Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/25

Rh interest on a debt of nearly a hundred millions sterling, contracted at an enormous discount, of which the country had received probably not more than fifty per cent.

But this was not all. The Controllers, finding that they had what some would call "a fat place," imported a swarm of foreign officials, to whom they gave the other "fat" places in the financial administration. No sooner was it fairly established in power, than it virtually took possession, not only of the Control of the Finances, but of all the departments of the Government. In the household of the Khedive there were French and Italian secretaries and masters of ceremonies, while Englishmen were employed on the railways and in the postal service. There was the same mingling of nations in the departments of justice and of the interior; in the army and in the police; in the arsenals and military schools; in short, everywhere. A list carefully prepared showed that there were nearly fourteen hundred foreign officials employed in one post and another in the Egyptian Government. A large part of these obtained their positions by the removal of native officials, who in many cases were quite as well qualified as these foreign intruders. General Stone said to me, "Here come these English and French Controllers, who have not only taken the great offices to themselves, with enormous salaries, but have placed under them a large number of foreign subordinates. As one illustration of what they are doing, they have in many instances removed the Copts, who have been scribes in the land from the days of Joseph, and who were the best men to be found for the minor posts of the government, to do the work of special bureaus in the different departments, and filled their places with Englishmen imported from India — 'old Indians' — who have been worn out in that country, and now find Egypt a new field of operations. These swarm upon us