412 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

had been arrived at, the general election of January, 1886, returned a Liberal majority, and Mr. Gladstone resumed office. During the brief session, which ended in the Liberal Unionist secession, and in the consequent defeat of the Ministry, the Government had no time to turn its attention to other than home matters, and consequently the Anglo-Turkish negotiations at Cairo remained in abeyance. The elections of July gave the Conservatives an overwhelming victory. Lord Salisbury returned to power, with Lord Randolph Churchill as leader of the House of Commons, and, as soon as the new Government were able to attend to foreign affairs, the negotiations at Cairo were resumed. The Sultan, after the fashion of vendors in all parts of the world, and especially of the Eastern world, began to increase his terms as soon as he saw the purchaser was anxious to get the sale settled, and raised various objections, which, as he alleged, might stand in the way of the execution of the contract. The chief difficulty raised was that while Turkey was asked to bind herself to send an army to Egypt under certain contingencies, which could only arise after our troops had been withdrawn, our Government was reluctant to commit itself beforehand to any fixed date for evacuating Egypt. I should doubt, however, this objection having been seriously maintained, if our Envoy had been in a position to use the good old arguments, which Turkey has seldom hitherto been able to resist. But, by the conditions under which he had to negotiate, he was unable either