148 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

whatever happens, I am not going to be a filibuster.*' By disposition, as well as by conviction, he was hostile to the ideas which underlie Imperialism, and he was so especially in virtue of his official training.

France, as I have said, consented at once to nominate a member of the proposed Commission ; Austria and Italy followed suit. England stood aloof; but in order to secure the presence of an English representative on the Commission, the Khedive selected j Major Evelyn Baring (now Lord Cromer) as the / British member of the Public Debt Commission.

It is impossible to understand the course of the events which intervened between Ismail's repudiation of his debts and his subsequent dethronement, unless one realizes the plain fact that his whole policy was based on the maintenance of his own personal govern-(ment. In respect of external affairs, he was ready to accept the control of a foreign power in return for the moral, if not the financial, support required to reestablish his damaged credit But in internal affairs j he was resolved to remain, at all costs and all hazards I the Effendina, the absolute Lord and Master of his V subjects, and of their lives and properties. Notwithstanding his singular intelligence, he shared with all Oriental rulers an utter inability to understand the nature of constitutional government, as established in Western and Northern Europe. That foreign Governments were ever actuated by any other motive than that of promoting their own personal interests was to him a thing absolutely unintelligible. I have no doubt