Parallèle entre la portion de richesses qui est laissée à la classe laborieuse, et la portion de ric

CHAP. 34: > Parallel between the portion of wealth that is left to the laborious class, and the portion of wealth that the military aristocracy appropriates for itself, among the peoples of the Caucasian species of northwest Africa. — Of the morals that result from military domination. — State of women. — Progress of barbarism. — Influence of security on morals and on industry.

I have expounded, in the preceding chapter, the relations that have been observed between the military aristocracy of Egypt and the laborious class of the population: we have already seen a part of the effects that servitude produces on both of these two classes. It remains for me to show now what is the manner in which the annual products of the country are distributed among the diverse classes of the population; what is the portion of wealth that the military chiefs who dominate over the industrious class leave to it, and what is the portion that they attribute to themselves. I will then expound what are the morals that result from the relations that take place between these two classes, and what is the influence of these morals on the state of women of all ranks. I will end this chapter by expounding some effects produced by security on industry and on morals.

In Cairo, the most considerable city of Egypt, the arriving foreigner is struck by a general aspect of ruin and misery; the crowd that presses into the streets offers to his gaze only hideous rags and disgusting nudity; a shirt of coarse blue canvas, girded with a leather belt or a red handkerchief, a black cloak of a light and coarse weave, and a kind of toque around which is rolled a large red wool handkerchief, such is the costume of almost all the inhabitants; they have their chest, arms, legs, and feet bare, and most do not wear breeches [241].

The population presents an even more miserable aspect in the less populous, and consequently more oppressed, cities. At Saint-Jean-d’Acre, says M. de Forbin, all the senses are disagreeably affected by the most hideous deformities; beings who seem to emerge from the sepulcher drag themselves about half-naked, wrapped in large blankets of a dirty white, variegated with black; their heads are muffled in rags that serve them as a turban; and one encounters at every step, beside the victims of ophthalmia, the victims of the ferocity of Gezzar Pasha [242], blind men or unfortunates without noses and without ears. This mass of men, inert, miserable, and disgusting, remains ceaselessly lying in the sun under the walls of the seraglio gardens [243].

The inhabitants of the countryside show themselves nowhere but half-covered in rags: among the men, the best dressed wear only a poor blue shirt and a wool loincloth; the others have for all clothing only a part of a brown cloak that falls in tatters. The women almost all bear the imprint and the livery of misery; they have no other clothing than an ample tunic with sleeves, serving them as a dress and a shirt, and open on each side from the armpits to the knees: they care little that their slightest movements expose their bodies to view, provided that their face is never uncovered. The children are entirely naked [244].

All the individuals who belong to the enslaved population are doubtless not equally miserable; but, as they are all equally exposed to extortions, the small number of persons who would have the means to procure good clothing abstain from it, as has already been seen, for fear of awakening the cupidity of the members of the aristocracy [245].

The food reserved for the numerous class of the people consists of barley or doura bread, without leaven and without flavor, raw onions, lentils, and sycamore figs; those who can add to it, from time to time, some honey, cheese, sour milk, and dates, believe they are living in abundance [246]. When the winds bring clouds of locusts, the men who belong to the mass of the people gather them, salt them, make provisions of them, eat them, or exchange them for other foodstuffs [247]. In times of scarcity, they spread out in troops in the fields, and graze on alfalfa [248]; finally, if hunger presses them, they go and sit on the carcasses of camels, and dispute with the dogs for the putrid shreds [249].

The continual scarcity in which they live, the bad food on which they subsist, and the infected air that surrounds them, give the population of the cities a host of diseases. The population of Cairo, the least subject to lacking food, is thin and blackish; the beggars there have a hideous form; the children there have a miserable and stunted look. These little creatures, says Volney, nowhere else offer such an afflicting exterior; with hollow eyes, a wan and puffy complexion, a belly swollen with obstructions, thin extremities, and yellowish skin, they seem to be constantly struggling against death [250].

A multitude of persons have lost or damaged their sight; the quantity is such, says the same traveler, that, walking in the streets of Cairo, I have often met, out of a hundred people, twenty blind, ten one-eyed men, and twenty others whose eyes were red, purulent or blemished; almost everyone wears bandages, signs of a nascent or convalescent ophthalmia [251]. In upper Egypt, the poor quality of the food engenders other diseases, with which almost all the inhabitants are afflicted [252].

