When Mehemet Ali made his famous canal from Alexandria to the Nile, he did it by forcibly marching down 150,000 men from all parts of the country, and obliging them to excavate with their hands, as tools they had not, or perhaps could not be provided. The excavation was completed in three months, but 30,000 men died in the operation. Then comes the curse of the conscription, which is exercised in a most cruel and arbitrary manner, without any sort of rule or law to regulate it. An order is given to the chief of a district to furnish a certain number of men; these he seizes like wild beasts wherever he can find them, without distinction or exemption, the weak as well as the strong, the sick as well as those in health; and as there is no better road to the Pacha’s favour than showing great zeal in this branch of the service, he if possible collects more even than were demanded. These are chained, marched down to the river, and embarked amidst the tears and lamentations of their families, who know that they shall probably never see them again: for change of climate, bad treatment, and above all, despair, cause a mortality in the Pacha’s army beyond belief; mutilation is not now considered an exemption, and the consequence of the system is, that from Assouan, at the first cataract, to Aleppo, you literally speaking never see a young man in a village; and such is the depopulation, that if things continue as they now are for two years more, and the Pacha insists on keeping up his army to its present force, it will be utterly impossible for the crops to be got in, or for any of the operations of agriculture to be carried on. The whole of this atrocious system is carried into action by the cruelest means--no justice of any sort for the weak, no security for those who are better off: the bastinado and other tortures applied on every occasion, and at the arbitrary will of every servant of the government. In addition to this, the natives of the country are rarely employed--never in offices of trust--and the whole government is entrusted to Turks. In short, the worst features of the Mameluke and Turkish rules are still in active operation; but the method of applying them is much more ingenious, and the boasted civilization of Mehemet Ali amounts to this: that being beyond doubt a man of extraordinary talents, he knows how to bring into play the resources of the country better than his predecessors did, but like them entirely for his own interest, and without any reference to the well-being of the people; and that with the aid of his European instruments he has, if I may say so, applied the screw with a master-hand, and squeezed from the wretches under his sway the very last drop of their blood.