The physical features, and peculiarities of a country are one of the starting-points in the history of its people. If we do not provide ourselves with a knowledge of these matters before we commence our investigation of what the people were, and did, the character of the people, and of the events is sure very soon to make us feel the want of it. It is so in a higher degree with the history of the Egyptians, than with that of any other people. They were, emphatically, a people that stood alone; and the peculiarities of the people were the direct result of the peculiarities of the country.

Its environment by the desert gave it that security, which alone in early days could have enabled nascent civilization to germinate and grow. It possessed also a soil and climate which allowed its inhabitants to devote themselves to some variety of employments and pursuits, and so prevented their being all tied down to the single task of producing food. The absence of these two great natural advantages elsewhere placed insurmountable difficulties in the way of advancement in other parts of the world, so long as the arts by which man battles with nature were few, and feeble; and the organization of society in consequence only rudimentary. So was it, for instance, in Europe, at the time when Egypt was at the zenith of its greatness; where, too, for long centuries afterwards, nothing could have been done without the aid of slavery, which alone made mental culture possible for the few at the cost of the degradation and misery of the many. Egypt was differently circumstanced. There one man might produce food sufficient for many. The rest, therefore, could devote themselves to other employments, which might tend, in different ways, to relieve man’s estate, and embellish life. In this matter the river and the climate were their helpers. The river manured with an annual warp, irrigated, cleaned, and softened the land; and the climate, working harmoniously with the river, made the operations of agriculture easy, speedy, certain, and very productive. What in other countries, and in later times, the slow advances in arts, and knowledge, and in social organization, as the successive steps became possible, brought about for their respective inhabitants, Nature did, in a great measure at once, and from the first, for the Egyptians.

Another of the early hindrances to advancement arose out of the difficulties of communication, which prevented either a military force from maintaining itself away from home, or a single governing mind from acting at a distance. Of course in matters of this kind the effects of the want of sufficient means of communication are greatly aggravated by the want of foresight, and the distrust men have in each other, which belong to such times and circumstances. Nothing but the organization of tribes and cities can be accomplished then. Egypt, however, had advantages in the great and varied gifts of nature to which our attention is now directed, which enabled her, in some remote prehistoric period, to emerge from this politically embryonic condition, and to form a well-ordered and homogeneous state, embracing a population of several millions, who were in possession of many of the elements of wealth and power, and had attained to a condition that would suggest, and encourage culture. Of these advantages, that which came next in order to the soil and climate, was that its good fortune had conferred upon it a ready-made means of communication, absolutely complete and perfect; no part of the country, either in the valley of Egypt, or in the Delta, being more than a few miles distant from one of the most easily navigable rivers in the world.

And that nothing might be wanting, this advantage was equalised to all by a provision of nature that, at a certain season of the year, the descending current of the river should, for the purposes of navigation, be overbalanced by a long prevalence of northerly winds; thus giving every facility, by self-acting agencies, to both the up and the down traffic.

I may also observe that the river ran precisely in that direction in which it could serve most effectually as a bond of union, by serving most largely as a channel of commerce. If its course had been along the same parallel of latitude, that is, from East to West, or reversely, then throughout its whole length the productions of its banks would have been the same. It would, therefore, have been of little use as a means of commercial interchange. Where there was no variety of productions there would have been no commodities to exchange. But as its course was in the direction of a parallel of longitude, its stream offered a highway for the exchange of the varying products of the different degrees of latitude it passed through. This difference in the direction of their courses already constitutes a vast difference in the comparative utility of the streams of the Amazon and of the Mississippi; and must ensure to them very dissimilar futures.

Another of the provisions that had been made for the early progress of the country was something quite unique: there was not by nature, and there could not be constructed by man, a single strong place in the whole of Egypt, such as would enable powerful and ambitious individuals, or malcontent factions of the people, to maintain themselves in independence of the rest of the community, or to defy the government. Nature had supplied no such places, and the conditions of the country were such that they could not be formed. This is a point which involves so much that I will return to it presently.

