Cherif Pacha to Charles Hale, July 17, 1867

Cherif Pacha to Mr. Hale

Sir : You have lately expressed a desire to know what is the feeling of the government of his Highness the Viceroy with regard to the nature of the recent occurrences in which a Copt, converted to Protestanism by the American missionaries, was the principal actor, and which aroused the attention of the local authorities.

On this subject you are yourself aware that the government of his Highness practices religious tolerance to the fullest extent, and that in no other country freedom of worship is more respected than in Egpyt.

Devoted to the ideas of civilization and of progress, his Highness the Viceroy, my august master, sanctions every day this principle of tolerance, and, placed under the safeguard of his generous inspirations, all creeds find the most easy access to the hospitable soil of Egypt, as well as the most constant support there.

And this support is not merely moral, for, you are also aware, the greater part of the religious communities established in the country, including the American missionaries, have received marks of the good-will of his Highness, whose liberal hand has often aided and contributed to their establishment and to their material well-being.

Accordingly nobody can doubt that the Egyptian government is as favorable as possible to the enjoyment of religious liberty, and I believe that, in the face of the facts which take place every day, no voice is raised to contest this truth. But side by side with the enjoyment there is the abuse; and to tolerate the abuse would be precisely to fail in the object which the government has always proposed—that of assuring the exercise of liberty within the largest limits, at the same time, of course, excluding license, which is always dangerous. The government is willing to respect the religious convictions of all who inhabit its territory; it is willing that everybody should obey without restraint the inspirations of his conscience; but it thinks proper at the same time to look for the same respect for the convictions and the consciences of its own subjects.

To proceed in the way of an active and incessant propagandism, as the Copt you have mentioned to me, is evidently to fall into the abuse and stray from the limits which befit the enjoyment of a wise liberty; for this is to exercise upon the conscience of another a pressure which injures liberty and tends constantly to change it.

Thus the government raises itself with energy against such proceedings, and has quite decided to take all proper measures to repress propagandism, whether secret or public, whoever may be engaged in it, because it considers this entirely opposed to the liberty of conscience; that is, to the exercise of an inviolable right, to the perfect preservation of which an enlightened government owes all its solicitude and all its vigilance.

Such is moreover the sovereign influence of this right, such is the sentiment it inspires in all, without distinction, that in this particular case the Coptic population aroused itself in a body against these attempts at propagandism; and it required to calm this excitement the intervention, wholly conciliatory, wholly pacific, of the patriarch, who, by a happy chance, was making his periodical round of visits at the time, but to whom, nevertheless, the local authority, if it had been warned in due time, would not have allowed the initiative, in virtue precisely of this principle of religious liberty which it is bound to insist upon in all circumstances. Behold the truth.

These explanations will suffice, without doubt, to give you a clear understanding of the facts which have happened, as well as of the manner in which the government regards them, which you wished to know.

Accept, &c.,