132 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

laid down by Sir Evelyn Baring, devoted its efforts to cutting down all needless expenditure, to reducing all grants and salaries on which reduction was possible, and to bringing the total expenditure of the year within the year's income.

Every official, from the Governor of a province down to the Sheik of the humblest village, had been taught to believe that it was impossible to uphold his authority unless he had the power to claim irregular largesses out of the public funds which passed through his hands, and from these largesses to reward his subordinates for services rendered, or supposed to have been rendered, in the interest of the Administration. In consequence, the native officials — even those who were most enlightened and least open to suspicion in respect of integrity — resented bitterly the reign of economy established under British control. It was not only that they suffered by it in their own pockets, but that they felt their importance to be diminished and their authority to be impaired amidst their neighbours. What made their resentment the greater was that the system in question was introduced by foreigners, and that it was justified on the alleged necessity of providing for the regularity of payments due for the most part to foreign creditors.

Popular dissatisfaction was, moreover, aggravated, however unreasonably, by the fact that the self-same foreigners who cut down expenditure right and