Note 178 — Chapter XXV · ENGLAND IN EGYPT.

This loan was raised to wipe out the floating debt then amounting to £28,000,000. But the money-brokers who floated it imposed such usurious conditions, that they never really paid Ismail more than £20,740,077, of which they made him take £9,000,000 in bonds of the floating debt which the loan was raised to pay off. These they held themselves, having bought them at 65 per cent. They made the Khedive, however, take over the £9,000,000 worth which they thrust on him as part of the loan at 93 per cent.—See Mr. Stephen Cave’s Report on the Financial Condition of Egypt, and McCoan’s Egypt as It Is (Cassell and Co.), Appendix 9, p. 396.