156 Egypt
subsequently added claims due to the burning of
Alexandria (£4,000,000), the cost of Sudan operations
(£2,500,000), and a contribution to the Egyptian expedi-
tion (£3,000,000).
The London Conference (April, 1884) had failed to
get a revision of the debt. The Conference of a year later
had secured a temporary relief in the new guaranteed
loan, but had incurred thereby a considerable permanent
extension of the powers of the international control, and
consequently of the possibilities of French obstruction.
For the Convention in question, embodied in a decree
(July 27, 1885), added German and Russian Debt Com-
missioners to the original British, Austrian, Italian, and
French. And it augmented the foreign control from one
intended to prevent further extravagance to one that
involved a power of veto on all expenditure outside a
fixed annuity of f' non-affected " revenues. The effect
of the arrangement was that for every £i of surplus by
which the authorised revenue of ££5,237,000 was
exceeded, £2 had to be raised in taxes ; and that the
surplus even then could not be usefully expended. Thus,
by 1892, the revenue was shown as ££10,364,000
and expenditure as ££9,595,000. Yet the surplus avail-
able under the arrangement was not ££769,000, but only
££179,000. Nor was this surplus, taken by the Com-
mission, applied to the immediate reduction of debt
capital and debt charges. It went to swell a reserve fund
to as much as £2,000,000, the use of which was con-
trolled by the Commission. And when, in 1896, the
Commission, by a majority, granted £500,000 from the
Fund to the Sudan expedition, the French, by appealing
to the Mixed Tribunal, enforced a refund.
This international control would have been less of an
embarrassment if it had not been that French policy was