The soil of Egypt, however, is not changed; it still produces in abundance rice, wheat, barley, flax, beans, sugar cane, and a multitude of other plants; all the plants there are vigorous, all the trees there are covered with fruit; a multitude of poultry is raised there; a sun, always pure and brilliant, illuminates an admirable vegetation; the soil, by means of artificial watering, can yield several harvests in the space of a few months [253]. How, in the midst of so much wealth, can there exist such general misery?

One sees in the cities a numerous, unhealthy population covered in rags; but, in the midst of this population, one also sees a few robust men, richly dressed, and mounted on magnificent horses: it is the men of this class who absorb the means of existence of all the others. All that the soil, aided by the labor of man, can produce of the best is reserved for their tables; all that they cannot consume in kind is exported for their profit, and they use its value to buy rich fabrics, sumptuous furnishings, or the most beautiful slaves. In the midst of a famished populace, the masters live in abundance; and, beside huts of earth or houses that are falling into ruin, they possess rich palaces and magnificent gardens [254].

The palaces of the great are surrounded by walls and have a disagreeable exterior; but, when one has penetrated into the interior of these kinds of fortresses, one finds there refinements of luxury and amenity; pretty marble baths, voluptuous steam rooms, mosaic halls in the middle of which are basins and fountains, large divans composed of plush carpets, wide, quilted platforms covered with beautiful fabrics, surrounded by rich cushions; the perfume of orange trees is brought into these halls by a zephyr cooled under bowers of thick trees. It is there that, lying on soft and immense carpets covered with rich squares, holding in one hand a pipe with whose vapor he intoxicates himself, and in the other a set of prayer beads whose grains he passes through his fingers, and served by young slaves, the rich Muslim dreams without purpose, does the same thing every day without taste, and ends by having lived without having sought to vary the monotony of his existence [255].The masters, differing from the conquered men by their origin, their education, their power, their wealth, and their religion, must necessarily differ from them in their moral habits. The Mamluks and the Turks, like all races of conquerors, have always had the vices that are the consequences of a continual abuse of force. An unbridled passion for all physical pleasures, and an extreme greed for the wealth by which one can procure them, have at all times been the most salient features of their character: hence, the extortions, avanies, and venality of which so many proofs have been seen. Contempt and cruelty towards the weak are vices equally engendered by the habit of violence: these vices have always been those of the masters of Egypt; hence, the ease with which they spill human blood for the slightest faults [256].

The domination of the masters having no other goal than their own pleasures, and this goal being reached only by the spoliation of the subjects, there can be no justice for anyone, and the security of each rests only on the fear he inspires; thus, nowhere is the passion for vengeance carried further than in the countries subject to the Turks:

“If vengeance has altars,” says Sonnini, “it is doubtless in Egypt; there it is the goddess, or, to put it better, the tyrant of hearts: and there it is implacable. Not only do most of the men whose mixture forms the mass of the inhabitants never forgive, but however striking the reparation given to them, they do not consider themselves satisfied until they have themselves dipped their hands in the blood of the one they have declared their enemy. Although they long preserve their hatred, and dissimulate it until they find a favorable occasion to satisfy it, its effects are no less terrible: they are no better reasoned. If a European, or, as they say, a Frank, has provoked their animosity, they make it fall indiscriminately on a European, without troubling themselves as to whether the latter is a relative, a friend, or merely of the same nation as the one from whom they received the offense: they thus strip their resentment of what might be excusable in it, and their vengeance is but an atrocity [257].”

The principal object of conquest is to seize the products of the labor of the vanquished people, and to dispense with any laborious occupation oneself. Of all the races of men, there is none that has a greater aversion to labor, and a more pronounced penchant for idleness than the Muslims; for them, to change place is a fatigue, a man who walks is a madman; among them, the most sought-after piece of furniture in an apartment is the divan, where one is more lying down than seated; their gardens have charming shade, comfortable seats, but not a single path where one can walk [258]; the very form of their clothing excludes any kind of activity: their breeches are skirts in which the legs are engaged; their large sleeves cover eight inches beyond the fingertips; their turban does not allow them to lower their head; all their customs, in a word, tend toward repose [259].

