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Egypt—Claims Of British Subjects—Question

Volume 217: debated on Thursday 17 July 1873

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asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If he can inform the House whether the land and other property belonging to the Alexandria and Ramle Railway Company (in which British subjects are largely interested), taken possession of by the Egyptian Government, has been restored to that Company; and, whether Her Majesty's Consul General at Alexandria was authorised to submit to arbitration the matter of the land so taken possession of?

Sir, the right to the land in question is still in dispute between the Alexandria and Ramle Railway Company and the Egyptian authorities, and the question is one over which, in the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown, the British Consular Court has no jurisdiction; it rests, therefore, with the Company either to submit their case to the Local Courts or to let it be decided by arbitration—a course to which, I believe, the Egyptian Government is not averse.