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318 began with Ismail Pasha's son Tewfik as Khedive. It is now necessary to observe carefully every step taken by the Powers, as they were no longer acting "unofficially," but directly and in their own names. The one political act chargeable on them as regards Ismail Pasha was their procuring his deposition. That was no doubt partly in the interest of the bondholders, but quite as much in the interests of the Egyptian people, for whom good or even endurable government was impossible while smail was intriguing and manœuvring to recover the arbitrary power which he had been forced nominally to resign. Up to the end of 1877 the issue had been solely between Ismail Pasha and his foreign creditors. In 1878, and onward to the deposition of Ismail Pasha, it was a question of public safety and order in Egypt: a question clearly affecting the Egyptians more than any one else. With the accession of Tewfik Pasha, however, an undeniably abnormal state of affairs begins. From that date a state of foreign intervention existed on the Nile. Egypt was placed under a moral protectorate by the European Powers, with England and France at their head. Any one candid enough to accept the fact that Ismail Pasha had by his extravagance and his general recklessness rendered himself an impossibility as ruler of Egypt, will not care to waste further words on the modus operandi of his fall. He threw himself on his fate, and there was an end of him.

The Egyptian question of to-day begins, therefore, with the advent of Tewfik Pasha. It was attended by three distinctive acts of foreign intervention. The first was the re-establishment of the European Control, this time with an avowedly political character, and not, as before, in an "unofficial" sense. It is important to note here that the first British Comptroller was Sir Evelyn Baring, who had filled the same post on the old Control, and who has been the trusted adviser of the present Government ever since it had anything to do with Egypt. This unimpeachable Liberal, experienced financier, near relative of Lord Northbrook, and intimate friend of Mr Gladstone, was an integral part of the Egyptian "heritage of woe" taken over from the late Government. It may have been specially for him that Mr Gladstone intended the warm eulogy he bestowed on the Dual Control in his speech at Leeds in October 1881. Though the Premier had been eighteen months in office he was still playing the rôle of humanitarian statesman, and it suited him to assure the people of Leeds that "not only the finance of Egypt, which was in confusion, had been brought into order, but the peasantry had had great advantages introduced through the European interference into what was a system of serious and grievous oppression."

The second distinctive act of foreign intervention in 1879 was the appointment of a new Financial Commission. This, too, was avowedly political, and all the great Powers were represented on it save Russia. Its object was to complete the interrupted inquiry into the financial condition of the country, and to frame a new supervising authority on behalf of the bondholders. It will be observed that it satisfied Mr Gladstone's fundamental canon of foreign policy – the concert of Europe. The third and most important act of the Powers in the rehabilitation of Egypt was the Law of Liquidation framed by the above Commission. It was an act which for the first time demanded a substantial sacrifice from the bondholders,