Up to Whitsuntide Government business was sadly in arrears--foreign questions diverting attention from domestic legislation. The fall of Khartoum, the retreat of Lord Wolseley’s advance column in the Soudan, the defeats and disasters of the campaign, the deaths of Generals Gordon, Stewart, and Earle, together with wild rumours of an Arab invasion of Egypt, excited Parliament to a state of high tension. The Government called out the Reserves, announced that they would crush the Mahdi, and ordered the war against Osman Digna to be renewed. The Opposition in the last week of February brought forward a vote of censure on the Ministerial policy in Egypt, calling on Ministers to recognise British responsibility for Egypt and those parts of the Soudan which were necessary for the security of Egypt. Mr. Gladstone evaded any positive declaration of policy, and the Liberal party spoke with two voices, some being for complete withdrawal from Egypt, others being in favour of administering its affairs in the name of the Khedive, but none being bold enough to advocate any permanent course of action. The Ministry were saved from defeat by 302 votes to 288, and this narrow majority was a warning of their coming doom. A dispute then arose as to the plan adopted for rescuing Egypt from a financial crisis. This plan was embodied in a convention with the Powers and assented to by the Porte, by which a loan of £9,000,000 under International guarantee was advanced to Egypt to save her from bankruptcy, in consideration of which the Powers agreed to suspend the Law of Liquidation and cut down the interest on all Egyptian securities by 5 per cent. That on the Suez Bonds payable to the English Government was, however, reduced by 10 per cent. The arrangement was to last for two years, and if Egypt was still bankrupt in 1887, then her affairs would be subject to an International inquiry. No care had been taken to prevent the International guarantee of the loan carrying with it the right of International intervention in Egypt, though Ministers repudiated the suggestion that it did. The Convention was, however, approved by the House of Commons by a vote of 294 to 246. Soon after this the diplomatic hostility of France, Russia, and Germany, caused Mr. Gladstone’s Government suddenly to limit their responsibilities in Egypt. Operations in the Red Sea were countermanded, the Suakim-Berber railway was stopped, and it was decided to abandon Dongola and fix the Egyptian frontier at Wady-Halfa. Mr. Gladstone, or rather Lord Derby and Lord Granville, had produced the diplomatic isolation of England at a most inconvenient moment, when a dispute with Russia over the Afghan boundary reached a critical stage. The negotiations for settling the boundary had been delayed because the Russian Commissioners under various pretexts avoided meeting Sir Peter Lumsden, the British Commissioner, on the frontier. Meanwhile Russian troops were stealthily