Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1878 — Oppression In Egypt. [ARTICLE]

Oppression In Egypt.

Egypt is a country groaning beneath a frightful tyranny. Writing to an English journal, from Assouan, Mr. Douglas Murray says: “Provisions, always dear, are now at higher prices than ever, and how the year’s taxes will be raised in Upper Egypt is a mystery yet to be solved. I suppose those who can’t pay will suffer the usual penalty —the bastinado and imprisonment without food. They may die, and it matters nothing to the Government, which lives for the day, and apparently cares nothing for the future. The unfortunate people are constantly taken from their own homes to work ou thß Khedive’s estates and factories. A small proprietor is taken from the land he is cultivating. His camel and donkey are earned on to the factory, where it is all work and no pay. A modicum of sugar cane or corn is all he gets till the mills have finished the season’s work. His la* uis deserted. I' he has crops they are ruined. He is promised payment, but never gets a farthing. The landholders are charged enormous rents and every profession and trade pays :*or its license. Thousands of the bazaai ..hops are closed to escape taxes. Even a cook’s boy has to pay sls a year for a license, and a donkey boy pays not only for his own license, but for his donkey’s. Every conceivable thing, animate or iuanimate, is taxed. Soldiers are at present entirely unpaid, and officers have received nothing for about a year. Few of the civil servants, unless Europeans, have seen salaries for months. Such is the price Egypt has to pay for a progressive Prince, bent upon Europeaffizxng his country. The condition of his people is worse than that of the French in 1780. Will similar results follow? While his people are starving he has given five of his sons magnificent palaces, and his daughters, too, have princely abodes.” Mr. Murray says that this is his fourth visit to Egypt, and each year he finds the wretchedness greater. The deplorable aspect of the people, who, in many places, have that pinched look which only long continued starvation can give, largely takes away from the pleasure of traveling on the Nile. At Girgeh he found that the children’s food was sugar-cane previously sucked by others. " A lawyer once asked the late Judge Pickens, of Alabama, to charge the jury that “it is better that ninety and nine guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should be punished.” “Yes,” said the witty Judge, “I will give that charge, but in the opinion of the Court the ninety and nine guilty men have already escaped in this county.” Eighteen thousand men are now engaged in the express business in this country, 8,600 horses are employed, and there are 8,000 -■ officers. The capital invested is estimated at thirty millions. A LIGHT employment— The lamplighter’s.