Accustomed to seeing in the conquered peoples only instruments of their pleasures, they do not consider women from a different point of view: they buy them at the market like the vilest animals; they then shut them up in harems like slaves, and have them raised in the manner that suits their passions. A species of prostitutes, to whom they give the name of almé, come to teach these slaves dances proper to reawaken the dulled senses of their masters, and to instruct them in the art of debauchery [260]. Polygamy is in use in Egypt; but it is so only among the race of masters.

The morals of the dominant class in all countries contribute to forming the morals of the enslaved population; one must not therefore be surprised if the population of Egypt has its almés like the great: these are prostitutes who roam half-naked through public places, and who execute dances that decency does not permit to be described. The Egyptians delighting in these sorts of spectacles, the squares and promenades are filled with them [261]; the young girls or women who are not permitted to go out feast their eyes on them through the latticed windows of their windows like the populace of the streets [262].

At no time in their lives are women their own masters; they cease to be subject to the power of their father only to pass under the power of a brother, a relative, or a husband. They have the disposition of nothing, can possess no landed property, and are continually secluded. When they marry, the husband is obliged to assure them means of existence for the case where they might be repudiated; but they are not much happier for it, since in leaving the power of their husband, they fall back under the power of a relative [263]. They can, however, escape marital power if they are violently outraged; but, when they demand a divorce, they lose not only the advantages that were promised to them, but even the property they brought in marrying [264]. In a word, women in Egypt show themselves only laden with the irons of slavery; they have masters, and have no husbands [265].

Women who can have no will, and who, consequently, have nothing to give or to refuse, soon inspire satiety, disgust, and mistrust. Among the men who have several of them and who, moreover, possess young slaves, they are at first in rivalry with one another and always see the latest arrivals preferred [266]. But soon disgust follows possession; their masters disdain them and seek less easy pleasures elsewhere. The depravity, which everywhere is the consequence of the enslavement of women, is so general, especially among powerful men, that they do not take the trouble to hide it.

“The great give the example,” says M. de Forbin, “and are imitated on this point in a manner as disgusting as it is general. The second personage of the government so little hides his infamous tastes, that one recognizes those who are their object by the beauty of their horses, by the refinement of their costume. Women are neglected to the point that the sale of the most beautiful slaves is often difficult. The public baths are especially the theater of these hideous debaucheries [267].”

The depravity goes further still; but here the pen stops and cannot reproduce the hideous tableaux that travelers have presented to us [268].

The servitude, contempt, and abandonment of women naturally give them an antipathy for their masters, and consequently inspire in the latter jealousy and mistrust: nowhere do these two sentiments manifest themselves with more violence. The entry to the place where the women live is forbidden to anyone other than their master: a certain death is reserved for any man who would attempt to introduce himself among them, or merely to address a few words to them upon meeting them outside their house [269].

The women of the conquered people, even when they are Catholic, are subject in Egypt to the same seclusion as the women of the masters; they are visible only to priests and monks; in their illnesses, they cannot be seen by their doctor [270].

The furies inspired by jealousy lead men to the most horrible excesses against their wives: there exists no magistracy that can set limits to it.

In the time when Egypt was occupied by the French army, some soldiers of this army, upon their departure from Alexandria, met near Beda, in the Desert, a young woman, her face bloodied; she held in one hand an infant, and the other hand, straying, went to meet the object that could strike or guide it. Their curiosity, says Denon, is excited; they call their guide, who served them at the same time as an interpreter; they approach, they hear the sighs of a being from whom the organ of tears has been torn; a young woman, a child in the middle of a desert! Astonished, curious, they question; they learn that the frightful spectacle they have before their eyes is the consequence and effect of a jealous fury: it is not murmurs that the victim dares to express, but prayers for the innocent who shares her misfortune, and who is about to perish from misery and hunger. Our soldiers, moved by pity, immediately give her a part of their ration, forgetting their own need before a more pressing need; they deprive themselves of a rare water that they are about to lack entirely, when they see a furious man arrive who, from afar feasting his eyes on the spectacle of his vengeance, was following these victims with his eye; he runs to snatch from this woman’s hands this bread, this water, this last resource of life that compassion has just granted to misfortune. Stop, he cries; she has failed in her honor, she has sullied mine; this child is my disgrace, he is the son of crime. Our soldiers want to prevent him from depriving her of the help they have just given her; his jealousy is irritated that the object of his fury becomes again that of tenderness; he draws a dagger, strikes the woman a mortal blow, seizes the child, lifts him up, and smashes him on the ground; then, stupidly savage, he remains motionless, looks fixedly at those who surround him, and braves their vengeance.

