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 comparatively minor part. The business of the Government is largely carried on by personal communication, and thereby the delays and misunderstandings produced by departmental correspondence are avoided. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and occasionally Anglo-Egyptians have been known to indulge in acrimonious official correspondence in bad French over some trivial dispute which a five-minutes' interview would have set right; but such practices are discouraged by the powers that be, and are dropped at an early stage.

There are some manifest advantages in the Egyptian system—or want of system, as some would perhaps call it It produces men, and it can effect improvements. The daily work of administration is carried on in a businesslike manner, and does not oppose obstacles to progress and reform. Its lack of rigidity is especially suitable to the needs of the Oriental community for whose benefit it exists. These are great merits, but there is, of course, the other side of the medal. In the first place, the predominance of the man over the machine causes the latter to work erratically whenever the former is changed. The mechanism is so responsive to the touch that an unskilful hand can quickly produce disaster. The human element is of necessity subject to frequent variation, and no two men, however equally versed in the art of government, take the same view either of ends or means. Consequently, there is at times a want of continuity in the methods adopted, owing to the fact that the personal factor has a tendency to overshadow tradition and precedent. New ideas can be put into execution and administrative experiments tried with greater facility in Egypt than elsewhere. But new ideas are not necessarily good ones, and experiments sometimes end in failure. The very ease with which new projects can be launched is sometimes the cause of their being adopted without due consideration or sufficiently thorough study, and occasionally it is found that a false road has been followed, and that the steps taken must be retraced.

The natural and proper remedy for the defect here