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480 RISE OF THE CONTINENTALblissful ignorance, had allowed it to remain neutral. It hadbeen for two centuries and a half the allyof France, withouthowever taking partin her wars. England had had littleconnexion with it. She had wished perhaps, though in vain,to take an interest in its affairs before the conclusion of thelast peace ; but in this she was not actuated so much by atender solicitude for the Porte, as by jealousy on account ofthe growing power of Russia. But now relations hadchanged ; Egypt belonged to the Porte ;which now alsodiscovered by experience that no public law afforded anyprotection against the political code of the revolution. Itsoldest friend despoiled it,without any provocation, of one ofits best provinces and; thoughthis proceeding might be inexplicable to them, they were quite sensible that an insulthad been offered them, which a semibarbarous peopleis ofall others usually least disposedto brook. The means forgaining the divan failed; their voice was raised for war;and under these circumstances it could not be difficult forthe British cabinet, when war was declared, to find in heran ally.Both expectations proceeded rapidly to their fulfilment. As earlyas the 12th Sept. the Porte issued a declaration of war against France, and by the 5th of January,1799, a league was concluded, by which was stipulated mutual assistance, their harbours were closed against the Frenchvessels, and they engaged not to make peace except withmutual consent, and guaranteed to each other their possessions. The alliance of the Porte differed only in one respectfrom that of the other powers with England. The Portewas the only power which received no subsidies, nor evendesired them. This connexion was for England, not onlyof the highest importance in regard to her immediate objectand the present war, but itopened to her a new and dazzling prospect of the fortresses in the Mediterranean and thetrade in the Levant, which had been hitherto in the handsof the French and Dutch ;but if it once passed into hers, itwould not be so easy to wrest it back from her. The sequelhas shown how these expectations were realized; it waswritten in the book of fate that the fruits of the expeditionto Egypt,if we exceptits literary advantages, should not bereaped by France, but by England. The importance ofthis new continental connexion is sufficiently obvious.