THE ROAD TO RUIN. 85 difficulty Turkey had long experienced of raising loans v abroad for her own use. Possibly, too, the Ottoman | authorities, who had far better means than anybody I else of appreciating the enormous amount of indebted- / ness which Ismail had already incurred, now began to / perceive that a financial crisis was imminent in Egypt, ( and that such a crisis, if it could not be averted, or[ at any rate postponed, must of necessity bring about 1 the further collapse of Turkish credit in the money marts of Europe. What is not so easy to understand is why Ismail should have consented to restrictions . which debarred, or were supposed to debar, him from resorting to the only methods by which he could reasonably have hoped to meet the immense liabilities so rapidly maturing. The only explanations I can offer are that his knowledge of Turkey led him .

to believe that these restrictions could always be removed for a consideration ; that he was convinced they could easily be evaded in fact, if not in name;-that he immensely exaggerated the facility with which he could raise money by private loans and exactions ; or that he had reached the stage in the road to ruin during which a spendthrift is prepared to pay any price, however ruinous, by which temporary relief can be obtained from a pressing emergency.

I should, however, extremely doubt whether atthis period, or indeed till a much later date, either Ismail himself or his ministers and advisers had any very distinct idea of the character and extent of his liabilities. The public accounts of the State were mixed up