They agreed, indeed, to modify three or four of the articles which the Controllers had principally objected to as giving the Chamber powers of a "Convention," and the amendments I proposed in these were in fact incorporated later in the published Leyha. But on the Article of the Budget they were quite obdurate, notwithstanding the support Sheykh Mohammed Abdu gave me. They would not yield a line of it, and I returned crestfallen to report my failure, nor did I again undertake any mission of mediation between Malet and the Nationalists. I had done my best to help him to a peaceful solution of his difficulties, but our points of view from this time forth became too divergent for me any longer to be able to work with him. Although I had done my very best to persuade the Notables to give way—for I was then firmly convinced that they were menaced with intervention—I could not help in my inner mind agreeing with them in their claim of controlling the free half of the Budget as a sound one, if Parliamentary Government was to be a reality for them, not a sham. Malet's despatches of the time show that they were all of one mind on this point, and even Sultan Pasha, who was a timid man and easily frightened, declared roundly that Sherif's draft was "like a drum; it made a great sound but was hollow inside." As between Sherif and the Notables in the quarrel which followed, my anti-Turkish sympathies put me on their side rather than on his. At Malet's suggestion I had a little before called on Sherif and had discussed the matter with him, and had been unfavourably impressed.
Sherif was a Europeanized Turk of good breeding and excellent manners, but with all that arrogant contempt of the fellahin which distinguished his class in Egypt. Malet had a high opinion of him because he was a good French scholar and so was easy to deal with in the ordinary