Bankrupts and Brokers 85
opinion of Sir Rivers Wilson, have paid for the work.
Yet it was the claim under this contract that forced on
the final crisis.
What made this financial failure especially ruinous
was that Ismail had revived much of Mehemet All's
system of State trading. He had made himself owner of
a fifth of the cultivated area of Egypt, and he had tried
to market the produce on speculative lines. His favourite
operation was selling a bear in wheat, and he never
seemed to learn from his losses. He also ran a sugar
monopoly and several shipping lines. Mehemet Ali's
system might be called State Socialism, for the whole
national economy was organised as a business entity.
Ismail's system was rather an overgrown " vertical
trust," such as those which have bankrupted even first-
class business brains with the best assistance. And
Ismail had neither. He was just an explorer, and he
fell among thieves.
When we examine the more personal expenditures of
Ismail, such as his jewelled gold services for the Sultan,
or his gorgeous entertainments for the French Empress
and the Emperor of Austria, we are shocked at the
shameless swindling of his foreign caterers and con-
tractors. Though it must be admitted that when a busi-
ness man tries to bolster up his credit by ostentatious
expenditure, he undoubtedly invites this sort of exploita-
tion. Moreover, Ismail's advertising was itself almost
fraudulent. To impress a foreign capitalist he would erect
a sugar refinery and equip it with modern machinery,
which was then left to rust. To impress a crowned head
he would run up a Louis XIV. palace, fill it with bewigged
valets in appropriate costume, and then leave it to rot.
Nor did he confine his efforts to impressing visitors to
Egypt. The clou of the Paris Exhibition of 1867 was his