g about an anti-foreign movement, a
movement in which, as events have shown, murder on a large or a small
scale is expected to play a leading part. Boutros Pasha[14] was the
best and most competent Egyptian official, a steadfast upholder of
English rule, and an earnest worker for the welfare of his countrymen;
and he was murdered simply and solely because of these facts, and
because he did his duty wisely, fearlessly, and uprightly. The
attitude of the so-called Egyptian Nationalist Party in connection
with this murder has shown that they were neither desirous nor capable
of guaranteeing even that primary justice the failure to supply which
makes self-government not merely an empty but a noxious farce. Such
are the conditions; and where the effort made by your officials to
help the Egyptians towards self-government is taken advantage of by
them, not to make things better, not to help their country, but to try
to bring murderous chaos upon the land, then it becomes the primary
duty of whoever is responsible for the government in Egypt to
establish order, and to take whatever measures are necessary to that
end.

[14] Compare the address at the University of Cairo.--L.F.A.

It was with this primary object of establishing order that you went
into Egypt twenty-eight years ago; and the chief and ample
justification for your presence in Egypt was this absolute necessity
of order being established from without, coupled with your ability and
willingness to establish it. Now, either you have the right to be in
Egypt or you have not; either it is or it is not your duty to
establish and keep order. If you feel that you have not the right to
be in Egypt, if you do not wish to establish and to keep order there,
why, then, by all means get out of Egypt. If, as I hope, you feel that
your duty to civilized mankind and your fealty to your own great
traditions alike bid you to stay, then make the fact and the name
agree and show that you are ready to meet in very deed the
responsibility which is yours. It is the thing, not the form, which is
vital; if the present forms of government in Egypt, established by you
in the hope that they would help the Egyptians upward, merely serve to
provoke and permit disorder, then it is for you to alter the forms;
for if you stay in Egypt it is your first duty to keep order, and
above all things also to punish murder and to bring to justice all who
directly or indirectly incite others to commit murder