The British Occupation 99
representation (April 2, 1880), and of which Rivers
Wilson became President. In respect of debt payment,
the Controllers thus represented the Egyptian con-
tributor, the Commission represented the European
creditor.
It was a misfortune that Major Baring was at this
crisis transferred to India as Financial Secretary (June,
1880), for he had already done much to convince
Egyptians that a British official could be not only dis-
interested but could even be devoted to Egyptian interests
as distinct from those of England. Moreover, as a Liberal
with a lively though limited recognition of Egypt's
rights, direct contact with this first phase of the
Nationalist movement might have modified his contempt
as a proconsul for the Constitutional Party or even his
condemnation as a Liberal for any political action by the
army. But he was succeeded by Sir Auckland Colvin,
an Anglo-Indian administrator whose attitude towards
educated Egyptians was that of the Burra Sahib to the
Babu, and who approached the Nationalist agitation in
the army as though it were an incipient and insignificant
Indian Mutiny.
If Egypt was treated with contempt as a backward
and bankrupt Native State by such ex-Indian officials,
this was tempered by the correctness with which it was
treated by the British Agency as a foreign State in diplo-
matic relations. But Sir E. Malet was new to the post,
and was left to form his own policy. For Gladstone and
Granville had now succeeded Disraeli and Salisbury, and
no one, themselves included, knew what our policy really
was. Malet in these conditions was naturally most con-
cerned to avoid the fate of his French colleague, M. de
Ring, who was so heavily backing the Nationalists that
he eventually broke himself. Indeed, whatever line the