“The general political interest of England was clear. England did not want to possess Egypt, but it was essential to British interests that the country should not fall into the hands of any other European Power. British policy, in respect to Egypt, had for years past been based on this principle. In 1857 the Emperor Napoleon III. made overtures to the British Government with a view to the partition of the northern portions of Africa. Morocco was to fall to France, Tunis to Sardinia, and Egypt to England. On this proposal being submitted to Lord Palmerston, he stated his views in a letter to Lord Clarendon. ‘It is very possible,’ he said, ‘that many parts of the world would be better governed by France, England, and Sardinia than they now are.... We do not want to have Egypt. What we wish about Egypt is that it should continue to be attached to the Turkish Empire, which is a security against its belonging to any European Power. We want to trade with Egypt and to travel through Egypt, but we do not want the burden of governing Egypt.... Let us try and improve all these countries by the general influence of our commerce, but let us abstain from a crusade of conquest which would call down upon us the condemnation of all other civilised nations.’ On another occasion Lord Palmerston used the following homely but apt illustration. ‘We do not want Egypt or wish for it ourselves any more than any rational man with an estate in the north of England and a residence in the south would have wished to possess the inns on the north road. All he could want would have been that the inns should be well kept, always accessible, and furnishing him when he came with mutton chops and post-horses.’”[234]