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REGENERATION OF THE COUNTRY.

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destruction; and in this I see the plain and direct fulfilment of that prophecy, in which we are told that "there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria,"* brought about by the glorious consequence of the revolution of Syria at the battle of Koniah.

Altogether I am of opinion that the balance must now lie on the side of the good done by Mohammad Alee in Egypt. He has, however, done another great work; he has placed it in that position from which it can never return to its former degenerate state; for the very tradesmen, the artizans he has established, and the thousands who are now educated, must prevent such a catastrophe from occurring. Would, or could Mohammad Alee recall even a part of that soldiery who are now retained to hold Syria, and perhaps Egypt, from the Sooltan, and place them in the native villages, they would not make the worse subjects, or worse agriculturists, that they have been subjected to order, cleanliness, and discipline.

That men like Mohammad Alee have, for a particular purpose, been raised up, have flourished, conquered, and were conquered, decayed, and fell, Scripture warrants, and experience proves; and on that warrant it is for the thinking mind to say whether he has been allowed the power he now possesses, but

"To point a moral, or adorn a tale;"

* Isaiah, xix. 23.

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FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY.

or that he is the instrument employed to hasten that glorious day when Egypt shall be "sent a Saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt, and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance."*

In the foregoing sketch I have carefully avoided mixing up the present political condition of Egypt, or the relation in which the Basha stands, both with the Porte and the different powers of Europe; but the affairs of the east have now become a topic of such absorbing interest, and the Egyptian army has assumed such a threatening position, that even the passing traveller will be asked for an opinion as to the comparative merits of the contending parties, and the probable issue of the present crisis.

That the age we live in is one fraught with interest, and hastening us towards the dawning of great events, is a fact the most apathetic and indifferent must admit. The theatre on which those coming scenes are likely to take place, is one on which were enacted deeds the most wonderful that ever swayed the destinies of mankind. Knowledge is running to and fro in the world, and "tidings out of the east, and out of the north" are already beginning to trouble us. † Dan. xi. 44.

*Isaiah, xix. 24, 25.

AFFAIRS OF THE EAST.

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War is bursting out upon the frontiers of British India; Persia, urged on by Russia, is exhibiting a front that neither her inclination nor her power would warrant; the different independent but heretofore friendly states of Hindostan are conniving at, and, in some instances, offering assistance to powers aiming at Indian possessions; the Burmese are gaining daily strength and knowledge wherewith to meet the soldiers of Europe with their own arms and their own discipline; China, impressed with the state of degradation to which our traffic has brought her, is threatening the very life and existence of Anglo-Indian commerce; and we have daily proofs of the weakness and instability of the Turkish empire, and the general breaking up of the Mohammadan power. Our attention is, therefore, naturally directed towards the cause of the Syrian war, and the claims that Mohammad Alee has to urge in behalf of his right to independence; and the hereditary possession of the vast territory at present acknowledging his sway. To trace the progressive steps that led to his extraordinary elevation would be foreign to the purport of a work that does not profess to give the history of the Basha; many such sketches are already before the world; but when the life of that great man can be written with accuracy and fidelity, it will form a biography almost unequalled in the nineteenth century, for it will be the history of one of those

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POLITICAL CONDITION OF EGYPT.

blazing lights that at times start up to astonish by their brightness, and leave us dazzled by their glare.

Let us consider three subjects:-The extent of territory of the Egyptian Viceroy; his right to independence; and the effect that independence would have on the balance of power and the general state of affairs in Europe and Asia.

The extent of territory under the dominion of Mohammad Alee is almost unknown in England. It far exceeds that of the mother country, and would, if again added to the Turkish empire, make it a more cumbrous machine than it was ever before; for territories and people that never acknowledged the Sooltan, or Mohammadanism, have been subjugated, and are now ruled by the Egyptian Viceroy. He wrung Egypt from the Porte, and has added to it the whole of Syria, a great part of Asia Minor, as far as where the Euphrates enters the Persian Gulf; in all the Arabian Peninsula, except Muscat; in Nubia, Abyssinia, the ancient Ethiopia, with the plains of Sennaar, Koordofan, and far as the foot of civilized man has followed the various wanderings of the blue and white Nile, Mohammad Alee's power is more or less acknowledged. The extensive borders of the Red Sea, even beyond the Straits of Babelmandel, to the confines of Persia and the Indian Sea, with Candia, and the whole upper border of the Mediterranean, are now included in his dominions; and the great

EXTENT OF THE BASHA'S TERRITORIES.

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nomad tribes of the Bedawees of Petra, Babylon, and from Bagdad to Medina, with few exceptions, own him as their prince. All, this, greater even than the mighty empire of Sesostris, was conquered, and is now governed by the orphan boy, whose precarious livelihood was, at one time, gained by the huxtering of tobacco, but who now fills the throne of the Pharaohs, and wields the sceptre of Zenobia!

Were this vast extent of country to be returned into the hands of Turkey, it would but increase the difficulties under which that tottering state now labours, scarcely able to support the pressure of its own weight; for the sixth angel has begun already to pour out his vial upon the great river Euphrates (the acknowledged symbol of the Ottoman empire;) and the water thereof is fast drying up. And why is this? "That the way of the kings of the east might be prepared."* But were it possible that the Porte could even for a time regain its influence, Syria would, upon the death of Mohammad Alee, instead of being governed by his successor in Egypt, be undoubtedly split up into small bashalics, and the people be once more reduced to the horrors and oppression, moral, physical, and religious, that history records was their lot some twenty years ago. That the Viceroy is more than a match for the Porte none can deny; and that, but for the

*Revelation, xvi. 12.

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