W2 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

Khedive, the Ministers, the civil and religious authorities, the native population, and the leading members of the foreign mercantile community, all protested against the surrender of Khartoum as a step likely to prove fatal to the material welfare of Egypt, as well as to her security and safety. The agitation caused in Egypt by the proposal to evacuate the Soudan was so formidable and so widespread, that Sir Evelyn Baring urged upon our Government the paramount importance of taking immediate steps to increase the force of the army of occupation to its original dimensions. As a last resource, the Khedive and his Ministers came to the conclusion that the risk of allowing the Turks to obtain a footing once more on Egyptian soil was less than the peril involved in surrendering the Soudan to the rule of the Mahdi, and therefore proposed, subject to the permission of her Majesty's Government, to request the Porte to send an army of 10,000 men to Suakin, with the object of advancing from that port to Khartoum.

It is doubtful to my mind whether this proposal was not made with the object of bringing pressure to bear on the British Government, and whether, if the proposal had been approved in London, it would ever have been seriously submitted to Constantinople Lord Granville probably was of the same way of thinking, as he replied that the idea could only be entertained on the condition that Turkey agreed to pay all the expenses of the despatch of a Turicish force to the Soudan, a condition which, it was