I inquired, continues Denon, if there were any repressive laws against such an atrocious abuse of authority; I was told that he had “done wrong” to stab her, because, if God had not willed her to die, after forty days the unfortunate woman could have been received into a house, and fed out of charity [271].

If women enjoy no protection when they find themselves placed in the lowest ranks of the social order, one conceives that they must not be better protected when they belong to powerful men. The magistrates, charged with the police, can make their authority felt by weak men; but how would they repress the disorders of the great?

Considering, in a general manner, the morals of the conquering class, one finds that the character of the men of this class is composed of the following vices: greed, venality, perfidy, vengeance, cruelty, idleness, contempt for labor, and the passion for all the most brutal physical pleasures. Bruce was therefore able to write without exaggeration:

“There are perhaps no men in the world as brutal, as unjust, as tyrannical, as oppressive, as avaricious as the infernal race that holds in its hands the government of Cairo [272].”

To this picture of the aristocracy’s morals must be added an immoderate pride. It is there, according to Savary, that the Muslim, consumed by ignorance, believes himself the most sublime being in the universe, and attributes to himself with a certain complacency these words of the Koran: You are the most excellent people of the universe; you command equity, you forbid crime [273].

The morals of the conquered races, those of the Arab cultivators and those of the Copts, bear the imprint that their possessors have given them. The Arabs who have renounced the pastoral life, being delivered without defense to the race of conquerors, being ceaselessly exposed to seeing the products of their labors taken away, and their destiny depending less on themselves than on their masters, are distrustful, somber, avaricious, careless, and without foresight [274]. The same vices are found among the Copts; they are, moreover, nonchalant and inclined to idleness: knowing that they can keep nothing beyond what is strictly necessary to sustain their existence, it is rare that they make efforts to obtain more. They invent nothing to do better, and do not seek to profit from the inventions of others. They reject the methods that would oblige them to work standing up: the carpenter, the locksmith, the joiner, the blacksmith, even the mason work while seated [275].

The enslaved men have at once the vices that are the consequence of servitude, and those that their masters communicate to them; but they are nevertheless much less vicious than the masters. The Copts appear weak and without energy with regard to their oppressors: without weapons, without connections among themselves, without a chief to direct them, they let themselves be despoiled without resistance, and know only with difficulty how to revolt [276]; but the extortions, the violence, the murders, remain the appanage of the foreigners who have invaded their country, and who command there as masters [277].

If there are vices that are particular to the class of conquerors, and others that are proper to the class of the vanquished [278], there are also some that are common to both, and of this number are contempt and hatred for foreigners. When a race of men has established its domination over another, and has succeeded in transforming it into an instrument of cultivation, its first care is to inspire in it a horror for change, to raise it in contempt for the men or things that could give it the idea of a less miserable state and inspire in it the desire to be better. Hence, that article of the Sunni code, which has Mahomet say that all innovation is an error, and that all error leads to fire. Hence also, the contempt and hatred that all possessors of men, by whatever title, have attached to the words infidels, heretics, innovators, and other analogous ones [279].

The Muslims, and particularly the Turks, being of all conquerors the most oppressive, have also been those who have inspired in their subjects the strongest hatred and contempt for men who have adopted neither their beliefs nor their practices. One of the principal cares of the Muslim rulers and priests in Egypt has, consequently, been to inspire these two sentiments for all men who are foreign to their domination [280]. The most effective means employed by the priests has been to persuade their proselytes that it is to them that the favors of heaven are exclusively devolved, and that they are the only ones for whom eternal pleasures are reserved. In despising or insulting a man who does not share their opinions and who does not engage in their practices, the Turks therefore imagine that they are treating him in this world less severely than the Divinity will treat him in the other; they believe that they could do no better than to share the sentiments they attribute to the Divinity, and think themselves humane and generous when they limit themselves to being hateful and contemptuous.