It ought not to be unnoticed here, for it is one of the important peculiarities of the country, that Egypt yields both a winter and a summer harvest. The overflow of the river, and the warmth of the winter sun suffice for the former, which consists of the produce of temperate regions; and artificial irrigation for the latter, which consists of the produce of the tropics. This gives it the advantage of the climates of two zones; the one temperate and the other tropical; for, though it lies to the north of the tropic, its winter, by reason of its environment by the heat-accumulating desert, resembles our summer, and its summer, for the same reason, that of the tropics. Egypt is thus enabled to exceed all other countries in the variety of its produce. Both its wheat and its cotton are grown beneath its palms. This variety of produce ought to contribute largely to the wealth, and well-being of a country; and it was, we know, a very considerable ingredient in the greatness of the Egypt of the Pharaohs.

The characteristics of surrounding nature had corresponding effects on the ideas, too, and sentiments of the ancient Egyptians. We may, for instance, be absolutely certain that had they lived in an Alpine country, although they might have had the power of commanding the requisite materials on easier terms, they never would have built the Pyramids, for then an Egyptian Pyramid would have been but a pigmy monument by the side of nature’s Pyramids. But as these structures stood in Egypt, when seen from the neighbourhood of Memphis and Heliopolis, and throughout that level district of country, they went beyond nature. There they were veritable mountains; and that is what the word means. There were no other such mountains to be seen. In that was their motive. Man had entered into rivalry with nature, and had outdone nature.

So was it with one instance. And so was it on the whole, generally. The guise in which nature presented herself to the eye of the Egyptian was grand and simple. Nature to him meant the broad beneficent river; the green plain; the naked bounding ridge on the right hand, and on the left; upon, and beyond these the lifeless, colourless desert; above, the azure depth traversed by the unveiled sun by day, and illumined with the gleaming host of heaven by night. Here were just five grand natural objects, and there were no more. We rehabilitating to our mind’s eye the scene, must add a sixth, the orderly, busy, thronging community itself. But to them these five objects were all nature. No dark forests of ancient oak, and pine; no jutting headlands; no island-sown seas; no hills watered from above, nor springs running among the hills; no cattle upon a thousand hills; no shady valleys; no smoking mountains. Just five grand objects; everywhere just the same, and nothing else. Their thoughts and sentiments could only have been a reflection of nature (their mind as a glass reflected nature), and of the instincts which the form of society nature had imposed upon them gave rise to. And their acts could only have been the embodiment of their thoughts and sentiments, which must needs have been in harmony with surrounding nature. And hence the character of the people, which was grand and simple; but withal sensibly hard, somewhat rigid and formal, without much tenderness, and with little geniality; solid, grave, and serious.

Under such circumstances the individual was nothing. There could be no Homeric Chieftains; no Tribunes of the people; no eccentricities of genius. The community was an organism, of which every member had his special functions and purpose; a well-ordered machine which did much work, and did it smoothly.

This complete organization of society—it was what the gifts and arrangements of nature had enabled them to attain to—had brought them face to face with the ideas of law and justice. But under their form of society—and it has not been different under other forms the world has since seen—it was understood that some laws, which were necessary, were not good, and that justice did not rule absolutely. We see—it shows itself in all that they did—that their minds were too thorough, and logical, to rest satisfied under these contradictions; they therefore worked out for themselves to its legitimate, and complete development the old Aryan thought of a life beyond this present existence: this was that western world of theirs, in which no law would be bad, and in which there would be no miscarriage of justice. And thus it came to be that their doctrine of a future life was the apotheosis of their social ideas of law, and justice, and right.

And nature encouraged them in this belief. Every day they saw the sun expire in the western boundary of the solid world; and the next morning rise again to life. They saw also the mighty river always moving on to annihilation in the great sea, just as the sun sank every evening into the desert: but still it was not annihilated. Its being was lost, and was recovered, at every moment. It was ever dying, but equally it was ever living. These two great phenomena of nature (through our increased knowledge they teach other lessons now) aided the idea which the working of society was making distinct in their apprehension, and confirmed them in the belief of their own immortality. With the Egyptian also death would not be the end: the renewal he beheld in the sun, and in the river, would not fail himself.

