CHAPTER III
THE BRITISH OCCUPATION
TEWFIK—ARABI—GLADSTONE
"Then spake Azariah the son of Hoshaiah, and Johanan the
son of Kareah, and all the proud men, saying unto Jeremiah,
Thou speakest falsely : the Lord our God hath not sent thee to
say, Go not into Egypt to sojourn there.'7—JER. xliii. 2.
THE time had now come when, in the words of Jeremiah,
the daughter of Egypt was to be delivered into the
hands of the children of the north/' and if Jeremiah be
really buried in the ancient tomb that is shown as his in
Cairo, this is an unkind irony of fate, in view of his states-
manlike efforts to keep his fellow-countrymen out of
Egypt. But perhaps fate treated him more kindly than
it did our Liberal prophet, whose reputation it buried
there.
The deposition of Ismail by the Powers led to a period
of confusion, not unlike that which followed the destruc-
tion of the Mamelukes by Napoleon. For there was no
personality or authority to take the place of effendina
—the personal all-powerful government that Egypt then
understood. The foreign condominium of British and
French officials could not take its place, nor could the
native condominium of a Khedive in leading-strings, and
of a Khalif on a leash.
The new Khedive, Ismail's son Tewfik, was inexperi-
enced and unenterprising. The Powers had prevented
the Sultan from repudiating the firman of 1873 and from
nominating Prince Abdul Halim, a man of parts and of