staking the tail for the dog. Diplomacy, I fancy, was
not wagged by finance, but used finance as a very opportune pretext. If
Egypt had been Brazil, it is not very likely that the British fleet
would have shelled Rio de Janeiro. The bondholders would have been
reminded of the sound doctrine, _caveat emptor_, which signifies that
those who make a bad bargain have only themselves to blame, and must
pocket their loss with the best grace that they can muster. As it was,
Egypt had long ago been marked out as a place that England wanted,
because of its vitally important position on the way to India. Kinglake,
the historian, writing some three-quarters of a century ago, long before
the Suez Canal was built, prophesied that Egypt would some day be ours.
In Chapter XX. of "Eothen," comes this well known passage on the Sphynx
(he spelt it thus):--

"And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away, and the
Englishman, leaning far over to hold his loved India, will
plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile, and sit in the
seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will
lie watching, and watching the works of the new, busy race,
with those same sad, earnest eyes, and the same tranquil
mien everlasting."

After the building of the Canal, the command of this short cut to India
made Egypt still more important. England bought shares in the Canal, so
using finance as a means to a political object; and it did so still more
effectively when it used the Egyptian default and the claims of English
bondholders as an excuse for taking its seat in Egypt and sitting there
ever since. The bondholders were certainly benefited, but it is my
belief that they might have whistled for their money until the crack of
doom if it had not been that their claims chimed in with Imperial
policy. It may have been wicked of us to take Egypt, but if so let us
lay the blame on the right doorstep and not abuse the poor bondholder
and financier who only wanted their money and were used as a stalking
horse by the Machiavellis of Downing Street. Mr Brailsford's own account
of the matter, indeed, shows very clearly that policy, and not finance,
ruled the whole transaction.

In South Africa there was no question of default, or of suffering
bondholders. There was a highly prosperous mining industry in a country
that had formerly belonged to us, and had been given back to its Dutch
inhabitants under circumstances which the