i64 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

foreigners, who, in former years, had been in his employment under similar conditions — to expect that they would content themselves with drawing their salaries, studying their own interests, and making no attempt to acquire information, whose possession might prove inconvenient. His Highness soon discovered that this impression was erroneous. I have no wish to represent the British officials who then, and later on, were employed in the Egyptian service as men exceptionally high-minded ; but they were, as a body, imbued with a sentiment that, as honest men, they owed a duty to the people whose affairs they were called to administer, as well as to their own country and to themselves. I do not say that their non-English colleagues had not the same sense of duty, but I do say they did not display quite the same zeal for the interests of the Egyptian public. Anyhow, the mere fact that various departments of the public service in Egypt were in the hands of officials, who wanted to know the truth themselves and to let the truth be known abroad, added a new difficulty to the embarrassments with which Ismail had to contend.

If he had been labouring for a worthier cause, there would have been something heroic in the resolution shown by the Khedive, at this period of his fortunes, ** to take arms against a sea of troubles." It was not only his creditors who harassed him day by day. In the Soudan, the Egyptian troops, under a Danish commander. Colonel Ahrendroop, had sustained a