conspirators. These had been tried by court-martial and condemned to the not overwhelming punishment of being banished to the White Nile, a penalty constantly enforced in Egypt even in the time of the Dual Control. Malet, however, wrote home that the sentence was a monstrous one, equivalent to death, while the "Times" correspondent was allowed to publish the story, an altogether false one, that Arabi had privately visited the prison and there had had the conspirators tortured under his eyes. That there was no truth in this tale it is hardly necessary to affirm. Yet Malet gave it a certain countenance in his despatches to the extent of mentioning it as a report prevalent, and that cries had been heard issuing at night from the prison. What is certain is that it was made a pretext with him for encouraging the Khedive to quarrel with his Ministers by taking the case out of their hands into his own, and commuting their sentence into one of simple exile, an act which according to the new Constitution was beyond his right.
To go back to my journal in London, I find that on 28th April I went to Downing Street "rather wroth" about nothing having been done for Egypt, but Hamilton bade me be patient and said that my idea of a Commission had been taken up. Also, the next day, Button congratulated me on my success. "He tells me there has been a fearful crisis about Egypt; that the Sultan was for sending troops there, deposing Tewfik, setting up Halim, and hanging Arabi. The English and French Governments, however, have prevented this, and Arabi is to be supported and a Commission sent." On Tuesday there was to be a declaration of their Egyptian policy in the House of Lords by the Government. This news of the Sultan's intervention seems, in fact, to have been a crisis of the moment brought on by the Rothschilds with the support of Bismarck. The relations between Constantinople and the National Party in Egypt had become strained in the last few weeks through various circumstances which it is time now to explain, as well as the peculiar communications which passed in the month of February between the Sultan and Arabi, communications which are of the greatest