them are these. With regard to the government of the country, as soon as it was clearly demonstrated at Cairo that the Khedive could be no longer looked upon as Chief of the State, exercising freely his right of issuing orders, a General Council was assembled to consider the position of affairs and decide what should be done. In this the lead was taken by the religious and other civilian dignitaries, rather than by the military element. Arabi was not himself present at the general meeting, being absent with the army at Kafr Dawar, nor did he once during the war pay any visit to Cairo or intervene personally in the management of affairs there. The Council, however, was very fully attended, there being present, besides the great religious sheykhs, the Turkish Grand Cadi, the Grand Mufti, the Sheykh el Islam, and the heads of the four orthodox sects. All the most representative Moslems of the country were there, including four princes of the Viceregal House who had openly espoused the National cause, many of the provincial Governors who had been expressly summoned to Cairo for the occasion, and the chief country Notables, and also, representing the non-Mussulman population, the Patriarch of the Copts and the Chief Rabbi. The Council was, therefore, fully entitled to any claim of validity in its decisions which universality can give, for it comprised all sections of political opinion and class divergency. Many of the chief men were of Circassian origin, but endowed with sufficient patriotism as Moslems to see that, now it had come to fighting against a European invader, no honest choice was left but to defend Egypt against him irrespective of party feuds.
It was, accordingly, resolved by the Council, without a dissentient voice, that the Khedive was no longer in a position legally to command, and that his decrees, while he remained in English hands, were from that very fact invalid. Tewfik's first announcement of his new attitude had been to dismiss Arabi from his post of Minister of War. The Council resolved that Arabi should be maintained in it, and instructed him as such to continue the defence of the country. A permanent Council, or rather it should perhaps be called "Committee of Defence," was named to assist