*Art. 51. The interpretation of all Articles and phrases of the present law which it may be necessary to make clear shall be made on agreement between the Chamber of Deputies and the Council of Ministers.
Art. 52. All provisions of Laws, Decrees, Superior Orders, Regulations, or Usages contrary to the present Law are and shall remain revoked.
Art. 53. Our Ministers are charged, each in what concerns him, with the execution of the present Law.
Done in the Palace of Ismaïlieh, 7th February, 1882
(18 Rabi Awel, 1299).
(Signed) Mehemet Tewfik.
By the Khedive:
The President of the Council of Ministers, Minister of the Interior.
(Signed) Mahmoud Samy.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Justice.
Moustapha Fehmy.
The Minister of War and Marine.
Ahmed Arabi.
The Minister of Finance.
Ali Sadik.
The Minister of Public Works.
Mahmoud Fehmy.
The Minister of Public Instruction.
Abdallah Fikry.
The Minister of the Wakfs.
Hassan Chéréy.
[APPENDIX IV]
Letter Received by Mr. Blunt from Boghos Pasha Nubar as to his Father Nubar Pasha's Political Connection with the Khedive Ismaïl. (Translated from the French.)
Paris, September 26th, 1907.
Sir,
I have just read in the Egyptian Gazette of the 14th instant your reply to Mr. Lucy about the Cyprus Convention, and I was very glad to observe the offer you made in it of correcting in your book any errors which might be pointed out to you. It has decided me to appeal to your loyalty in regard to a mistake about my father which has found its way into it. I do not know from what sources you have drawn your information, nor do I doubt your good faith, which has certainly been misled.
You say that Nubar Pasha was Ismaïl's Minister of Finance, and that in virtue of this office he was responsible for the ruinous loans contracted by the latter. This is evidently a complete mistake, my father never having been Minister of Finance, and having had nothing to do directly or indirectly with any of the loans.
The only offices which he filled during Ismaïl's reign were the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was never, I repeat, Minister of Finance, for this very good reason that, in spite of his great intelligence and qualities as a statesman, he recognized that he did not understand financial questions, and the Khedive, who also knew it, would never have thought of confiding a Ministry to him, which he himself felt he was incapable of directing.
Ismaïl's Minister of Finance was the Moufettish Ismaïl Pasha Sadek, whom you speak of on pages 18, 39 and 40 of your book. He was the sole collaborator and confidant of the Khedive upon financial matters, and it was he who organized the loans.
As to my father, I think what will best show you how entirely he was a stranger to financial administration, is a simple résumé of his career, under Ismaïl, which I shall try to condense into a few lines.
"In the very first year of Ismaïl's accession, 1863, Nubar Pasha was sent on a mission to Paris to regulate the differences relating to the Suez Canal. He remained there two years, and upon his return to Egypt he was appointed, first, Minister of Public Works, and then, Minister for Foreign Affairs. A year later, in 1866, he went once more on a mission to Europe, and remained three years absent. It was during this period that he obtained the Firman of 1867, granting to Egypt administrative autonomy, the right of making Customs Conventions with the Powers, and the title of Khedive for the Viceroy. It was at this time, too, that he commenced the first negotiations for Judicial Reform with the Powers. He did not return to Egypt until 1869, and then for six months only, in order to assist at the opening of the Suez Canal, and preside at the Commission of Inquiry for Judicial Reform which was sitting at Cairo, and he returned to Paris in 1870 to continue there the negotiations for the Reform. These negotiations, begun in 1867, lasted until 1875, about eight years, during which time Nubar Pasha lived almost entirely in Europe, with the exception of short intervals of a few months in Egypt. In 1874 he was dismissed by the Khedive on account of a difference of opinion relative to the said negotiations, and he remained in Europe without employment for a year. He was recalled by Ismaïl to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in June, 1875. Six months later, he was again dismissed, January, 1876. He then remained two years in Europe, exiled, and did not return until 1878, when recalled by the Khedive to form the Mixed Ministry in conjunction with Sir Rivers Wilson."
