438 THE STORY OF THE KHEDIVATE.

protest against the administration of Egypt by British officials.

Up to this time our Protectorate over Egypt had brought us nothing but trouble and annoyance, and Nubar, who was a very keen and close observer of English politics, and who had no very exalted opinion of British statesmanship, thought that England was beginning to count the cost of intervention in Egypt, and was anxious, in mercantile phraseology, to cut the loss. In this impression he was confirmed by the negotiations initiated through Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, to which I have referred before, for the conclusion of an Anglo-Turkish Convention. If these negotiations meant anything, they were evidence that the British Government were trying to find a means of withdrawing our troops from Egypt.

The particular form by which Sir Henry proposed to facilitate the evacuation of Egypt was equally distasteful to the Khedive and his Prime Minister, though on different grounds. Tewfik Pasha, though a Turk by descent, and a devout Mussulman, resented, as the descendant of Mahomet Ali, any measures which seemed calculated to replace Eg>'pt under the authority of Turkey. It so happened that, just at this time, Ismail Pasha had been invited to reside at Constantinople, and had been received there with great apparent favour by the Sultan. Tewfik Pasha was convinced that his father hoped, through the influence of the Porte, to return to Egypt-Mukhtar Pasha and his English fellow-commissioner