Lord Cromer explained what he meant by 'autonomy for Egypt':
Consider what is generally meant by Europeans when they talk of Egyptian self-government. If they meant that the Egyptians should be allowed to govern themselves according to their own rude lights, the task of educating them in the art of self-government would not merely have been easy; there would have been no necessity that it should have been undertaken. … What Europeans mean when they talk of Egyptian self-government is that the Egyptians, far from being allowed to follow the bent of their own unreformed propensities, should only be permitted to govern themselves after the fashion in which Europeans think they ought to be governed.
