ABSTRACT
I FIND in my journal the following complaint. 'One pregnant fact here is that one can get no reliable information from the most reliable men. About matters on which there ought to be no difference of statement, we meet with strange contradictions; such as the rate and amount of tax, &c. In fact, there are no data; and there is little free communication. Even a census does not help. The present census, we are told, will be a total failure - so many will bribe the officials to omit their names, because of the poll-tax.' Thus it is that neither I nor any other traveller can give accounts of any value of the actual material condition of the people of Egypt. But we have a substantial piece of knowledge in this very negation of knowledge. We know for certain that a government is bad, and that the people are unprosperous and unhappy in a country where there is a great ostentation of civilisation and improvement, side by side with mystery as to the actual working of social arrangements, and every sort of evasion on the part of the people. We have a substantial piece of knowledge in the fact that men of honour, men of station, men of business, men of courage, who have all the means of information which the place and time permit, differ in opinion and statement about every matter of importance on which they converse with inquiring strangers. I saw several such men. They were quite willing to tell me what they knew; and they assigned frankly the grounds of their opinions and statements: but what I obtained was merely a mass of contradictions so extraordinary that I cannot venture to give any details: and if I give any general impressions, it can be only under the guard of a declaration that I am sure of nothing, and can offer only what I suppose on the whole to be an indication of the way in which the government of Mohammed Alee works.