The complete organization of the whole population had been rendered possible by the peculiar advantages of the country. The enterprising among the Pharaohs availing themselves of this complete organization, and of these peculiar advantages, were thereby enabled to command the whole resources of Egypt, and to wield the whole community at their will, as if it had been but one man.

I reserved for separate and fuller consideration the point that nature had nowhere provided Egypt with a single spot where the ambitious, the discontented, or the oppressed could maintain themselves; or to which, we may add, they could even secede. In this respect also, Egypt is quite unique. The configuration of the country, combined with the absence of rain, brought about this peculiarity. The valley of Egypt, speaking roundly, is five hundred miles long, and five miles wide, with a broad navigable river flowing through the midst of it. The Government will always be in possession of the river. It follows then that before the disaffected can be drawn together in formidable numbers at any rendezvous—for the distances they would have to traverse would not admit of this—the Government will be able to send troops by the river in sufficient force to disperse them; or, at all events, to prevent their receiving reinforcements.

A second reason is, that these handfuls of isolated insurgents must always remain within reach of the Government troops sent against them. They would not be able to withdraw themselves from the flat, open banks of the river; for there is nowhere vantage ground they could occupy, except in the desert; and there in twenty-four hours, that is before they could be starved, they would by thirst be reduced to submission. For, from the absence of rain, there are no springs on the high ground; and from the same cause the nitre accumulates in the soil to such a degree, as to render the well-water brackish, and unfit for drinking.

A third reason is the dependence of the agriculture of Egypt on irrigation. The people, therefore, in any neighbourhood cannot intermit their attention to their shadoofs and canals for the purpose of insurrection, or for any other purpose whatsoever. Were they to do so starvation would ensue. The Government also, being in possession of the river, could at any moment stop the irrigation, by destroying the shadoofs and canals, of a malcontent district.

Here, then, are three reasons, any one of which would, singly, be sufficient to make the Government in Egypt omnipotent. What conceivable chance, then, can the people have, when all the three are, at all times, combined against them? This explains much in the past and present history of the country. Nature had decided that in it there should be no strongholds for petty potentates, no castles for freebooters, no mountain fastnesses for untameable tribes, no difficult districts to harbour insurgent bands; no possibility of getting away from the bank of the river; no possibility of withdrawing attention, for a time, from the most artificial of all forms of agriculture. For long ages the wandering Arab of the desert was the only possible disturber of the peace of this exceptional country. Nature first gave to it, in its singular endowments, the means of union; and then eliminated those physical obstacles to its realization which, elsewhere, for long ages proved insurmountable. The point to be particularly noted here is, that these circumstances have ever given to the Government for the time being every natural facility for uniting the whole country into a single State, and ruling it despotically.

The Delta is no exception, for the branches of the river, and the canals by which this whole district is permeated, and the absence of defensible positions, reduce it, in respect to the points I have been speaking of, to the same condition as that of the long narrow valley above it.

A time may come when the moral force of public opinion will outweigh, and overmatch these natural facilities for establishing, and working a despotism; but there is no indication in the existing condition of the country of such a time being at hand. And that this is the only force that can be of any effect in such a country is demonstrated by its history. In the remote days of its greatness there was in some sort a substitute for it in the priestly municipal aristocracy, or oligarchy, of each city. The priests were the governing class, and supplied the magistracy. They were an united and powerful body. Wealth, religion, knowledge, the habitual deference of the people, made them strong. They thus became, to some considerable extent, a bulwark, behind which, in each separate city, some of the rights of person and of property could find protection from the arbitrary caprices of despotism. In this way something that was in the mind of man was at that time counterworking the consequences of physical arrangements: and this only is the way in which a country so circumstanced can be helped in the future.