The chiefs of the conquerors have had recourse to a means that has been no less powerful; they have subjected to the most humiliating conditions, they have designated by the most debasing names the foreigners whom they have permitted to live on the conquered land. An Arab, a Moor, an Egyptian, can appear in the cities of Egypt mounted on mules [281]; but a European can have no other mount than a donkey; this mount must not even be in too good a state; for, if it were well cared for, the one who possessed it would run the risk of being subjected to a heavy avanie [282]. The use of horses is exclusively reserved for the conquerors; it is one of the signs of conquest, as going on foot is one of the marks of subjugation [283].

The Europeans, or the Franks, as the Turks call them, cannot appear with their national costume in the cities of Egypt, without running the danger of being beaten to death by the populace; they must be dressed in long garments in use in the Orient; but it is necessary, at the same time, that a part of this garment, such as the headdress, indicate that they are foreigners, and thus designate them for contempt and in a way for proscription [284]. If they wish to leave the quarter reserved for them, they are obliged, to protect themselves from the insults of the populace, to have themselves accompanied by janissaries armed with sticks or pikes [285]. If, in their excursions, they pass before the house of a great man, or if they meet some powerful man, a priest, a man in office, they are obliged to dismount immediately, to step aside to leave the passage free, and to place a hand on their chest as a sign of respect; and, while they thus humble themselves before force or imposture, the janissaries who accompany them or even their valets, if they are Muslims, remain proudly seated on their donkeys [286]. The order to dismount is given by the valets or janissaries who precede the great, and if, through inattention or for any other cause, it is not executed at the first sign, it is accompanied by blows of a stick violent enough to break the limbs of the unfortunate who receives them [287]. The Europeans are designated only by the name of dog; this word and that of Christian are two synonyms so much in use that one no longer pays attention to them [288]. Finally, the contempt attached to the quality of foreigner is such that, according to Hasselquist, those who have committed some crime could not better expiate it than by going to Cairo to make some stay there [289].Since Egypt became the prey of barbarians, it has fallen from the most flourishing state into the most profound degradation: its most famous cities have been overthrown; its canals have filled up, its countryside has been partly converted into desert or has remained uncultivated; the most enlightened portion of its population has been extinguished; the sciences have been eclipsed; the arts have disappeared with them; morals have become depraved; poverty has succeeded wealth. But, although the decadence has been general, although tyranny has weighed upon the entire territory, barbarism has not spread over the country in an equal manner. Starting from one of the points where the Nile flows into the sea, and ascending to the first cataracts, one observes that men become more vicious and more miserable. At the extremity of upper Egypt, near Syene, one encounters only savages. We shall seek elsewhere the causes of this phenomenon, which is not particular to Egypt; I will limit myself here to stating it.

The most cultivated part of Egypt is the Delta, that is to say, the part of the territory that is comprised between the sea and the two branches that the Nile forms below Cairo. Below Atrib, says Savary, the villages are so close to one another that the banks of the Nile seem like a long city interrupted only by gardens and fragrant woods. The trees there are varied, the herds numerous, the richness of the soil inexhaustible [290]. The cultivators there are reduced, no doubt, to the bare necessities; their dwellings are in poor condition; their clothing barely covers them, their food is only of poor quality. There exists, however, in the entire part of the territory designated by the name of lower Egypt, a number of families, more or less large, who enjoy a certain ease; this number is even more considerable than it appears, as everyone believes himself to be under the necessity of hiding his means of existence for fear of extortions.

But as one ascends into upper Egypt, the dwellings become rarer, one sees more uncultivated lands, the dwellings are worse, the men there are poorer, more miserable. At Syene, one finds barely any traces of cultivation; one sees there only a poor nature, left to itself, and, on some rocks, a few dwellings that resemble the huts of savages [291].

Sonnini, led by a sheikh to Gournoy, one of the villages of the Thebaid, found himself, he says, in the most wretched, the most frightful place in its aspect of misery that he had yet encountered. The huts that composed it, poorly constructed of mud, were only the height of a man and were covered only with palm branches [292]. A part of the inhabitants of this region lived only in caves or in the hollows of rocks, and had no more industry than the most stupid savages [293].

