Porte to grant him the title of Khedive and confirm the succession of the Pashalik in his family. Again and again did he “kiss the carpet,” till in 1872 he was practically an independent Sovereign wielding absolute personal power over Egypt--the suzerainty of Turkey being marked only by the annual tribute, the Imperial cypher on the coinage, the weekly prayer for the Sultan in the Mosque, and the preservation of the _jus legationis_. In 1875 he abolished the Consular Courts before which suits between Egyptians and foreigners were tried, substituting for them the Mixed Tribunals on which representative judges of the Great Powers sat. At this period the crop of financial wild oats which Ismail Pasha had sown had ripened. He had spent money lavishly not only on the Suez Canal, but on every conceivable scheme that wily European speculators could persuade him was an improvement. He had borrowed this money on the principles that regulate the financial transactions of a rich young spendthrift and a usurer of the lowest class. In 1864 he borrowed £5,700,000. In the succeeding years loans for £3,000,000, £1,200,000, and £2,000,000 were added. In 1873 there was another loan for £32,000,000--which, according to Mr. Cave, swallowed up every resource of Egypt.[178] The Khedive’s private loans came to £11,000,000, and the floating debt to £26,000,000 in 1876. How these last loans were to be met, seeing that the 1873 loan swallowed up all the resources of the country, was a perplexing point. The usurers would lend the Khedive no more money, and in 1875 England helped him to meet the interest on existing loans by giving him £4,000,000 for the Suez Canal Shares. [Illustration: THE KARMOUS SUBURB, ALEXANDRIA, AND POMPEY’S PILLAR.]