92 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE who determined what amount he had the right to seize in satisfaction of his advances, and, as a rule, he contrived to leave the borrower still in debt after he had paid a sum for the renewal of the loan more than sufficient to cover the original loan. I have no wish to paint things as blacker than they were. The oppression under which the native population of Egypt suffered during the era of the Mufettish did not, I am convinced, appear as monstrous either to the perpetrators or the victims as it does to the European mind. That the people should suffer, because their master needs money, seems to the Oriental only in accordance with the law of the universe. I do not believe that the fellaheen of to-day entertain any keen feeling of resentment towards their native rulers for the sufferings they underwent previous to the downfall of Ismail at all analogous to that which, under like circumstances, would be entertained by an European population.

A record of the expedients to which the Khedive was driven by the constant necessity of meeting the enormous demands upon his Treasury would afford a curious chapter to the chronicler of the annals of insolvency. I if once he made default in any of the payments due on his public loans, his credit was gone ; '\ and with the loss of his credit went the possibility of ) inducing European capitalists to open their pursestrings again. Similar considerations precluded any / curtailment of the public works to which he had coml mitted himself. The Alexandria breakwater had to