The aspect of the men was in harmony with that of the places.

“Never,” says Sonnini, “had I seen any of such ill-favored appearance: half-black, their bodies almost entirely naked, with miserable rags covering only a part of them; the somber and haggard physiognomy of ferocity; having neither trade, nor taste for agriculture, and, like the wild animals of the arid mountains near which they live, seeming to occupy themselves only with rapine: their approach had something frightening about it. My companions, whose imagination had been struck by all they had heard said about this truly detestable place, appeared very worried; the Syrian interpreter, as cowardly as he was villainous, shed tears of fear; all blamed me loudly and had no doubt of our loss, when they saw me seated on the sand in the midst of a dozen of these vile fellahs [294].”

The lot of women is, among these peoples, as among all savages, more miserable still than that of men. Sonnini had no means of seeing them, for the jealousy of the husbands probably hid them from his sight. But, in the invasion of this country by the French, Denon had occasion to observe several of them, and here is the description he gives:

“Their extreme ugliness,” he says, “can be compared only to the atrocious jealousy of their husbands; I saw a few of them: as I inspired less fear in the husband than the soldiers did, they put a certain number of them under my protection, in a cabin before whose door I had established myself to spend the night. Surprised by the roundabout march of the French at nightfall, they had not had time to flee and hide in the rocks, or to cross the river by swimming; they had absolutely the savage stupidity of savages: a harsh soil, fatigue, and insufficient food, alter in them all the charms of nature, and give even to youth the imprint and the degradation of decrepitude [295].”

One observes in the morals the same progressive degradation as in agriculture and in the other industrial arts. In lower Egypt, the ambition and vices of the great often excite troubles and wars; but, while the chiefs and their soldiers seek to destroy one another, the mass of the population sometimes remains peaceful, and continues to devote itself to its labors [296]. In upper Egypt, on the contrary, the villages are at war with one another, families against families; a first drop of blood shed becomes the cause of inextinguishable hatreds; vengeance provokes vengeance, and from reprisal to reprisal all the hordes tend toward their mutual extermination: it is a state similar to that which has been seen among the savages of New Zealand [297].

But of all the vices, the one whose gradation is the most marked is the hatred for foreigners. At one of the mouths of the Nile, at Rosetta, this sentiment already manifests itself in a very perceptible manner; this vice, like all the others, is however less pronounced there than in any other part of the country [298]. In Cairo, the hatred and contempt for foreigners manifest themselves in a stronger, more insulting manner [299]. In the Sa'id, the sentiments of malevolence are more pronounced still; the Europeans, says Sonnini, are held in horror there [300]. Finally, in the Thebaid and at Syene, the highest part of Egypt, the inhabitants render all communication with them almost impossible; if they believe themselves the stronger, they attack the foreigners who present themselves in their lands; if they believe themselves the weaker, they take refuge in the hollows of the rocks like wild beasts, or save themselves by swimming across the river. The terror or hatred that foreigners inspire in them is such that if, in their flight, they cannot carry away their children, they throw them into the river or mutilate them [301].

The penchant that these peoples have for theft, and the skill with which they engage in it, equal or even surpass the skill and penchant of the most savage peoples observed by La Pérouse on the northwest coasts of America [302]; they have, like all other Egyptians, the vices engendered by the oppression and contempt of women; but, among them, these vices show themselves in an even more hideous form [303].

Such is the state of degradation to which the combined domination of the Mamluks and the Turks had reduced the peoples of Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century. But since that epoch, this country has undergone a new revolution: the Mamluks, long divided by the Turks, have been massacred by them; and thus ended their republic, and the charter by which Sultan Selim had guaranteed them its eternal duration [304]. From that moment, the authority or power of the sultan’s delegate no longer met with obstacles, and the government of Egypt had all the simplicity of the government of Constantinople.

The Egyptians, far from having gained by this change, have, on the contrary, fallen even lower than they were. Territorial properties lacked guarantee; the pasha has entirely seized them and has them exploited for his profit [305]. Thus, Egypt is no longer, in this respect, but a vast domain belonging to a single individual; and the agricultural population is composed only of an immense multitude of workers whose master arbitrarily fixes the wage, who do not have the faculty of working for others than him, and who, consequently, are in the same position as slaves.