My father declares in his memoirs, which I hope one day to be able to publish, that during the fifteen years of Ismaïl's reign, he spent twelve in Europe on missions, on leave of absence, or in exile. The dates and facts which I have recited above prove the accuracy of this statement. During all these absences from Egypt, Nubar Pasha, exclusively occupied with his negotiations, could not take any part in the interior affairs of the country, about which he was not even consulted. Thus, while in Paris in 1869, he learnt from M. Béhic, Minister of Public Works to the Emperor Napoleon III, in the course of a conversation with him relative to the Judicial Reform, that the Khedive had just arranged a loan of ten millions sterling, of which my father had not even been informed; and again, at Constantinople in 1873, where he was pursuing his negotiations for the Reform, it was indirectly that he learned that the Khedive was negotiating a fresh loan of thirty millions.
You see, Sir, by these facts, which it will be easy for you to verify, that not only was my father never Minister of Finance, nor connected with the Khedive's loans, but that all his energy, his talents and the influence which he had acquired were employed in negotiations abroad: (1) for the regulation of the question of the Suez Canal, which culminated in the arbitration of Napoleon III, through which Egypt obtained a verdict for the abolition of forced labour in the making of the Canal; (2) for obtaining Firmans from the Sublime Porte; (3) for the Judicial Reform which was his conception and his work, and to which he consecrated all his energy, his intelligence, and the best years of his life. I must also add that he continued to work zealously for the abolition of forced labour while Director of Railways and at the Ministry of Public Works. This we owe in large measure to him, as Sir W. Wilcocks so courteously testifies in his book on the Irrigation of Egypt.
Do you not think, Sir, that I have a right under these circumstances to appeal to your courtesy in asking you to rectify in the new edition of your book the erroneous passages which I have mentioned? You cannot fail to see the importance which I attach to these corrections, for it would not be just, in a work bearing upon history, for my father to be held responsible for government measures to which he was altogether a stranger.
My father in the course of his laborious career made many friends, but also many enemies, as all politicians do. His enemies have not failed to spread calumnies about him and to invent stories. I will only cite two: First, that concerning his nationality. His political adversaries, in the interest of their cause, successively reproached him with being an English and a German subject! These allegations, the object of which was to discredit him in the course of his negotiations for Judicial Reform by contesting, though he was a Minister of the Khedive, his Egyptian nationality, have been since recognized as being without any foundation. Another legend relates to his supposed immense fortune. The most calumnious and fantastic assertions have been made with regard to this, generally by people who were interested in tarnishing the memory of an adversary by leaving it to be understood that such great wealth could only have been acquired by unlawful means. They did not hesitate to say and write that he possessed more than four millions sterling. Although I have not condescended up to now to reply to calumnies which have appeared in newspapers, there is no reason why I should not give you, for your personal information, the precise facts and figures.
At his death my father left a fortune of £155,000, having settled upon my mother during his lifetime a personal fortune amounting to an equal sum. Thus the four millions, at which the most moderate estimators valued what he possessed, were not in reality more than about £300,000. This is a fact which can easily be verified, for the Deed of Partition of his inheritance—there being children who were minors among the heirs—was registered at the Mixed Tribunal at Cairo.
It is equally easy to show the sources from which this fortune was derived. It consisted of donations, which he had received from the Khedive in recompense for services rendered, and of an exceptionally fortunate investment of a part of these donations.
By the résumé which I have given of his career, you will see the importance of the services he rendered to his country and the results obtained by his various negotiations. The Khedive did not fail to recompense him, as he had recompensed others of his Ministers, and as the British Parliament has recently done for Lord Cromer by voting him a donation of £50,000. Thus he received, upon the successful result of the negotiations relating to the Suez Canal, the Firman of 1867 and the Judicial Reform, various recompenses consisting of sums of money, of a property of nine hundred acres, and of a house in Alexandria—the whole being of the value of about £80,000.
My father had the fortunate inspiration, at the creation of the Cairo Water Company, of which he was President, to invest an important part of this sum, £25,000, in shares of the Company; and this investment alone sufficed to raise his fortune to the sum I have indicated, for it is a matter of public knowledge that the Cairo Water Company's shares had gone up to ten times their value at the date of Nubar Pasha's death.
I will end by begging you to excuse my having written you so long a letter, but your offer of rectification proves your anxiety to be impartial and has authorized my doing so. Thanking you in advance, therefore, for the corrections which my information will enable you to make, I beg you will accept, Sir, etc.,
Boghos Nubar.
Note.—I am glad to have obtained Boghos Pasha's permission to publish the whole of this interesting letter, and regret that I cannot, at the late date of my receiving it, make any alteration in the text of this edition, such as he at first suggested. I think, however, that the letter, published in full, will be found more satisfactory than a mere omission of the passages it corrects could possibly have been.