report, when it was published, gave only a partial truth.
I think too that Cave might have insisted, if he had been of a stronger character, on the fact which lay at the bottom of all Egypt's financial difficulty, namely, that in justice, and indeed it might have been maintained in law, Ismaïl's debts were personal not public ones, and should have been so treated.
Cave's weakness on this point was the beginning of the political intervention in favour of the bondholders, and his report led by a necessary logic to the recognition of Ismaïl's debt as a public obligation.
Sir Rivers Wilson, who immediately followed him, though a far abler man, was equally inexperienced, and was at that time chosen, I believe, principally for his knowledge of the French language.
I knew him intimately, and I knew also, but in a less degree, Cave; and I continued in correspondence with Wilson for some years and am well acquainted with all his Egyptian doings.