SECOND STAGE OF INTERVENTION. i6i Joubert, as envoys of the bondholders, considered with justice that their first duty was to protect the interests of their clients. They were probably of opinion that the amount of the floating debt had been swollen by all sorts of bogus claims ; that the great majority of these claims would not stand any serious investigation ; and that the Khedive and his private creditors could come to some reasonable arrangement between themselves. Moreover, they had no authority to effect a settlement of the unfunded debts, and they I were perfectly well aware that they could look for no / active support from their respective governments so J long as England adhered to her policy of absolute!

non-intervention. In all likelihood, these expectations might have been realized if Ismail had still possessed the same uncontrolled authority as he held up to midsummer, 1875, when he had presided at the opening of the International tribunals. Lord Randolph Churchill, shortly after his resignation, used to say, in defence of his abortive resignation, " It would have been a success if I had not forgotten the existence of Mr. Goschen." Lord Randolph's successor, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, might justify the failure of the Goschen settlement by paraphrasing this saying, and declaring ** that his financial scheme would have been a success if he had not forgotten the existence of the International tribunals." The oversight, if oversight there was, can easily be excused.

At the period when the so-called Goschen decree was issued, the legal position of these tribunals was not M