the House never interfered with the political question, but confined itself to the approval of the services of the officers; but he was bound to say that an unfortunate precedent had been afforded for the course now taken by the proceedings with reference to the grant to that gallant officer, Sir Frederick Roberts, who had been very shabbily treated. This was, in his humble opinion, a most painful exhibition, as everyone must have known that Lord Alcester positively declined the Peerage, and it was absolutely forced upon him SIR WILFRID LAWSON: I never alluded to the Peerage. COLONEL NORTH said, but he was alluding to it. When, three centuries ago, Shakespeare wrote the play of the Merchant of Venice, he little thought his imaginary character of Shylock would become a reality; and they had the poundof-flesh principle in full play in 1883. He believed the great Napoleon was correct when he said this was a nation of shopkeepers, for here an actuary had been called in to assess the rewards to be given to men for upholding the honour of their countrymen who had carried their lives in their hands over and over again. This was nothing but a miserable mercantile transaction. Lord Alcester was to receive £5,000 less than Lord Wolseley, not because his services were less distinguished, but because he happened to have been born a few years before the other. The House would remember the testimony the Prime Minister bore on a former occasion to Lord Alcester's services, not only before Alexandria, but throughout his Mediterranean command; and he therefore hoped that the House would insist on the same reward being given to him as to Lord Wolseley. He did hope that the House would insist on rewarding both officers equally for the distinguished services they had rendered. He make he should endeavour to confine to the Bill under consideration. It was difficult for him to follow his hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle in a debate concerning the exercise of Military and Naval powers. They started from different premises, and necessarily arrived at opposite conclusions. From the drift of his speech that day, and from many other deliverances he had made in the House and elsewhere, it was known to all that his hon. Friend would not, under any circumstances, resort to war. He would allow the marauders of the world to pursue their career of crime and conquest unchecked. Rather than run the risk of a war, he would have them retreat from India, abandon their Colonies, disband their Army, and make England a focus of materialism and trade. Driven to its logical conclusion, this doctrine was the deification of comfort rather than duty. It was simple, but it was selfish. It certainly could not be called elevating, and might be described as cowardly. He (Mr. Cowen) held an entirely different faith. believed England, as a nation, had a duty to perform, from which it was impossible to divorce herself-not only to her own people, but to the great family of nations of which she was one. War was a dreadful thing; but there were calamities even greater than that. There were times when it was not only desirable but necessary that an appeal should be made to it, both in the interests of freedom and of justice. He would not say the Egyptian War was a case in point. [Sir WILFRID LAWSON: MR. JOSEPH COWEN said, he Hear, hear!] With respect to the agreed with the hon. and gallant Mem- policy which led to that campaign, he ber for Oxfordshire, that the discussion was more or less in accord with his was not as to the policy of the war in hon. Friend. But that was not the Egypt, but as to the desirability or un-point they had met to consider. They desirability of rewarding the Commanders. The statements that the noble Lord the Member for Woodstock had submitted to the House were highly important. They deserved the grave consideration of the Government and of the country. With some of his comments he entirely sympathized; but he must confess that he did not see the relevancy of his remarks to the matter then under debate. The question he had raised would have to be discussed. To raise it in that way and upon a side issue was inconvenient to all parties. The few observations he intended to Colonel North were not responsible for the war. The English people were. If ever there was a popular campaign, that in Egypt certainly was one. It was opposed by a handful of persons, and those persons were as insignificant in numbers as in influence. He and his hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle were amongst them. But the people having gone into the war, and done so with their eyes open, they should pay for it. They had got the glory, and they should pay for the gunpowder. They had it on high authority that the labourer was worthy of his hire. Lord Alcester was a national cumstances. might do; and he was illustrating his point by reference to the Democratic Government of the United States, and he would continue his observations. The inadequate remuneration that the officials in America got led them into corrupt practices. The political corruption of the Republic was eating into its very labourer. They had hired him to do a certain work. He had done it well, and they should recompense him. Lord Alcester was not responsible for the course of events, or for the line of policy that led up to the war. It was a most undesirable thing, both for the National Service and for the nation at large, to act unfairly and ungenerously with Com-vitals. [No, no!"] The hon. Gentlemanders who had successfully carried man who cried "No, no!" was contestout the popular desire under trying cir- ing a statement the historical accuracy It was especially unde- of which every man acquainted with sirable for that to be done under cover current politics must concede. He would of public sanction. His hon. Friend had cite an instance to illustrate his point. said he was a Liberal. He (Mr. Cowen) A gentleman in America-who had held Democratic principles, and he was served his political Party and had been prepared to maintain their justice and engaged in the War-failed to get an wisdom. But he could not shut his eyes appointment that he competed for. This to the fact that Democracies had their was looked upon as a loss to him. The vices as well as their virtues. Demo- loss was made up by his brother getting cracies were sometimes personal and a contract for soldiers' gravestones. In mean. The opposition to this grant he other words, instead of paying the man regarded as personal. He did not know straight and openly for the work he had Lord Alcester; but he knew that he done, they paid him in a left-handed had laboured long and ably and faith- manner by allowing a relative to get a fully for the State. He had grown contract at prices far beyond the value grey in the country's service, and age of the article supplied. The course they and service ought to earn for any man pursued in this country was vastly suconsideration and regard. An old offi- perior. The Government proposed, as offi-perior. cial ought to have special consideration in this instance, that a Commander when he was absent. Lord Alcester was should be rewarded for his services by a absent. It was impossible for him to grant of public money, made in the most reply to charges that were made against open manner. They did not propose to him, or to comments that were offered give either Lord Alcester or his relatives on his conduct. That fact ought to a beneficial contract for naval stores. restrain his critics. To import personal With all the drawbacks of the English bitterness into such a discussion would Service, with all their national sins of be most injurious, and he could not help omission and commission-which he thinking that some of the remarks that never hesitated to condemn when ochad been made bore that character. casion seemed to require it-he conDemocracies, he said, were sometimes fessed he was proud of the character of mean. They paid their servants inade- their Public Service and the absence quately, and higgled over trifles. That from it of all petty corruption. He had been the case from the earliest to hoped they would long continue in dealthe present time. There were instances ing with their officials to observe an imof it in Greece, and they had an instance personal and generous treatment. Atof it in the most successful of modern tempts had been made to disparage the Democratic experiments. In America Naval and Military operations in Egypt. -where there was the most powerful He was not there to contend that the Democracy in the world-there was any-seven weeks' campaign that closed at thing but liberality shown in the payment Tel-el-Kebir could be compared with of public men. ["Question!"] Surely the hon. Gentlemen who cried "Question!" had a very extraordinary conception of the rules of discussion. It was impossible to suggest anything more pertinent than the observations he had made to the subject under debate. He was contending that Democracies did not treat their servants as generously as they the seven weeks' war that closed at Solferino, or the six weeks' war that closed at Sadowa. The forces employed, and the skill displayed in these two great military encounters was vastly superior to that displayed in Egypt. Everyone must admit that. But, still, the Egyptian enterprize had special features of its own which deserved com |