In the time of the Mamluks, there existed some crude arts by means of which a part of the population could procure means of existence; since the Turks have become exclusive masters of the country, the pasha has attributed to himself the exclusive exploitation of all branches of manufacture [306]; the small manufacturers who enjoyed a sort of independence have thus been transformed into simple workers: their wages have been arbitrarily fixed by the great entrepreneur of industry; and it has not been in the power of any of them to change masters.

There existed in the cities, before the massacre of the Mamluks, a fairly considerable number of merchants doing commerce by means of their capital, and consequently having as much independence as the nature of their government could allow; the pasha has seized the exclusive sale of merchandise and even of basic foodstuffs; the merchants have become no more than his salaried clerks; he has fixed their wages, he has been able to dismiss them as any master can dismiss his servants [307].

At the same time that the pasha has seized the monopoly of the cultivation of lands, of the manufacture, and of the sale of merchandise, and that he has thus made himself master of the means of existence of all the inhabitants, he has sought to increase the quantity of products, either by having canals dug, or by adopting processes and machines invented among the civilized peoples of Europe; but this apparent progress is in reality only a new calamity.

Even if the products of the soil of Egypt were doubled, the agricultural population would be neither better fed nor better clothed, since the pasha can leave it only what is rigorously necessary not to die of hunger: the Egyptian cultivators are today in a position similar to that of the slaves of the European colonies: however rich the product of these colonies may be, the slaves are no better off for it; what exceeds the needs of the master and his court is exported.

The progress of manufactures will profit the population of the country no more: the abundance of products will have no more influence on the lot of the workers than the abundance of agricultural products on the lot of the cultivators. The pasha can see in them only another class of slaves; fixing, on the one hand, the rate of their wages, and, on the other, the price of the objects necessary for their existence, he would simplify his processes without aggravating their lot, if he treated them as a planter treats his negroes. Finally, the profits of commerce will no more remain in the hands of the merchants, than the profits of agriculture will remain in the hands of the cultivators.

But, if an increase in products does not make the lot of the population happier, it greatly increases the power of the pasha; it gives him the means to have a more numerous army and a more formidable navy. The increase of his wealth enables him to extend the domination of the Turks, to thus put barriers to civilization in the countries where it could penetrate, and to extinguish it in the places where some sparks of it already exist [308].

In seizing the monopoly of all kinds of industry, the pasha has put his interests in the hands of the most avid Armenians and Greeks. Also, says M. de Forbin, never has the Egyptian people been squeezed, vexed, and ruined as much as at the present time. Terror imposes silence on murmurs; but this silence is that of death [309].

If the impossibility of satisfying the avidity of the pasha’s agents obliges the cultivators to seek refuge in the Desert, their children are carried off, and it is on them that the rod of the Turks weighs heavily.

“A dozen children,” says the same traveler, “naked, tied two by two with ropes, stretched out on the pavement of the cachef’s courtyard (at Mankieh) were dying of hunger and thirst. They were hostages. These innocent and weak creatures already knew the pains of captivity, because their parents, in the impossibility of paying the miry, had fled into the Desert [310].”

In the cities, and especially in the capital, the people and particularly the foreign merchants regret the government of the Mamluks, who did not meddle in commerce in any way [311]. Finally, such is the tyranny that weighs on the inhabitants of all classes, that everyone desires a revolution; they even call to their aid the cruelest scourges. The people who groan under oppression are, like a sick man, persuaded that they would experience relief if their illness changed its nature [312].

The exclusive domination of the Turks has made the condition of the inhabitants harsher with respect to their means of existence; but it has changed nothing in the manner of conducting the police or of rendering justice: it is always the same agents, the same principles, the same manner of proceeding [313]; it would consequently be superfluous to investigate whether morals have been perfected [314].

We have found among the peoples of Egypt all the vices that philosophers have attributed to the influence of heat: laziness, mistrust, jealousy, vengeance, cruelty, and others. But one would be mistaken, if one thought that these vices are inherent to the nature of the soil and the climate; in the times when this country made immense progress in the arts, it was what it is today. The true cause of the decadence and vices of this people is in the domination to which it is subjected: it is enough for this cause to cease for the vices it engenders to disappear with it.

