166 Egypt
fluence over education, their conviction that an Egyptian
intelligentsia could only be an embarrassment, and their
contempt for any form of education other than that of a
British public school—an institution clearly inapplicable
to Orientals—all combined in causing them to overlook
what they should have realised was their main responsi-
bility. The expenditure on education as late as 1890,
when the financial stress was over, was only £E8i,ooo
annually ; whereas an annual expenditure of ;££2,000,000
would not have been excessive. And if, by the end of
Cromerism (1906), one hundred and sixty-five thousand
pupils were being taught in four thousand five hundred
and fifty-four schools at an annual cost of ££374,000,
this represents the beginning of a new regime inaugurated
by the appointment as Minister of Education of Said
Pasha Zagloul, the future Nationalist leader.
The British policy of respecting Islam, not only as a
State religion, but as a social regime, postponed any
reform of social life in regard to slavery and the subjec-
tion of women. Slave trading was effectively stopped ;
but domestic slavery was tolerated. Under a new Con-
vention (1895) ^e emancipation and the escape of slaves
were made easier. But slavery remained an essential
element of Egyptian society. As late as 1894 no less a
person than a President of the Council got into trouble
for buying slaves. Slavery that would have disappeared
of itself in Egypt, as elsewhere, on the establishment of
a national democracy, could not be dealt with by an
authority that was itself based on conquest and caste.
Education was neglected not only scholastically, but
in the larger field of schooling in affairs. Education in
self-government by development of democratic institu-
tions had, as we have seen, been suspended. Even the
ancient Islamic institutions of Medjliss and Mudir Were