FIRST STAGE OF INTERVENTION. 149 that when he contemplated the acceptance of a British Protectorate, he felt convinced that, so long as the interest on the debt was duly paid, and the special interests of England, as the mistress of India, were secured under the Protectorate, he would be given a free hand to govern or misgovern Egypt as seemed wise in his own sight. The protecting Power, according to the Khedive's conception, was to look after its own interests in Egypt ; and personal government was to go on there in every other respect as it had done heretofore. In accordance with the ame order of ideas, he offered to appoint the Commission of the Public Debt in the hope that its appointment might seem to the European public to constitute a sort of International Control; while in reality it was not to concern itself with anything beyond matters of account. Entertaining, as he did, a profound conviction of the innate superiority of Eastern to Western statecraft — using the word in its literal sense — he felt assured he could easily keep the Commission from knowing anything he did not wish them to I know, while he was confident that, even if ugly facts / came to their knowledge, they would not interfere s with niatters which, in his opinion, were nobody' business but his own.

When the Public Debt Commission came intor/ operation the Khedive soon discovered that his anticipations were not likely to be realized. He had overlooked the fact that, though the Commissioners, in their capacity as representatives of England,,