CHAPTER XVI THE CAMPAIGN OF TEL-EL-KEBIR

presumed to supplant him in the popular affections. He was disappointed on the formation of the Sherif Ministry in September, 1881, that he was given no place in it, and was only half consoled with the presidency assigned him of the new Parliament. Still less was he pleased when on the formation of the more purely fellah administration of February, 1882, he was again left out, and the lack of what he considered the due consideration shown him caused him to drift gradually into opposition. Then came the arrival of the fleets at Alexandria, and, as we know, he was partly cajoled, partly frightened by Malet into declaring himself in favour of the English demands, and threw in his lot finally with the Court party against his former associates. There is nothing difficult to understand, more than in the Khedive's case, in the downward grade he was obliged to follow. It became with him, I imagine, a matter of obstinacy rather than any longer of ambition, and his patriotic scruples had been allayed by the promise made him that the English intervention was intended only to restore the condition of things previous to the Mahmud Sami Ministry, and that Egypt should still have her claim to Constitutional government respected. In this sense he addressed letters to his numerous former friends at Cairo, putting forward the explanation that the alliance between the Khedive and the English was a merely temporary necessity, as the English troops would not stay in Egypt when once the Khedive's authority had been re-established; and that Arabi had lost the confidence of the Sultan, and that the continued resistance at Cairo was generally condemned by Moslems. These letters, distributed carefully, were not without their influence, and money again played its powerful part. Sultan indeed seems to have advanced the money out of his own pocket, for the very first financial act of the restored Khedivial Government after Tel-el-Kebir was to make him a public present of £10,000 under the title of an indemnity for losses sustained by him during the war, while he also received an order of English knighthood. The sums actually given away by Sultan were not, as far as I can learn, very large, being supplemented with more