SECOND STAGE OF INTERVENTION. 171 had undoubtedly given him an unfavourable impression of French politicians and diplomatists. His sense of justice was outraged by the manner in which M. de Lesseps and his colleagues had exploited Egypt, and still more by the partisan support given to this exploitation by the French Government during the time when he was advocating the cause of Egypt before the arbiters appointed by Napoleon III. AgahirN when he was conducting the negotiations for the repeal I of the Capitulations, and for the establishment of the / International courts, he found himself thwarted atl every step by French official influence, both in Egypt and abroad. From England, on the other hand, his efforts at reform had met with sympathetic support.!

Moreover, the French adventurers who crowded! round Ismail in the days of his glory, were distasteful!

to Nubar, not only by conviction, but by instinctJ He saw, and saw very keenly, the defects of English statesmanship, but he recognized that, on the whole, it was more honest, more trustworthy, and more high-minded, than that of France. Therefore, after he had made up his mind that Egypt, for her own welfare, must pass under European control, he laboured to the utmost of his power to place that control in the hands of England.

It was in connection with this period, when intervention was, so to speak, in the air, that I first came into intimate relations with Nubar. He had come over to London in order to place his views before the Government, and finding that these ideas met with