The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-24 00:00:00

CONSUL CAMERON AND THE EMPEROR
THEODORE.

-,P.--

Mr. Charles Beke in aletter to the Times says :

In the discussion of Consul Cameron's first de-
tention in Ju1y,1863, and the subsequent imprison-
ment of himself and the other Europeans, there
appears to be a great confusion of times and places.
As I am innocently a main cause of that grossly
misrepresented officer's originally falling under the
Emperor's displeasure, it is due to him and the Bri-
tish nation that I should set matters right by stating
the facts as they really occurred.
Notwithstanding the repeated attempts to throw
blame on Consul Cameron fur proceeding into the
interior of Abyssinia, it is now an acknowledged
fact that he was accredited to the Emperor Theo-
dore by Earl Russell's letter to that monarch of
February 20, 1862, and that he went to his Court
in pursuance of express instructions. On his ar-
rival there in October, 1862, he was most favour-
ably received, and in the beginning of November
he left for the coast with the memorable letter to
the Queen, the not replying to which ou the part
of her Majesty's Government was one of the
causes, though anything but the only cause, of the
Emperor's displeasure.
Having been prevented from reaching Massowah,
Consul Cameron forwarded the Emperor's letter to
Aden by two Abyssinians, and he himself went into
the frontier province of Bogos. In doing so he is
alleged not, merely to have acted contrary to instruc-
tions, but also to have incurred the displeasure of
the Emperor. In both respects this is not the fact.
The Christian inhabitants of Bogos had long been
under the protection of the British Consul in Abys-
sinia, with the knowledge and approval of the Bri-
tish Government, and Consul Cameron, in follow-
ing in the footsteps of his predecessor, Consul
Plowden, believed that he was acting according to
orders. But since Plowden's death, in 1860, Egypt
bad become a large cotton-growing country, and
it would not do for England to quarrel with so
valuable an ally for the sake of a paltry tribe
of Abyssinian Christians. So Consul Cameron
was blamed by Earl Russell for doing precisely
that for which Consu:Plowden had been highly com-
mended by Lord Palmerston. Thus it is that in
Earl Russell's most ill-timed despatch of October
sth, 1865, to Colonel Stanton (which has far more
to do do with the present lamentable war with
Abyssinia than is imagined by any one except those
few who know the facts) it is asserted that " Capt.
Cameron in going to Bogos acted without orders,
and incurred the displeasure of his own Govern-
ment." And more recently the policy of England
with respect to Bogos has been declared by Lord
Stanley, in his despateh to Colonel Stanton of De-
cember 15, 1866 (Blue-book, page 95), to be that
" Her Majesty's Government do not feel themselves
in any way called on to interfere in differences and
disputes between native tribes residing respectively
on the frontiers of Egypt and Abyssinia."
Still this is no reason why Consul Cameron
should have incurred the displeasure of the Emperor
Theodore. On the contrary, his visit to Bogos was
made in the cause of that monarch's Christian sub-
, jects, and in company with Samuel, the Emperor's
steward, formerly my servant ; and had our Consul
but returned direct from Bogos to the Emperor's
Court, even though without an answer from the
Queen, no harm could have ensued. For he had
only to show that sufficient time had not elapsed for
such answer to arrive. In fact, his own despatch of
October 31, 1862, forwarding the Emperor's letter
to the Queen, did not reach London till Feb. 12,
1863, and Lord Russell's answer to that despatch
was dated April 22 ; so that when Consul Cameron
returned to Gondar in June, 1863, and met the
Emperor there in the following month, sufficient, or
hardly sufficient, time had elapsed for Lord Russell's
answer to reach him. It has nothing to do with
the question as it then stood that in that answer the
Emperor's letter to the Queen should have been
totally ignored. Both Cameron and the Emperor
expected a reply, and neither of them for a moment
imagined that no reply would be sent. All, then,
that Cameron had to do, had circumstances
been favourable, was to account for the delay
as above stated, which could not have failed
to be satisfactory, especially as M. Bardel, who
had left the Emperor's Court, with him in Novem-
ber, 1862, and had gone direct to Paris with a letter
