404 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

be considered as implied by the circumstances under which the concession was demanded and accorded.

How far, in any ordinary financial contract, it is possible to read in a clause not contained in the original document, is a point I, for one, should incline to doubt.

At the same time, I think our Government were justified in not scrutinizing too closely any plausible plea which enabled them to inform the Khedive that the concession he had been asked to grant must not be granted. If an Anglo-Egyptian Company had been given permission to make a new canal, which, whether successful or otherwise, must infallibly have injured, if not ruined, the Suez Canal, the national interests and the national pride of France would have been outraged to a pitch which would have either rendered peaceful relations impossible, or would have led to the reopening of the whole Egyptian question under conditions most unfavourable to England. If I am rightly informed, Tewfik himself fully realized the " Necessity of State " which compelled our Government to refuse their consent to the construction of a second canal across the Isthmus of Suez.

Probably he shared the opinion, commonly held in Egypt at the time, that the British Government might well have availed itself of the alarm created in the Suez Canal Company, by the possibility of a competing canal being constructed, to obtain some share for Egypt in the profits of an Egyptian undertaking.