In the debate of March 2 on a supplementary estimate of £728,000 "for additional expenditure for army services consequent on the dispatch of an expeditionary force to Egypt," he spoke with his accustomed frankness. He would like to know where the money was to come from. He had seen it stated in the papers and other organs that it was to be raised by an increase on the Income Tax. For his part, he should like to see it raised in one of two ways--one, by raising it from the landed interest--or, since he was afraid the Government would not accept that plan--in default, by a general tax on every individual in the country poor or rich. Let every one of those shrieking Jingoes who went out calling on the Government to go to war, now here and now there, understand that they would have to pay for the cost of those wars. Then he thought they would be less inclined than now to advance the Jingo policy which he was sorry to see had been adopted by the Government, and which they had inherited from gentlemen on the other side of the House. He believed that the war had been a mistake all through. If we went to Egypt at all we ought to have installed Arabi instead of the Khedive. He believed that as long as British troops supported the Khedive and supported him against his own subjects, England was absolutely responsible for what was going on in Egypt. No doubt Lord Dufferin did his best to procure trustworthy information, but he was {208} necessarily very much in the hands of the Europeans and of the Ministers and friends of the Khedive. He did not gather from the dispatches that Lord Dufferin had consulted the people of Egypt. Sir George Campbell, the member for Kirkcaldy, said that he had read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested Lord Dufferin's scheme of government. For his own part, although he had read, marked, and learned it to a certain degree he could not digest it because it was objectionable to a Radical stomach. Lord Dufferin's scheme was a perfect sham of constitutional government. If any species of representative government were established in Egypt it must be based on control of the purse. But when anything was said to the noble Lord, the Under-secretary, on this subject, he vaguely alluded to representative government and international obligations. Was Lord Dufferin prevented from doing what he thought desirable for the country by any obligations which the Egyptians were supposed to be under to pay the interest on their debt? If there was any obligation on their part it was not our business to go there to carry it out.... He denied that the people of Egypt were bound by any such thing, but, supposing they were, it was not England's business to deprive them of the most elementary and necessary basis of representative government--the government of the purse.[13]