Let us now examine whose interests would have been affected by giving Mehemet Ali independence. No power in Europe is so much interested in keeping well with Mehemet Ali as Great Britain, and no power is more aware of that than France; for in the very first conversation Count Molé had with Lord Granville[132] he alluded to the subject, and the French Government have never let slip an opportunity of doing acts of kindness to Mehemet Ali, so as to keep him as much out of our hands as possible, and I fear they have too well succeeded. France had opened a considerable trade with Egypt, and she entertained great fears that English enterprise would supplant her; no wonder, then, that she should have befriended the Pacha in every possible way. France is as well aware as we are, that steam navigation having got to such perfection, Egypt has become almost necessary to England as the half-way house to India, and indeed ought to be an English colony. Now if we wished to weaken Mehemet Ali, with a view, in the event of the breakup of the Turkish empire, which is not far distant, to have seized Egypt as our share of the spoil, we were perfectly right in our policy; or even, had we not looked so far ahead, it might, perhaps, have been politic to have confined Mehemet Ali to Egypt, so that in the event of his stopping the road to India by Suez, we might have the road of the Euphrates open, one remaining in the possession of the Ottoman empire, and the other in that of the Pacha of Egypt. It is not, however, usual for a Government to quarrel with their own interests, and it is so decidedly the advantage of the Pacha of Egypt to facilitate, by every possible means, the passage across the Isthmus of Suez, that on the whole I believe the soundest policy of Great Britain would have been to have supported Mehemet Ali, and I have not the smallest doubt that when France saw we were committed against him, she seized that opportunity of quitting the alliance in order to make the Pacha her firm friend. France, however, though she had all the desire to protect the Pacha, even at the risk of war, with match lighted ready to put to the gun, hesitated, and, fortunately for Europe at large, Louis Philippe had either not nerve to begin the strife, or being desirous of preserving peace, refused to adopt M. Thiers’ plan of sending the French fleet to Alexandria. The Ministers resigned, and Europe was saved from a general conflagration.