to the Emperor of the French, was not yet returned,
and in fact did not return till September following.
The real cause of Theodore's displeasure, then,
was not so much that Consul Cameron returned in
1863, without the so anxiously-expected
anti:ewer from the Queen, as that, instead of waiting
first at Massowah, or at all events returning direct
to'Bogos, he had been in the interval into neighbour-
ing Egyptian provinces, in the Emperor's own words,
"He went to the Turks, who do not love me. . •
He stayed with them some time and returned to me."
The explanation of this is that while in Bogos
with Samuel, Consul Cameron received from the
Foreign-office a despatch containing certain corn.
munications which, under the circumstances detailed
in my work "The British Captives in Abyssinia,"
I had made to the Board of Trade in the months of
November and December, 1862, respecting the ex-
pediency of adopting measures for the development
of British commerce in Ethiopia, and which, as I
was informed by the Secretary of that Board in a
letter dated Jan. 10th, 1863, " had been referred by
her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
for the reportof her Majesty's Consul at Massowah."
In consequence of the orders thus conveyed to
him Consul Cameron went into the Egyptian pro-
vinces of Taka and Kalabat, " to see about cotton,
and trade, and so forth," as he wrote from Kedarif
on May 25th, 1863, in a letter quoted in my said
work, or, as he has since written from his prison at
Magdala, in a letter dated the 13th of Nov., 1866,
which has been duly recorded—" At Bogos I got a
letter from the Foreign-office directing me to report
on the comparative merits of Souakin and Mas-
sowah as the seat of a Consulate; also to report on
the trade of Souakin. It was that which led me to go
to the trading stations of Cassala and Matamma."
This, then, is what the Emperor meant when he
accused Cameron of " going to the Turks," and
this it is that poor Cameron himself alludes to when
he says, in his letter of the 25th of May', 1866, to
Mr. Henry D. Seymour, M.P., printed in page 55
of the Abyssinian Blue-book—" I feel somewhat
like the lad in the Arabian Nights,' who made
his cheese-cakes with pepper, and found that in so
doing he had committed a great political offence ?"
I have thus shown what was Consul Cameron's
primary offence. The neglect of the British Go-
vernment in reply to the Emperor's letter, the
abandonment of the Christian Abyssinians at Jeru-
salem, and other grievances aggravated his displea-
sure, and led to the imprisonment of our Consul
and the other Europeans. Still all this appeared to
have been condoned on Mr. Rassain's arrival with a
friendly letter from the Queen. What led to the
subsequent imprisonment of her Majesty's Envoy
and the whole party is a totally different question.
I regret to say that a letter from me, which ap-
peared in the Times on Sept. 14, 1865, by drawing
forth Earl Russell's ill-advised despatch of Oct. 5
following, became, without any fault of mine, the
primary cause of the misfortunes which have since
ensued, as I purpose showing on another occasion.

LONGEVITY IN ESSEX.—The death is announced,
in the parish of St. Martin, Colchester, of Mrs. Anu Ram-
sey, widow, in her 104th year. It is au interLsting cir-
cumstance that she was the daughter of the celebrated
navigator, Captain Cook, who was massacred by the natives
of Owbyhee, in the South Sea Islands; and that she was
barn only a few years after the accession of George 111. to
the throne of England.
HANGING A FENIAN.--A circumstance has
just taken place in Barnsley which shows very strongly
the feeling among the working classes on the subject of
Fonianism. It appears that a young man in the employ
of Messrs. G. J. Taylor and Son, manufacturers by
steam power, declared to some of his fellow-workers in
the warehouse that he was a Fenian, and that

his sympathies were with the cause of those who
had figured so conspicuously a few days ago in
Manchester. This declaration had no sooner been made
than a jury was empanelled, and the self-declared Fenian
put upon his trial. He was found guilty and seutenci:d to
be hanged. A rope was placed around his neck aul ho was
drawn up and suspended in mid-air. After he had been

hangiuga short dine he was cut down. The culprit had
already gut black iu the face, and there was the mark of
the rope upon his neck. The young men were taken be-
fore a tuagiarate and Ailed 10k. each.