growing popularity. This popularity was very marked all through the summer months and brought him into communication with innumerable country sheykhs and Notables to whom the idea of fellah emancipation which he preached was naturally congenial. He began to be talked of in the provinces as "el wahhíd" the "only one," and in truth he deserved the appellation, for he was the only man of purely fellah origin who had for centuries been able to resist successfully the tyranny of the reigning Turco-Circassian caste.
It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the National movement of 1881 was essentially a fellah movement, having for its object the emancipation of the fellahin, and that it was directed primarily against the iniquitous Turkish Government, which had ruined the country, and only incidentally against the Anglo-French control when this last declared itself openly the ally and supporter of that tyranny. Other interests, however, naturally joined in with the movement; and besides being sought out by the fellah Notables, Arabi soon found himself approached as an ally by the professed Constitutionalists, many of whom were members of the ruling caste, and were at heart as much opposed to fellah liberty as was Riaz himself. The idea of a Constitution in the minds of men of this class was one in which the supreme power, though taken from the Khedive, should remain in the hands of the Turco-Circassian oligarchy, the only ones they considered capable of governing the country. The chief of these Turkish Constitutionalists was Sherif Pasha, and the course of the summer found him in indirect but close correspondence with Arabi as the means of bringing about the Constitution which should be the road for him to a resumption of office. Arabi, always sympathetic to the Constitutional plan, lent himself readily to the idea, and the more so because Sultan Pasha, the most powerful of the fellah Notables, was himself a strong Constitutionalist, and acted as intermediary between him and Sherif. It was arranged between them all that, when a favourable moment should occur, Arabi should add the weight of the army's influence to any pressure that it