The nonchalance observed among the men of the laboring class disappears, in effect, as soon as they believe themselves assured of a wage. Travelers have seen with surprise that, when this people puts itself into action, it does so with a vivacity and a passion almost unknown in our climates; this is what is observed especially in the ports and commercial cities. A European cannot help but admire with what activity the sailors, with bare arms and legs, handle the oars, stretch the sails, and perform all the maneuvers; with what ardor the porters unload a boat and transport the heaviest couffes [315]; always singing and responding in verses to one of them who commands, they execute all movements in cadence and double their strength by uniting them through measure [316].

The peasants, so despised under the name of fellahs, endure fatigues that would exceed the strength of most Europeans; they spend entire days drawing water from the Nile, exposed naked to a sun we could not bear. Those among them who serve as valets to the masters of the country follow on foot all the movements of the horsemen: in the city, in the countryside, at war, everywhere they follow them ceaselessly and spend entire days running before or behind the horses; when they are tired, they attach themselves to their tails rather than remain behind [317].

The patience with which they endure oppression is due to the sentiment of their powerlessness and not to the weakness of their character. The obstinacy they show in their hatreds and their vengeance; the fury they bring to the combats they sometimes wage from village to village; the point of honor they make of suffering the bastinado without revealing their secret; the very barbarity with which they punish, in their wives and daughters, the slightest breach of modesty, all prove that, if they have energy on certain points, this energy needs only to be enlightened to become a formidable courage [318].

The Egyptians lack neither activity nor skill; deprived of instruments like savages, one is astonished at the use they know how to make of their fingers and even of their feet; as workers, they have a precious quality, that of being patient, without presumption, and of starting over until they have done approximately what is required of them; they possess all the qualities that could make excellent soldiers: they are eminently sober, pedestrians like runners, horsemen like centaurs, swimmers like tritons [319]; they preserve their strength and their activity until the most advanced age. In the Sa'id, the hottest part of Egypt, one sees a great number of old men, and several ride horses at the age of eighty [320].

The Arab artisans, so inactive and, in appearance, so stupid under the eyes of their oppressors, show activity and intelligence as soon as they have the hope of reaping the fruit of it. They were seen, in upper Egypt, at the time when this country was possessed by the French army, going to seek our soldier-manufacturers, offering them their services, working with them, and, sure of a wage proportionate to their labor, striving to satisfy them, starting their work over to succeed, watching with enthusiasm the effects of the windmill, and seeing the wool being carded with fits of admiration [321].The activity observed among the sailors and porters who are in the service of the Europeans manifested itself among the inhabitants of the countryside as soon as the presence of the French army gave them the hope of reaping their harvests; the fields were covered with cultivators; the canals were dug; the peasants turned from their occupations only to bring water and watermelons to our soldiers, whose peaceful demeanor no longer frightened them [322].

The same sentiment of confidence that restored activity to the laboring classes determined the men who possessed some wealth, but who did not dare to make use of it, to enjoy it publicly.

“Another happiness for the well-off inhabitants,” continues Denon, “was to be able to adorn themselves with their wealth with impunity, to come to us, every day, better dressed, to eat together, without suffering an avanie or a surcharge of taxes. We were ourselves invited, treated with magnificence by well-dressed people whom we had never perceived, who, full of sense and wit, spoke with sagacity of our interests and of theirs, of our errors, of their needs, spoke of Desaix with respect and confidence [323].”

A result no less prompt, but perhaps more extraordinary, of the establishment of security and the administration of impartial justice, was the cessation of vengeances.

“Another consoling circumstance for the country and for us,” says the same writer, “is that the villages had decided among themselves that the redemption of blood was abolished, and the punishment of new crimes referred to our equity. The redemption of blood is one of those scourges, son of prejudice and barbarism, which raised barriers between each country, and intercepted communication: if a private quarrel, an accident, had caused someone’s death, the lack of justice, vengeance, a misguided sense of honor, accumulated reprisals upon reprisals, and thenceforth an eternal war; one no longer walked except in numbers and armed: business visits were expeditions; the roads ceased to be used; one no longer met there but pedestrians of the most abject class, which could only add to the lack of safety on the roads. The forgetting of past errors was thus the first happy influence of our government [324].”