ioo
one Agency took, the other was likely to take the
opposite.
Have you ever seen a dog and a cat taking a mouse
for a walk ?" was the description by an Egyptian of the
condominium, And it was indeed a complicated balance
of power on which this international government was
based—a balance between the Concert of Europe and
the Anglo-French condominium, between the con-
dominium and Constantinople, between the British and
French, and between the old native regime and the new
Nationalist movement. Much time and trouble were lost
in working out the compromises and least common
multiples of these various factors. Yet somehow some-
thing was done by the Controllers, who, without friction
between themselves or recourse to foreign pressure,
secured a large instalment of the reforms recommended
by the Commission of Inquiry. Thus ushuri land was
taxed and the moukabala repealed. Poll-tax, octroi, and
a score of petty indirect taxes were abolished. The salt
and land taxes were reformed. And the burden of taxa-
tion was thereby shifted in part from the workers to the
well-to-do. The rate of interest on the debt was reduced
from six per cent, to four per cent., and the Budget to
eight and a half millions, of which half only was to be
reserved for debt repayments and charges. The taxes
were so carefully collected that the kurbash and corv£e
lost much of their terrors. The rate of interest of
usurers fell by half, and the value of land doubled. And
when we consider that this was only the first stage of
convalescence from complete collapse, we shall conclude
that this experiment in international government does not
deserve its general contemporary condemnation as un-
workable. True everything was starved and much was
strangled altogether in the struggle to pay foreign debts,