the Fellaheen: The Caisse de la
Dette_

The official deposition of Ismail Pasha by the sultan of Turkey, Abdul
Hamid, occurred on June 26, in the year 1879, and his son Tewfik assumed
the khedivate, becoming practically the protege of England and Egypt. To
understand how this came to pass, it is necessary to review the account
of the financial embarrassments of Ismail. In twelve years he had
extracted more than $400,000,000 from the fellaheen in taxes. He had
borrowed another $400,000,000 from Europe at the same time, of which
nominal sum he probably received $250,000,000 in cash. The loans were
ostensibly contracted for public works. Possibly ten per cent, of the
borrowed money was profitably laid out. The railways were extended;
Upper Egypt was studded with sugar factories,--most of them doomed to
failure,--and certain roads and gardens were made about the city of
Cairo.

The remainder of this enormous sum of money was spent in purchasing
a change in the law of succession, and the new title of khedive; in
disastrous Abyssinian campaigns; in multiplying shoddy palaces, and in
personal extravagance, which combined Oriental profusion with the
worst taste of the Second Empire. Useless works engaged the corvee;
the fellaheen were evicted from vast tracts, which became ill-managed
estates; and their crops, cattle, and even seed were taken from them
by the tax-gatherers, so that they died by hundreds when a low Nile
afflicted the land. The only persons who flourished in Ismail's time
were foreign speculators and adventurers of the lowest type. As these
conditions became more serious, the khedive attempted to find some means
of protection against the concession-monger. He adopted a suggestion of
the wise Nubar Pasha, and instituted the mixed tribunals for adjudging
civil cases between natives and foreigners.

The Powers agreed to the establishment of these tribunals, and intended
to enforce the decisions of the courts, even in case that Ismail
himself were the delinquent. When later the khedive repudiated the mixed
tribunals, this action precipitated his fall. It became increasingly
difficult for the khedive to meet his accumulated obligations. The price
of cotton had fallen after the close of the American war, and there was
less response from the impoverished people to the Cour-bash, which in
1868 was still more strictly enforced; and soon this enforcement by the
mixed tribunal of debts due to foreigners by an agricul