aifa-Khartum railway. The grandeur of his views may be realised when it
is remembered that he ordered this railway to be made of the same gauge
as those of South Africa, because "it would save trouble in the end."

As to the sudden fall in the price of cotton, his only expedient for
making good the loss was to grow sugar on a great scale, but this was
done so unwisely as to increase the deficits. As a natural consequence,
the Egyptian debt, which at his accession stood at L3,000,000, reached
the extraordinary sum of L89,000,000 in the year 1876, and that, too,
despite the increase of the land tax by one-half. All the means which
oriental ingenuity has devised for the systematic plunder of a people
were now put in force; so that Sir Alfred Milner (now Lord Milner),
after unequalled opportunities of studying the Egyptian Question,
declared: "There is nothing in the financial history of any country,
from the remotest ages to the present time, to equal this carnival of
extravagance and oppression[356]."

[Footnote 356: _England in Egypt_, by Sir Alfred Milner (Lord Milner),
1892, pp. 216-219. (The Egyptian L is equal to L1:0:6.) I give the
figures as pounds sterling.]

The Khedive himself had to make some sacrifices of a private nature, and
one of these led to an event of international importance. Towards the
close of the year 1875 he decided to sell the 177,000 shares which he
held in the Suez Canal Company. In the first place he offered them
secretly to the French Government for 100,000,000 francs; and the
Foreign Minister, the Duc Decazes, it seems, wished to buy them; but the
Premier, M. Buffet, and other Ministers hesitated, perhaps in view of
the threats of war from Germany, which had alarmed all responsible men.
In any case, France lost her chance[357]. Fortunately for Great Britain,
news of the affair was sent to one of her ablest journalists, Mr.
Frederick Greenwood, who at once begged Lord Derby, then Minister for
Foreign Affairs, to grant him an interview. The result was an urgent
message from Lord Derby to Colonel Staunton, the British envoy in Egypt,
to find out the truth from the Khedive himself. The tidings proved to be
correct, and the Beaconsfield Cabinet at once sanctioned the purchase of
the shares for the sum of close on L4,000,000.

[Footnote 357: _La Question d'Egypte_, by C. de Freycinet (1905), p.
151.]

It is said that the French envoy to Egypt was playing billiards when he
heard of the purchas