84 Egypt
of Ismail's transactions with foreign financiers. Egypt
got into the hopeless position of a small sound business
that has borrowed for its development from unscrupulous
usurers. That Ismail should have been tempted, as were
contemporary Oriental rulers, to exploit the new credit of
his State with European capitalists, and that they should
have treated Egypt no better than any other Eastern
State, is comprehensible enough. But Ismail had made
himself an expert in the technique of high finance as
few rulers Eastern or European have done. He went into
all the details of each transaction. He disgraced Nubar
for several years for a loan, on which he had worked out
the interest to be fourteen per cent. ; and at the same
time he was himself having Treasury Bills discounted at
thirty per cent. How, knowing as much as he did, he
got into such a mess is a matter rather for psychologists
than for political students. Anyhow, the morass of
liability in which he involved himself was bottomless.
The State loans placed with Goschens (1862, 1864,
1866), Oppenheim's (1873), Bischofsheim's (1870),
and Rothschild's (1879), show that for a liability of
seventy-seven Millions Egypt actually received about
fifty millions. In one Oppenheim loan (1873), for a
liability of thirty-two millions, involving an annua}
charge of three and a half millions, Egypt received less
than eighteen millions. The less official transactions
were even more leonine. Never has there been such a
spoiling of the Egyptians by the chosen people.
Moreover, a very large proportion of the produce of
the loans went abroad again as profit on foreign con-
tracts. Take the Alexandria harbour works as one of the
better examples, for they were duly completed and well
constructed by competent British contractors. But, of
the contract price of ^3,000,000, one half would, in the