Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the...

Western nations as soon as they emerge into history show the beginnings of those capacities for self-government having merits of their own.... You may look through the whole history of the Orientals in what is called, broadly speaking, the East, and you never find traces of self-government. All their great centuries-and they have been very great-have been passed under despotisms, under absolute government.

All their great contributions to civilisation-and they have been great-have been made under that form of government. Conqueror has succeeded conqueror; one domination has followed another; but never in all the revolutions of fate and fortune have you seen one of those nations of its own motion establish what we, from a Western point of view, call self-government. That is the fact. It is not a question of superiority and inferiority.

I suppose a true Eastern sage would say that the working government which we have taken upon ourselves in Egypt and elsewhere is not a work worthy of a philosopher-that it is the dirty work, the inferior work, of carrying on the necessary labour. Since these facts are facts, Balfour must then go on to the next part of his argument. Is it a good thing for these great nations- I admit their greatness --that this absolute government should be exercised by us? I think it is a good thing.

I think that experience shows that they have got under it far better government than in the whole history of the world they ever had before, and which not only is a benefit to them, but is undoubtedly a benefit to the whole of the civilised West.... We are in Egypt not merely for the sake of the Egyptians, though we are there for their sake; we are there also for the sake of Europe at large.

Balfour produces no evidence that Egyptians and “the races with whom we deal” appreciate or even understand the good that is being done them by colonial occupation. It does not occur to Balfour, however, to let the Egyptian speak for himself, since presumably any Egyptian who would speak out is more likely to be “the agitator [who] wishes to raise difficulties” than the good native who overlooks the “difficulties” of foreign domination.

And so, having settled the ethical problems, Balfour turns at last to the practical ones.