FIRST STAGE OF INTERVENTION, 145 one public debt of ;9 1,000,000, bearing 7 per cent"? interest. / If there had been any reason to supposej) this compromise would be carried out, the foreign bondholders would have accepted it gladly. Unfortu* nately, XQUfidence had beeu shattered If Ismail claimed the right to fix for himself the amount in which he was indebted to his creditors, and the interest he should pay them for their loans, what possible reliance could be placed upon his promises ?

If he was once allowed to determine the extent of his own liabilities, he might, whenever he found it incon- / venient to fulfil his engagements, reduce again, by a( fresh decree, the amount of his indebtedness and th€J rate of interest he was prepared to pay. Moreover, the compromise, whose acceptance Ismail Pasha, in his character of an insolvent debtor, proposed to enforce upon his creditors, gave great umbrage to the bondholders. By the consolidation of all his liabilities into one huge debt, the holders of Treasury bonds/ issued by the Khedive were placed on exactly the\ same footing as the holders of the State bonds issued! to the investors in the various State loans. The' holders of the floating debt were mainly French ; the holders of the State bonds were chiefly English. In consequence, the Unification decree was not unfavourably received in Paris ; but it was vehemently attacked in London, as giving an unfair advantage to the French creditors at the expense of the British. Nor was this hostility removed by a formal declaration accompanying the decree to the effect that no further L