Nothing, however, of this kind is now at work in modern Egypt. It has, therefore, but one ground for the hope of escaping from the despotism which so heavily oppresses it, and that is in the chance of external aid, which means the chance that some European power should assume the protectorate of the country. It must, however, be a power in which public opinion is in favour of liberty and political justice, and in which the economical value of security for person and property is understood. The Egyptians themselves desire such a consummation. They know how blessed to them would be the day which should relieve them from the grinding and senseless exactions of an oriental taskmaster, and place them under the sway of good and equal laws. Their wish is that this beneficent protector should be England. They almost expect that it will be. I was asked, why do you not come and take possession of the country? In Egypt this appears the natural conclusion of existing conditions. But a protectorate carried out thoroughly, and unflinchingly, and entirely for Egyptian objects, would be far better for both parties than simple English possession. If we were to make a gain by ruling the country, we should always be tempted to go a little further. We should find it very difficult to stop at any particular point, or to be clean-handed at all, when everything was in our power.

The motives for interference are strong. How saddening is it to the traveller to see the poor good-natured Fellah, his naked limbs scorched by the blazing sun, baling up the water from the river, during the livelong day, for his little plot of ground; and to think that all that will be left to him of its produce will be barely enough to keep himself, and his little ones, in millet-bread and onions; all the rest having been cruelly swept away to support at Cairo unused, and unuseable, palaces and regiments, and to make a Suez Canal for the furtherance of the policy of France, but for the naval and commercial benefit of England, and to build sugar-factories for a trading Khedivé. Of what benefit to the wretched cultivator are all the bounties of Egyptian nature, and all his own heavy moil and toil? This is one of the remorseless, and purposeless oppressions done under the sun, which it would be well that some modern Hercules should arise in his might, and in his hatred of such heartless and stupid injustice, to beat down, and make a full end of. An Egypt, in which every man might reap securely the fruit of his labour, would be a new thing in the world, and a very pleasant thing to look upon. At present, the riches of Egypt mean wealth without measure for one man, and poverty without measure for all the rest of the world.

The case of the poor Fellah is very hard: so also is that of his palm-tree. It came into existence, and grew up to maturity under great difficulties. It was hardly worth while to give it space and water, and to fence it round in its early days; for so soon as it could bear a bunch of fruit, it was to be taxed. Why, then, should the oppressed villager go to the cost of rearing it? He would be only toiling for a domestic despot, or foreign bond-holder. How many a palm-tree that might now be helping to shade a village, and beneath which the children might be playing, and the elders sitting, has by this hard and irrational impost, been prevented from coming into being. And of all the gifts of nature to Egypt, this palm-tree is one of the most characteristic, and of the most useful: its trunk supplies the people with beams; its sap is made into a spirit; its fruit is in some districts a most useful article of food, and everywhere a humble luxury; baskets are made of the flag of its leaf, and from the stem of the leaf beds, chairs, and boxes; its fibres supply materials for ropes and cordage, nets and mats; it has, too, its history in Egypt, for its shaft and crown, first suggested to the dwellers on the banks of the Nile, in some remote age, the pillar and its capital. A wise ruler, whether his wisdom was that of the head, or of the heart, would do everything in his power to induce his people to multiply, throughout the land, what is so highly useful, and in so many ways. But the plan despotic wisdom adopts is to kill the bird that lays the golden egg, and by a process which shall at the same time cause as few as possible of the precious kind to be reared for the future.

Every traveller in the valley of the Nile, who can think and feel, finds his pleasure, at the sight of the graceful form of this beneficent tree, clouded by the unwelcome recollection of the barbarous and death-dealing tax that is laid upon it.

If, when the Turkish empire falls to pieces, England should shrink from undertaking, on her own sole responsibility, the protectorate of Egypt, the great powers of Europe, together with the United States of America, might, as far as Egypt is concerned, assume the lapsed suzerainty of the Porte, and become the protectors of Egypt conjointly.