There law and order slowly took root under the shadow of the British administration, but Egypt ceased to control the lands south of Wady Halfa.  Mr. Gladstone announced that decision in the House of Commons on May 11, 1885; and those who discover traces of the perfidy of Albion even in the vacillations of her policy, maintain that that declaration was made with a view to an eventual annexation of the Sudan by England.  Their contention would be still more forcible if they would prove that the Gladstone Ministry deliberately sacrificed Gordon at Khartum in order to increase the Mahdi’s power and leave Egypt open to his blows, thereby gaining one more excuse for delaying the long-promised evacuation of the Nile delta by the redcoats.  This was the outcome of events; and those who argue backwards should have the courage of their convictions and throw all the facts of the case into their syllogisms.

All who have any knowledge of the trend of British statesmanship in the eighties know perfectly well that the occupation of Egypt was looked on as a serious incubus.  The Salisbury Cabinet sought to give effect to the promises of evacuation, and with that aim in view sent Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to Constantinople in the year 1887 for the settlement of details.  The year 1890 was ultimately fixed, provided that no danger should accrue to Egypt from such action, and that Great Britain should “retain a treaty-right of intervention if at any time either the internal peace or external security [of Egypt] should be seriously threatened.”  To this last stipulation the Sultan seemed prepared to agree.  Austria, Germany, and Italy notified their complete agreement with it; but France and Russia refused to accept the British offer with this proviso added, and even influenced the Sultan so that he too finally opposed it.  Their unfriendly action can only be attributed to a desire of humiliating Great Britain, and of depriving her of any effective influence in the land which, at such loss of blood and treasure to herself, she had saved from anarchy.  Their opposition wrecked the proposal, and the whole position therefore remained unchanged.  British officials continued to administer Egypt in spite of opposition from the French in all possible details connected with the vital question of finance[408].

[Footnote 408:  England in Egypt, by Sir Alfred Milner, pp. 145-153.]

Other incidents that occurred during the years intervening between the fall of Gordon and the despatch of Sir Herbert Kitchener’s expedition need not detain us here[409].  The causes which led to this new departure will be more fitly considered when we come to notice the Fashoda incident; but we may here remark that they probably arose out of the French and Belgian schemes for the partition of Central Africa.  A desire to rescue the Sudan from a cruel and degrading tyranny and to offer a tardy reparation to the memory of Gordon doubtless had some weight with Ministers, as it undoubtedly had with the public.  Indeed, it is doubtful whether the vox populi would have allowed the expedition but for these more sentimental considerations.  But, in the view of the present writer, the Sudan expedition presents the best instance of foresight, resolve, and able execution that is to be found in the recent annals of Britain.