Sir Rivers Wilson, who was then acting in Egypt as English Commissioner, received instructions to see that France should be equally represented with England in all financial appointments made in connection with his inquiry. Wilson's appointment as English Commissioner on the nominally International Commission of Inquiry was almost the first signed by Lord Salisbury on taking over the Foreign Office from Lord Derby. He was a man from whom much was expected. In 1878 he was appointed Finance Minister in Egypt. His predecessor, Ismail Sadyk, had been treacherously murdered by the Khedive Ismail, but this fact did not dash his confidence. He had great faith in Nubar, Ismail's Prime Minister. His French education would, he thought, enable him to preserve the Anglo-French character of the Ministry. He also had behind him the full interest and power of the house of Rothschild, whom he had persuaded to advance the loan of nine millions, known as the Kedival Domains Loan. But his brief career as Finance Minister (the Nubar Ministry was overthrown in the February of 1879) was a failure. It is the opinion of Mr. Blunt, and no one would have been more likely to know the true state of affairs, that the Khedive himself intrigued against him and that the internal policy of the country was entirely in the hands of Nubar, who, as a Christian, was at a disadvantage in governing a Mohammedan country, and in whose political value Wilson seems to have been greatly mistaken. The loan which he had negotiated did not relieve the taxpayer, but went in paying the more immediately urgent calls. His suggestion of a scheme which would have involved the confiscation by the Government of landed property to the value of fifteen millions disturbed the minds of the land-owners, and the mistakes of the Ministry reached their {194} climax when the native army, including 2500 officers, was disbanded without receiving their arrears of pay.