366 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

time they could not dismiss him without seeming to repudiate their own policy, of which he had been only too zealous a partisan, and for this repudiation they were not then prepared. In consequence, it was determined, after the usual fashion, to remove him by promotion. The post of the head of the police in Egypt fell vacant ; and some one in Downing Street had the happy thought that Mr. Clifford Lloyd was just the personage required to reorganize the Egyptian system. So instructions were sent out to Cairo that the Khedive should be advised to secure the services of the sometime opponent of the Irish Land League. The advice, of course, was followed ; the Ministry at home got out of a party difficulty, and Egypt was saddled with about the most unfit person that could be found for a post, requiring great knowledge of the world, extreme tact, good temper, and common sense.

I had the pleasure of making Mr. Clifford Lloyd's acquaintance during his brief tenure of office in Cairo, and I understood, for the first time, why a statesman so just, so fair-minded, and so kind-hearted as " Buckshot " Forster, should have incurred the bitter personal unpopularity he acquired in Ireland. It was impossible not to recognize and respect the extraordinary energy and the courage of which Mr. Clifford Lloyd had given so many proofs. I have no doubt if he had been wanted to lick a savage population into shape, Clifford Lloyd would have been the right man in the right place. But at Cairo, in a highly civilized society, he was nothing more nor less than a bull in a china shop.

J