'Both these facts,' answered Rivet, 'are true.'
'Do you believe,' I said to Tocqueville, 'H.'s history of the Tripartite Treaty?'
'I do,' he answered. 'I do not think that at the time when it was made we liked it. It suited you, who wish to preserve the _statu quo_ in Europe, which keeps us your inferiors, or, at least, not your superiors. _You_ have nothing to gain by a change. We have. The _statu quo_ does not suit us. The Tripartite Treaty is a sort of chain--not a heavy one, or a strong one--but one which we should not have put on if we could have avoided it.'
'Do you agree,' I asked Tocqueville, 'with Lafosse, Cousin, and H. as to the effect in Paris of our opposition to the Suez Canal?'
'I agree,' he answered, 'in every word that they have said. There is nothing that has done you so much mischief in France, and indeed in Europe.
'I am no engineer; I should be sorry to pronounce a decided opinion as to the feasibility or the utility of the canal; but your opposition makes us believe that it is practicable.'
'Those among us,' I answered, 'who fear it, sometimes found their fear on grounds unconnected with its practicability. They say that it is a political, not a commercial, scheme. That the object is to give to French engineers and French shareholders a strip of land separating Egypt from Syria, and increasing the French interest in Egypt.'
'What is the value,' answered Tocqueville, 'of a strip of land in the desert where no one can live? And why are the shareholders to be French? The Greeks, the Syrians, the Dalmatians, the Italians, and the Sicilians are the people who will use the canal, if anybody uses it. They will form the bulk of the shareholders, if shareholders there are.
'My strong suspicion is, that if you had not opposed it, there never would have been any shareholders, and that if you now withdraw your opposition, and let the scheme go on until calls are made, the subscribers, who are ready enough with their names as patriotic manifestations against you as long as no money is to be paid, will withdraw _en masse_ from an undertaking which, at the very best, is a most hazardous one.
'As to our influence in Egypt, your journal shows that it is a pet project of the Viceroy. He hopes to get money and fame from it. You _imitate_ both his covetousness and his vanity, and throw him for support upon us.'