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spending the proceeds on objects which, for the most part, conferred no benefits whatever upon the contributors themselves. In 1867 Lady Duff Gordon wrote:cannot describe the misery here now-every day some new tax. Every beast, camel, cow, sheep, donkey, and horse ist made to pay. The fellaheen can no longer eat bread; they are living on barley-meal mixed with water, and raw green stuff, vetches, etc. The taxation makes life almost impossible; a tax on every crop, on every animal first, and again when it is sold in the market; on every man, on charcoal, on butter, on salt. . . The people in Upper Egypt are running away by wholesale, utterly unable to pay the new taxes, and do the work exacted. Even here (Cairo) the beating for the year's taxes is awful."

In 1882 three things were quite clear: -(1) The people were overtaxed. (2) It was absolutely necessary to spend a large sum of money on drainage and irrigation. (3) Reforms were needed in every department of the State. As it was impossible to carry out all these reforms at once, and as people were more interested in the reduction of taxation than in administrative reforms, Lord Cromer decided to relieve the taxpayers as soon as possible, to spend all the funds available in remunerative public works, and to carry out the most pressing reforms in the Departments of Law, Medicine, and Education. We have already seen that the corvée system was abolished at a cost of £E.400,000 a year, and we must now note that the land tax has been reduced by about LE.570,000 a year. The professional tax, E. 180,000 a year, has been abolished; the goat and sheep tax, LE.40,000 a year, and the weighing tax, E. 28,000, have been abolished; the navigation of the Nile has been freed at a cost of £E.46,000 a year, and bridge tolls have been abolished. The Octroi duties LE.200,000 a year, have been remitted; E.40,000 a year have been remitted on fisheries; the light dues have

been reduced £E.63,000 a year; the salt tax has been abolished at a cost of £E.175,000 a year. The tax on

fishing boats has been abolished, the tax on ferries has in some places been reduced, and in others abolished. Import duty on coal, liquid fuel, charcoal, firewood, timber for building, petroleum, live stock and dead meat, has been reduced from 8 per cent. to 4 per cent., large reductions have been made in postal, telegraph, and railway rates; and the house tax is now paid by all residents in Egypt, and the receipts have risen from about E.60,000 in 1882-83 to £E.145,000 in 1901. The only increase of taxation has been in the duty on tobacco, which has been raised from 14 piastres to 20 per kilo. In short, during the last 20 years direct taxation to the extent of about E.1,600,000 annually has been remitted. The rate of taxation per head of population has sunk from £1 25. 1d. in 1882 to 16s. 2d. in 1902. In spite of all this, however, the Egyptian revenue has increased by about £E. 2,000,000 or E. 2,500,000. In 1901 only 592 acres of land out of a total tax-paying area of 5,540,900 were sold up by the Government, and on a total assessment of £E.4,698,000 arrears to the amount of only £E.18,278 were due at the end of the year. The revenue returns for the last sixteen

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Up to the end of 1902 about £E.9,000,000 had been devoted to drainage and irrigation, and as a result land tax is paid on 5,540,900 acres instead of on 4,758,474 as in 1882; the value of the imports has increased from about

LE.8,000,000 in 1883-84 to over £E.21,564,000 in 1905; and in the same period the exports have grown from LE.12,000,000 to £E. 20,360,000. The cotton crop varied 20 years ago from 2,500,000 to 3,000,000 kantars (about 100 lbs.), and in 1905 the total crop was 6,352,000 kantars. The total receipts of the Egyptian Government from 1882 to 1901, both inclusive, were E.224,206,151. money was spent in the following ways:

I. Ordinary expenditure

I. Khedivial Civil List

2. Justice

3. Public Works

4. Education

This

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leaving a balance of £E.10,440,736, which was spent on Conversion Economics, the General and Special Reserve Funds, etc. Thus we see that every piastre which has passed through the Government Treasury during the last twenty years is accounted for. There has been no “leakage,” and no sums of money, like those which used to be sent to Constantinople, of which it can be said, “On n'a pu rendre compte."

In 1878 the ruling Khedive agreed to accept a Civil List in lieu of the revenue which was derived from the properties which afterwards served as the security on which the Domains Loan of £8,500,000 was raised. In 1882 the Civil List amounted to E.384,000 a year; in 1889 a number of allowances of the Khedivial family were com muted for £E. 1,310,000, and the Civil List now costs rather more than a quarter of a million a year. On Justice a large amount of money has been spent, and it may be noted that the receipts from fees and stamp duties have risen from E.200,000 to £E.521,000 a year. The cost of the Native Courts has risen from £E.54,000 in 1882 to £E.173,000 in 1901. As regards Education, the sum of E. 1,822,547 does not really represent all that has been spent on this important item. The money spent on education in 1882 was E.76,000, but in 1901 the sum was £E.173,000, out of which were maintained nine colleges and forty schools; eighty-seven village schools were under Government control, and the number of pupils had risen to 11,931, and of teachers to 760. In 1887 only 1,919 pupils were under the direct management of the Department of Public Instruction.

In 1882 the principal European language taught in the Government schools was French; English was either altogether neglected, or was very badly taught. The schools of the American missionaries were the only places in which instruction in English could be obtained, and the

splendid services rendered by these institutions in this respect must not be forgotten. Until the last few years nearly every railway, postal, or telegraph official who possessed any competent knowledge of the English language owed his instruction to the American missionaries. The following figures illustrate the growth of the study of English in Government schools :

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Tnus in 1899 about 78 per cent. of the pupils were studying English and 22 per cent. French; in 1889 the figures were 26 per cent. and 74 per cent. respectively. In 1882 the State grant for the Medical Department was £E. 70,000 a year, but in 1901 it was E. 108,000. The Army in 1904 cost about E.745,000 a year instead of E.864,000 in 1881. Pensions cost about LE 430,000 a year, and Tribute, paid to Turkey, about £E.665,000 a year. The late Ismail Pasha obtained certain privileges from the Sultan of Turkey, and the Egyptians had to pay a considerably higher tribute than formerly. In 1863 the Public Debt of Egypt amounted to LE.3,293,000, but thirteen years (1876) later it had grown to £E.94,000,000, for which there was absolutely nothing to show except the Suez Canal. Enormous sums of money were sent to Constantinople by Ismail Pasha, the building of numerous palaces absorbed a great deal more, and among small items

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