242 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

the State, the legality or illegality of his actions, the conflict between the respective authorities of the International code and the law of Islam, the rights of slaves either to own or bequeath property, the relative status of wives and concubines. When to all these difficulties are added the normal embarrassments of a court of arbitration, which has to decide complicated questions in a foreign country, whose language, creed, laws, usages, and ideas are utterly alien to their own, it must be admitted that, if the Commission carried out their work in a rough and ready fashion, they contrived to effect a very satisfactory liquidation of a gigantic estate, whose affairs were involved in almost inextricable embarrassments.