EGYPT UNDER LIQUIDATION. 235 The report was embodied in a decree, the main conditions of which may be worth quoting.

The revenues of the State railways, the telegraph service, and the port of Alexandria, were set apart to the service of the Preferred Debt, while in the event of these revenues falling short of the amount required to pay the interest of 5 per cent., the deficit became a first charge on the receipts hypothecated to the Unified Debt. These receipts consisted' of the custom dues, the taxes on imported tobacco, and the revenues of the four fertile provinces, Garbieh, Menoufieh, Behera, and Siout. The interest payable on the Unified Debt was reduced to 4 per cent.

The short loans of 1864, 1865, and 1867 were converted into stock of the Unified Loan, the holders of these loans receiving in exchange for 80 per cent, of their nominal value 60 per cent, of Unified bonds. The Commission of the Public Debt was authorized to receive and collect the receipts affected to the service of the State loans, and to distribute them in accordance with the Law of Liquidation. Their consent was declared essential to the issue of any new loan, and they were specifically empowered, as the legal representatives of the bondholders, to institute actions against the Government before the International tribunals. The Daira Saniel lands, the most valuable of the lands ceded by Ismail, were placed under the control of an Anglo-French Commission, and the holders of the loan raised on these lands during the preceding reign were