Alfred Milner, the late under-secretary for finance in Egypt, whose _England in Egypt_ is the best book on the subject, though it reads like a novel, has put it in this way: "It is not given to mortal intelligence to understand at one blow the complexities of Turkish suzerainty and foreign treaty rights; to realize the various powers of interference and obstruction possessed by consuls and consuls-general, by commissioners of the public debt, and other mixed administrations; to distinguish English officers who are English from English officers who are Egyptian, foreign judges of the international courts from foreign judges of the native courts; to follow the writhings of the Egyptian government in its struggle to escape from the fine meshes of the capitulations; to appreciate precisely what laws that government can make with the consent of only six powers, and for what laws it requires the consent of no less than fourteen." It seems rather unfair to saddle the responsibility for all of these burdens and for this remarkable condition of affairs, which is unequalled in history, upon the shoulders of one man, but one man is responsible for it directly and indirectly. He is still alive, a hanger on at the court of the Sultan of Turkey, he who was at one time the most picturesque monarch of the world. Ismail Pasha became Khedive a little before the time of the close of our Civil War. Egypt had never been more prosperous than then--owing but fifteen million dollars. In 1876, when Ismail was deposed and his son Tewfik Pasha put in his place, he had increased the debt of Egypt to four hundred and forty-five million dollars. Ismail was a typical Oriental ruler; he had the typical Oriental ruler's French veneer and education, a combination which has been found to produce most serious results. When an Oriental is left alone he is a barbarian, or he used to be; now, after he has been made the talk of Paris for nine days, and has been given a state dinner at Marlborough House, and a few stars for his coat, and called "cousin," he goes home with no particular disgust for his former eccentricities of mis-government, but with a quiver full of new tastes, desires, and ambitions, and thereafter plays his role of monarch with one eye on the grand stands of Europe. He wants their good opinion, but he wants to get it in his own way--the old way. He begins to build railroads and hospitals, but he continues, after his past custom, to draw the money for such improvements from licensed gambling-houses or from the sale of opium. He has a French cook, but he retains the kurbash; he puts up telephones, but he does not give up the bowstring. [Illustration: RIAZ PASHA, Prime-minister of Egypt]