Lord Cromer's Report on the finances, administration, and condition of
Egypt, published this week, is a most striking State paper. It shows how extraordinarily successful has been our work on the Nile. Last year's surplus was the
largest ever realised. The revenue was £E10,568,000; the expenditure, £E9,480,000; and the surplus, 2E1 088,000. The three reserve funds behind which the Caisse de la Dette--the broker pat in by the Powers—is entrenched, amount in all to about £5,000,000. Thus, with bearable taxation, Egypt has a surplus of 21,000,000, and a reserve of 115,000,000. In 1883 there was a deficit of a million, while the taxation was higher, indeed, considering the poverty of the country, almost unendurable. That these results are directly due to English good management cannot be doubted for an instant. We have dealt with the general situation else- where, and will only note here the remarkable story of usury given by Lord Cromer in that part of his Report which deals with that eternal problem of the Bask—the moneylender. A small cultivator borrowed 210 from a European money- lender and signed a bond for 215. For three years he paid 25 a year for interest. The principal was then called for and refused. The creditor then put the debtor into the Court of the Mixed Tribunals at Cairo, four hundred miles distant. The debtor, rather than this, sold his house for £61 to the creditor (the price being fixed by the latter), who, keeping back £15 for principal and f14 for "expenses," handed the balance, £32, to the debtor. Thus the loan of £10 cost the borrower 234 out of pocket. It is not to be wondered at that Lord Cromer is anxious to deal with the usury question.
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