Lord Morley has commented on the irony of fate which imposed on Mr. Gladstone the unwelcome task of Egyptian occupation. "It was one of the ironies," he says, "in which every active statesman's life abounds." Disparity between intentions and achievements is indeed inevitable in all departments of activity, but nowhere more so than in cases of what may be called creative policy. Destruction is easy. But a constructive policy which shall bring about a new and more favourable state of things, and may, therefore, in this sense be called creative, is strangely apt either to overshoot its mark or to deviate into unexpected channels, with results wholly unlooked for by the statesman responsible for its conduct. Certainly this ironic force of circumstances was peculiarly apparent in the case of Mr. Gladstone's Egyptian policy. The problem of Egypt was not of his seeking, but was a legacy from the Tories. In 1875 Disraeli, against the advice of Lord Derby, his Foreign Minister, and without consulting the other members of his Cabinet, arranged with the London Rothschilds to purchase Khedive Ismail's shares in the Suez Canal for four millions sterling. Ismail, whose absolute reign of eighteen years had cost Egypt[1] no less a sum than four hundred millions sterling, had been {191} driven by his preposterous extravagance, and the consequent exhaustion of both his legitimate and illegitimate methods of procuring revenue, to look abroad for financial assistance. France, besides being crippled by the war of 1870, was regarded with suspicion in the matter of the canal, and the only alternative to France was England. A trifle like four millions was very far from what Ismail really required to give any sort of financial stability to his government, and, after the loan with Rothschild had been negotiated, the British Cabinet sent out a series of commissioners to study the state of affairs on the spot, and to see what could be done in the interests of Egyptian rule and, incidentally, of the foreign bondholders. Eventually a settlement of Ismail's affairs, known as the Goschen-Joubert arrangement, was made, by which the enormous yearly payment of nearly seven millions sterling was charged on the Egyptian revenue. Greek usurers attended the tax-gatherers on their rounds, and the ruined fellaheen were forced to mortgage their lands to meet these amazing demands. Even such methods failed of success owing to the famine of the two preceding years. The obviously juster course was now to let Ismail become bankrupt and abandon the Goschen-Joubert arrangement, but the foreign bondholders were naturally opposed to this, and pointed out reasonably enough that the English Government had guaranteed the loan. The moment was favourable to their views. Dizzy had succeeded in converting his colleagues, with the exception of Derby, who retired and was succeeded by Lord Salisbury as Foreign Secretary, to